Page 18 of The Cowboy's Second Chance Bride

“Beer pong requires you to be agile and quick. That’s probably really hard to do with the pole up your hole.”

“You keep bringing up this stick. What’s with the fascination of my backside?”

“You’re an asshole.” I tried to jerk away my hand.

He held tight. “I know.”

“Do you not think I deserve to know why, in a span of two hours, everything changed for us?” The space between us was as wide as my forearm.

He still held my fist in his. Energy crackled, causing the hairs on my arms to rise. At the point where we connected, our hands hummed and vibrated. If we’d been energy sticks, we’d have had a meltdown, with so much highly charged current flowing between us.

“It doesn’t matter why.” His gaze fell to my lips.

So mine did the same to his, and I was instantly vibrating with a need to rise up on my toes and flick my tongue across his lips. I tried to focus on the conversation. “It mattered to me.”

“But in the big picture, it doesn’t matter. It was just something that had to be done.”

We were talking to each other’s mouths.

I tugged my fist, trying to dislodge it from his hand again. “It came out of nowhere. And you think I was supposed to shrug and move on?”

He tugged back and brought me closer, my bent arm the only thing between us. Slowly, his gaze traveled back up to meet mine. “But it didn’t come out of nowhere. Come on, you know things weren’t perfect between us, Reenie. Did it not bother you that I never introduced you to my family?”

Hearing the nickname slip easily from his lips—a nickname given to me by my parents—dredged up another wave of achy longing, reminding me once more what I’d lost.

“You don’t get to call me that anymore.” I pulled against him.

He held steady.

I narrowed my eyes. “You said you were estranged. I believed you. Should I not have? Besides, no relationship is perfect, and it wasn’t my idea to run off to Vegas—it was yours. So tell me why you would do that if you weren’t sure.”

That made him look away.

We continued to play our push-pull game. Any passerby might pause and question my safety. But I didn’t feel scared. I was angry that he talked in riddles, never answering my questions.

“Why did you come, Reenie?” he asked, his voice gravelly. He shifted to lean more toward me.

I pressed my lips into a thin line and glared at him. He was using my nickname to disarm me, to try to melt me into a puddle that he could scoop up and do whatever he wished with.

Well, I was not going to have any of that. I needed to get away. My resolve was wavering again, and I wasn’t sure what I would do next. Crying seemed impending and unavoidable. I had one move he’d never expect. I stomped on his foot, making sure to avoid jabbing my heel into him. I was going for distraction more than pain, and my aim was true.

Cal swore as he thrust me away then reached for his foot. But because he’d pulled me close and had been holding my hand, I suddenly found myself off-balance and teetering backward. I tried to adjust by stepping back and windmilling my arms, but the momentum pushing me backwards was stronger than my correction.

“Oh,” I called as I reached for something, anything, and found the front of his shirt, clutching it in my fist.

His arms snaked out and caught me, and together we shifted, so I crashed into Cal.

“Oof.”

“What was that for?” he growled over my head, his arms tight around me.

I was up against his chest, surrounded by him, overwhelmed with the memory and familiarity of what he felt like pressed to me. Yep, I was going to cry. All of these feelings and memories were too much.

I was acutely aware of how alone I really felt, how long it had been since I’d had a hug that was all-encompassing. How long I’d gone without romantic affection and even sex. Here I was, not really being hugged but held, and I wanted more.

“I’m all done here.” I straightened and pressed my palms against his chest to push out of his arms. “The ten years have changed you. You’ve become hard.”

“In my line of business, I had to change. I have to be fit.”

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