Page 25 of The Run Home
He settled into the furthest rocker, his muscled body filling it to capacity and making the wood groan. I sat on the edge of the other rocker, plate of pie still in my hands.
“You gonna eat that?” Boon asked.
I handed him the plate. He picked up the slice of pie with his hands and bit into it. He groaned and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. He made eating pie sound like the best sex I’d never had.
“Mhm. Seriously,” he said with his mouth full, leaning over the arm of the rocking chair and into my personal space. “You gotta have more of this. This is the best pie I’ve ever tasted.”
He held the piece of pie in his hand, brushing my lips with it. My tongue darted out on instinct to swipe away the lemon curd, but then he pushed the piece into my mouth and I found myself taking a bite whether I wanted one or not. The flavors hit my tongue and my eyes fluttered shut. Oh, I wanted, alright. He was not wrong. That pie was out of this world.
He plopped the rest of it back on the plate and set it on the ground, licking his fingers. His manners were atrocious and yet my lower belly was melting into a puddle of need watching his tongue swipe at the remnants of pie.
“So, you were married before? Tell me about him.”
I reared my head back, sliding back into the rocker with a thunk. “Uh…” That was one hell of an abrupt change in conversation.
“Meet him at college? Was he into bugs too?”
I narrowed my eyes, used to the way this man teased me incessantly. Teased would have been the nice way to put it. Bullied might have been more appropriate. Then again, that was all before I heard about this supposed deal with Grady.
Boon held up his hands. “I’m not teasing you. You’re a hell of a lot smarter than me. I think it’s…”
I bristled, assuming the worst. “You think it’s what?”
Boon shot me a cocky grin, his teeth glowing in the moonlight. “It’s hot, Shae.”
My entire body went up in flames. Hot? Boon Wolfe thought Shae Fletcher was hot? Because of mybrain? I looked around, craning my neck left, then right.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for the flying pigs,” I muttered.
Boon huffed out a laugh. “Surely this ex-husband of yours thought you were hot. Is it so crazy to hear that I think you’re hot?”
I glared at him. “My ex-husband was an asshole.”
Boon shrugged like my miserable marriage wasn’t that big of a deal. “You can be right about a few things and still be an asshole.”
I shook my head, done with this little chat on my porch. I put my hands on the arms of the rocker, ready to stand up and slam the door in Boon’s face. His hand shot out and held mine.
“Stay. Please.” It was the serious tone in his voice that made me stay right where I was. It was so rare to hear anything but teasing from this man. “I don’t really have friends around here. It’s been…an adjustment being back home. Billy, my best friend, is still on the team. It feels like I’ve been left behind in many ways.”
I could only imagine. I didn’t know what a professional athlete’s life was life, but I had to assume it was far from the life of a high school teacher in a small town like Blueball. My heart, the one that had a tall wall around it, built to protect me from both Boon and my ex-husband, squeezed.
Well, butter my biscuits, that wassympathyI felt. ForBoon.
“I was never thin enough, didn’t make enough money, and couldn’t get pregnant. Defective, basically. Him divorcing me was the best thing he ever did for me.”
The confession was out before I could rethink showing my sensitive underbelly to a bully like Boon. He pulled his hand back leaving my skin cold. His gaze snapped to mine, anger in the set of his jaw.
“Fuck, lovebug. Sounds like you dodged a bullet.”
I scoffed, the sound as bitter as I felt. “Coming from a womanizer. What would you know about my situation back then?”
Boon’s spine straightened, and I could see I’d offended him. I didn’t want to care that I’d hurt him in some microscopic way, but I did. He’d hurt me a million times, but that didn’t mean it was okay for me to do the same.
“I love women.”
I snorted. “I know.”
