Page 33 of Hiding Rose
“My life is a train wreck, Sawyer. I don’t know why you want to hang out with me. Men don’t like drama from women and I’m nothing but drama right now, even though it’s not my fault. Well, actually it is my fault.” I swiped away the tears and stiffened my upper lip.
He rubbed my arm as I lay on his chest, his other hand still over my necklace. “Men don’t like drama from women because we don’t know what to do to make you feel better.”
“Usually there’s nothing you can do,” I said, honestly.
“And therein lies the problem. Men are doers. We want to jump in, fix the problem, and move on. When we can’t, we get frustrated. I suppose we come off as harsh or brash when we’re usually aching inside because we’re useless at solving your problem.”
“Unfortunately for you, I would say the case is the same here. There’s nothing we can do but sit around and wait.”
“Wait for what?” he asked.
I sighed. “My death, I guess.”
I was forcibly flipped around and my face was in his hands before I finished the sentence. “Not if I have anything to say about it!” He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath through his nose. “See, frustration,” he said glibly. “I can’t fix this for you, but I know I’m not alone because Niko and Gideon feel just as impotent as I do. The only difference is, I don’t know why.”
“Kate says I can trust you enough to tell you why,” I whispered, my face still in his hands.
His lips tipped up a hair. “Kate’s a wise, wise woman.”
I laughed and looked up to my hairline. “Easier said than done, though. I’ve kept it inside for months, protecting it. Now I’m afraid to let it out and never get the fear under control again.”
He leaned in and laid his lips on mine. His kiss was tender, soft, and gave me a sense of safety in his arms. When he ended the all too brief kiss he hugged me, his arms tightly around my shoulders. “The fear is already controlling you because you’re carrying the burden alone. Sure, maybe a few other people know, but having to keep it from the rest of the world is a brutal way to live your life.”
“You’re not kidding,” I said, attempting a joke, but it failed because we both understood the gravity of the situation. He rubbed my back and we sat in silence listening to the waves beat against the shore. “It all started when I met a guy at speed dating.”
He released me and ran his hand down my face. “Go on,” he encouraged, hugging his knees.
I hugged mine too and stared out at the water, avoiding eye contact while I spoke. “His name is Jarrett and he lived in Snowberry where Kate and I are from. Like I mentioned before, my mom couldn’t handle the cold anymore, so two years ago they moved to Miami.”
“You didn’t go with them?” he asked.
“I tossed it around, but I had a good job in Snowberry and I was finally on my own. I decided to give it a chance to see how I did without them. They left me the house, but I paid them rent.”
He held up a hand. “I’m not judging you. I’m only getting the backstory straight.”
I shrugged. “Winifred met Flynn through the speed dating they do in Snowberry every year, so I decided to try my hand at it. I met Jarrett and we started dating heavily. We saw each other almost every night for three months. After the first three months, we slept together and it wasn’t exactly mind blowing. I couldn’t deny something felt off any longer, but I convinced myself it was because our relationship was new and we didn’t have a lot of time under our belts.”
“I see,” he said, still holding his knees.
I sighed. “Go ahead and judge me for the casual sex. I learned my lesson without need for judgement, though.”
He shook his head. “I’m not judging you for anything. I’m trying to say as little as possible so you’ll keep talking. I’m also trying not to look disinterested and have you stop. I’ve made plenty of relationship blunders in my life.”
“Blunders? Have you been using a thesaurus to find new words for mistake?” I asked jovially.
He smiled in the darkness. “No, I call them blunders because I learned from them. They’re only mistakes if you—”
“Don’t learn from them,” I finished. “You must hang out with Kate a lot.”
He laughed and shook his head. “She may have said it to me a time or two.”
“In my case, Jarrett was a gigantic blunder, because I learned from it, but it nearly cost me my life.”
He crushed his legs to his chest. “You keep saying that, but you never tell me why.”
“Let me enlighten you then,” I said, sarcastically. His body language was enough to set my teeth on edge and he didn’t even know what happened yet. Imagine how he would react once he did. “After the first night we slept together things cooled off. We still saw each other, but not the way we had been. A month after we slept together I got two lines,” I said, choking on the words.
“Two lines?” he asked, his head swiveled toward me and his face illuminated by the glow sticks. I could tell how confused he was by the expression on his face.
