Page 37 of Accidental Abduction

When we were outside the stress of the bar, he was lighter, more talkative, and he looked at me in a way that made my entire body light up. For as much as he’d been horrified when I walked out of his bathroom this morning, he was making up for it with his inability to go more than a few minutes without touching me in some way.

Subtle finger grazes gave me goosebumps, his hand settling on my calf underneath the table made me desperate to climb across it, and it took everything in me not to swoon when he kissed my neck before he escaped to the kitchen to grab more snacks.

Vivienne was a fucking moron. Like really fucking stupid. Because she had this man who, despite his tendencies to be a workaholic, went out of his way to make her feel special. To show her genuine affection. I knew it wasn’t his idea to go to every stupid local festival he went to with her where he held her hand and carried her things the entire time.

I knew he wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t blind to the fact that he could withdraw into himself and never asked for help. His responses most afternoons before the bar opened often consisted of a litany of grumpy grunts and growls. He was oblivious to things sometimes—like the fact that women hit on him constantly when he was behind the bar. But he tried. He gave a shit. He listened to what people said and was kind in a way I knew was rare.

He was a solid guy. And so eager to please. But in a ‘make my nasty fantasies come to life’ kind of way, not in the ‘too sensitive or gentle way.’ But if that’s what I wanted, I knew he’d do that too.

Now that I’d seen this more primal side of him, it worried me that if he suddenly decided he wanted to stop whatever was happening between us, I’d be crushed. If I thought it was hard to want him before, it would be impossible if he walked away.

I’d have to quit the bar, find somewhere else to live and escape to Butterfly Ridge early to work for my aunt and uncle while I finished my degree. Commuting twenty minutes would be the least of my worries.

“You okay?” he asked, flexing his fingers, and shuffling the UNO cards he held.

Nodding, I tried to push down my nerves. Because he was here with me now. He insisted we stay dressed for the rest of the day and talk instead of getting distracted by each other’s bodies. That meant he cared what I had to say, not only what I looked like naked and writhing across whatever surface he’d spread me across.

I was currently drowning in fabric, zipped inside his black hoodie with his T-shirt underneath. He’d pulled his pajama pants on me after removing our snow boots, then proceeded down the hallway naked with both pairs in his hands to return to the mud room before he went to find more clothes.

He hadn’t been kidding about things not fitting him when I’d teased him about being shirtless earlier—not that I’d minded that much.

A Sage Springs football T-shirt was currently having its seams brutally tested as it hugged his defined chest, and his long legs were covered with another pair of soft flannel pants.

“Yeah, just thinking.”

“Do I dare ask about what?” he teased with a knowing smile. While he surely expected me to be thinking about something dirty as I often was, I was dwelling on the fact this man held my heart in his large, calloused hands.

“I’m trying to figure out how we can play strip UNO,” I teased, and he rolled his eyes.

“Why do you keep testing me like this? We’re behaving right now.”

“Because it’s fun.” He returned my cheesy grin, and I knew he wasn’t really annoyed with me. “And I think you need that right now.”

“What? Someone to drive me insane?” All the teasing was pushing his boundaries, but I think he was starting to crave the way I pushed him. I know I craved the effect he’d had on me.

“No, fun. I don’t think you’ve let yourself have fun in years. And maybe I’m tired of letting you hide behind a failed relationship with someone who never appreciated what she had.”

He swallowed hard, placing the cards down on the table as he stared at me. “She…”

“Was fun until she realized she couldn’t turn the sweet man she thought was a bad boy into her lapdog.”

Smack talking other women wasn’t something I wanted to do. But after every snide comment she’d made behind his back for the last four years, I was tired of being nice about it for the sake of my friend. She wasn’t nice to him, and if I had to remind him how terrible she was, then I’d do it until he finally stopped trying to romanticize the memory of her to make himself feel guilty for doing what he wanted for once.

“I’m not that sweet,” he murmured, his previous smile gone. A pang of remorse flowed through me, but she was always going to be the elephant in the room until we addressed it. I knew it’d onlybeen days since they broke up, but I wasn’t going to be a rebound fuck if I had anything to say about it.

“Yeah.You are. But you’ve also shown me that there’s a darker side you’ve been burying because you knew little miss perfect would never be okay with it.“ And I craved it. Every mark. Every degrading word. Every time he let himself lose control.

“She was the one who wanted me to…” he trailed off, looking down at the table and avoiding eye contact.

“Put on a mask and chase her through the woods?”

“Yeah…”

Taking a breath, I let him know exactly what I thought about how this situation started, and how it would have ended if he had tried it with her. “And she would’ve been into it once, critiqued your performance—which was really fucking hot, by the way—and then strung you along until the next time you weren’t giving her enough attention.”

He nodded, clenching his jaw as he tapped the edge of the card deck against the table.

“I’m not going to tell you she was terrible a hundred percent of the time. And I know that you...” I hesitated, choking out the next word. “…loved her. But she was honest with you last week and showed you who she was and how much she valued you. Don’t let her take up space in your heart when it’s clear she doesn’t want you in hers.”

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