Page 51 of Slow Hands Cowboy

“It is too late. I get that.” There was an undercurrent humming between them, getting louder and louder, and she was having a harder time than ever ignoring it.

“If you want the honest truth, Alan thought that I liked you, and I said that I didn’t. He told me to prove it. So I did.”

“Is that how it went,” he said.

“It’s how it went. And I am sorry. Because I really didn’t think about how it would affect you. I didn’t think that it would. Being totally honest, I believed that you didn’t care about anything. But of course anybody would care about being left like that when they were supposed to have a date.”

“I really didn’t care,” he said.

There was something behind his blue eyes that told her that he was lying, but he seemed intent on keeping up that lie.

That made her feel worse than if he had said outright that she’d hurt his feelings.

Because it meant he couldn’t even get into it. Even now.

She understood the weight of unsaid things.

Because there was a whole mountain of them between her and her mother. It was different, she knew. But still, she recognized it because she carried so many of her own unsaid burdens.

They were the ones that hurt the worst.

These things that you didn’t want to drag out and dissect because they might be able to hurt you again.

He was doing it now.

The waiter set their dinner down in front of them, and all she could do was stare at her ravioli. Then she looked back up at Walker. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I was your traumatic high school experience.”

“So, tell me more about your campaign plans,” he said.

He began to cut into his steak, and it was clear that he was done having this conversation.

She had whiplash from the changing conversation, but she decided to let it happen, because the alternative was to continue to marinate in this strange guilt that she wasn’t accustomed to feeling, guilt that she didn’t think she could add onto the existing shame that she was currently carrying around.

She started to recite her various campaign plans and promises, which she could do without thinking deeply, and it allowed her to disassociate from the moment for a bit, which she really, desperately needed.

But then she saw the crease between Walker’s eyebrows deepen, watched his eyes follow something behind her, and she turned.

Her heart jumped forward, hitting her sternum. Jill. Alan’s sister had just walked in.

Walker must’ve recognized her, because he had reacted the minute she appeared.

Jill’s eyes connected with Addison’s and then her former future sister-in-law looked away as quickly as possible, grabbing her husband’s arm and moving quickly to her table.

Walker very intentionally put his hand across the table again, and covered hers with his.

Making it unambiguous to Jill that this was absolutely a date.

Worry, fear, dammit, anxiety, all rolled through her brain.

Was Jill going to think that she had been cheating on Alan? Was she going to think that this had been something that was going on even before the wedding?

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

Except it felt like it did. It really felt like it did, and she felt like she was going to jump out of her skin.

She jumped when Walker’s thumb slid over her knuckles. “Relax,” he said.

“I don’t think I can,” she said. “I don’t think I can breathe.”