Page 78 of Wasted On You

We’ll talk tomorrow.

Don’t read anything into this. We’re good, I promise.

How did a man handle this stuff because he sure as shit had no clue. It was new territory for him. He sat at the kitchen island and tried to think of another time a woman had turned him inside out. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it had never happened—nor until last year when he and Ivy had first hooked up.

“Why don’t you go see her?” Jacob had returned to his game and was in the middle of killing a horde of aliens. He didn’t bother to glance up.

“Just drive over to her place,” Mike Paul replied dryly. “Show up unannounced.”

“Yeah.” The kid gave him a look that said,duh,you’re an idiot, and shrugged. “It’s what I’d do.”

Since when did Mike Paul Darlington take female advice from a seventeen-year-old boy with less hair on his face than he had on his balls?

“I mean, you like her, don’t ya?”

“I love her.” The admission caught Mike Paul by surprise, not because he’d said the words—he’d told Ivy as much the night before—but because he’d said them out loud in a room occupied by someone other than him and Ivy. The teen stopped his game and glanced over.

“Then why are you still here?”

Good question. “It’s late.”

“So?” Jake was back to his game. “Girls like that stuff.”

“What stuff is that?”

“Grand gestures. In junior year I liked this girl who was into butterflies. It’s all she talked about. I ordered a bunch online and released them in her backyard.”

“She liked the butterflies.”

“Heck yeah.” Jacob nodded and smiled. “And I made it to second base.”

It was pushing eleven o’clock in the evening. He fingered the letter again and pictured the way her eyes shone. Then he thought of how her nose crinkled when he kissed her. And how sweet it had been to have her in his bed, lying next to him.

He looked at the clock once more and, before he could talk himself out of it, hopped off the stool and grabbed his coat. He pulled on his boots and scooped his hat from the bin.

“Can you look after the animals tomorrow morning?”

“Yep.”

“The goats need?—”

“I know they need their meds.”

“And the horses?—”

“I got it.” Jacob shook his head, clearly irritated. “Just go already.”

The teenager had grown on him, no doubt about it. He had no idea how long this situation would last, but he didn’t hate it. An unfamiliar feeling crept over Mike Paul. It was warm and kind of fuzzy. Jacob looked up just then, and with a knot in his throat, Mike Paul gave a small nod. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

An eye-roll and a grunt was Jake’s reply.

The night was quiet and clear. That big Montana sky made a man feel small, and Mike Paul thought about that as he hopped in his truck. He headed down the lane and then took a right. Living in this corner of the world was a gift. He’d grown up surrounded by the Rockies and Yellowstone and a network of family and friends he wouldn’t trade for anything.

He was a lifer. Always had been.

But where was Ivy’s head at? She’d left Big Bend right after graduation without so much as a goodbye. Had up and disappeared one night with Cal, and that was it. Until recently, she hadn’t spent much time back here. But he supposed she hadn’t had a reason to. Would she stay now? If he asked her? Was he being weird thinking about these things when they’d only just gotten together?

Shit, he thought, this relationship stuff wasn’t easy. He didn’t have much time to ponder the fact that he’d just used the wordrelationshipbecause he pulled into Ivy’s driveway and turned off his truck.

---