Page 4 of Love Takes Home

“Like what?”

“Like anything about your weight. Not around me. You’re fucking perfect, and I won’t stand for it.”

“You won’t stand for it?” I ask, placing my hand on my hips. “I’ll have you know—”

“Don’t care.”

He cuts off my sentence and places his hand on my waist, lifting me right up into the cab of the truck. What. The. Fuck.

Chapter 2

Harrison “Joker” Bennett

What. The. Fuck. Thisis the dress she was going to get married in? I can’t help but glance over at my passenger as we drive out of the town limits and towards the mountains. I cringe, looking at her.

“You don’t have to be so disgusted by my presence,” Ginny says to the window, not turning in my direction.

“Why do you think I’m disgusted by your presence?”

“I can see your reflection in the mirror, Joker. I see you shrink back from me every time you look at me.”

“And you think—”

“That you’d rather be anywhere else but here with me? Yes.”

“Ginny—”

“You don’t have to come up with excuses. I know I’m no one’s dream girl, okay? It’s fine.”

“What are you—”

“You don’t have to keep trying to make me feel better. I said I was—”

I take my hand off the wheel and cover her mouth, returning the favor and cutting her off mid-sentence.

“Would you shut up?” I growl. “And let me finish a fucking thought before thinking you can read my god-damned mind?”

Her head whips around, her eyes wide as saucers. Almost like she’s afraid. Of me.

“Ginny,” I say, making my voice as gentle as I can. “I’m not shrinking back from you.”

“But I saw you,” she accuses me.

I smile. I can’t help it. “I promise, it’s not you. It’s that,” I chuckle, “monstrosity you have on.”

She buries her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Have I made her cry? I pull the truck over to the side of the road and put it in park.

“Ginny,” I say her name, but her shoulders continue and now she’s shaking her head at me. “Sweetheart. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

From behind her hands, she mumbles something I can’t understand.

“What? Can you repeat that?”

She parts her hands enough to free her mouth, but her cheeks and eyes are still covered from my sight. “You’re the first one today. Not a single person other than you had the balls to tell me how horrible this fucking dress was.”

And with that, she lowers her hands, laughing. She wasn’t crying, she was laughing.

“You hate it, too?”

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