Page 25 of Puck & Make Up

Her voice cracks, and I take a half step forward, prepared to cradle her close again, prepared to wipe her tears away.

“Des,” I whisper.

“I hate you because I want you,” she says. “Because every single time I allow my heart to make the decision to overrule my mind, I end up bruised and battered and alone. I can’t have that happen. Not again.”

Shit.

My heart aches, and my anger ramps.

I want to hold her again, and I want to demand that she explain herself, that she give me the name of every single person who hurt her.

But I need to know the rest of it.

“Is that why you came back to River’s Bend?” I ask carefully. “Because people you cared about hurt you?”

“People I cared about.” She sighs and spins back to face me, eyes widening as though not realizing I had come so close. But she just side-steps me, moves to the table, and picks up the last beer, chugging down a large sip of it. “Yes,” she whispers. “My fiancé and my coworker he was fucking.”

I frown. “But weren’t you working at?—”

“The station?” she finishes, and I nod. “Yup. Turns out it’s not all that hard to cheat when your partner is working long hours and away from home days on end.” A sigh as she takes another long drag on the bottle. “But Jett isn’t the only asshole to break my heart. I’m not good at this, Fox. Not good at picking people who will be good for me.”

“So what?” I ask. “You’re just going to hole up and hide from life?”

Her brows drag together, tone going deadly. “Excuse me?”

But really? She’s going to be a coward?

Dessie?

“You’re scared, sugar lips,” I tell her. “Scared of getting hurt again, but”—I shrug—“that’s fucking life. Things don’t work out, we date people who are bad for us. We hide from the truth”—fuck, do I knowthat—“but if we’re just hiding from everything that might hurt us then we might as well not?—”

“What?” she asks when I don’t finish. “Might as well notwhat?”

I sigh. “You know what I mean.”

“Tell me,” she grits out.

“Fine,” I say. “You really want to do this?”

She waves a hand around her apartment. “I thinkyou’rethe one doing this, hot shot.Youshowed up at my door.Youhung around.Youwanted to know the truth. Andyou’rethe one pushingthisright now.”

“Maybe Iamthe one pushing this.” I move over to her. “But I’m also not the one hiding.”

Not hidingthis.

I touch her cheek. “I’ve had my heart broken. More than once. I’ve been cut from teams I was desperate to play for. And up until a couple weeks ago, I thought I was never going to make it to my end goal. But, fuck, sugar, we have one life to live.” I drop my hands onto her shoulders. “Is this”—I glance around the room—“living alone, too scared to go after what you desire reallyallyou want from yours?”

Eight

Dessie

The disappointment in Fox’s eyes when he left last night is almost impossible to shake.

What’s worse?

The disappointment I feel in myself because I answered his question with the affirmative.

Is this living alone, too scared to go after what you desire really all you want from yours?

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