Page 99 of Putting Out
“True,” Reilly smiled. “Anyway, as crazy as it seems, given our track record, I still think it might work. I think it might be love.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Me, too.”
* * *
Kenny watchedhis sister go upstairs and put out of his mind what he knew was going to be happening between her and Luke. He couldn’t believe he’d been so blind to miss it all these years. The zing of lust that crackled in the air anytime they were together today must have always been there; he’d just been oblivious.
He snorted in self-disgust, realizing obliviousness was his favorite state.
Knowing it was ridiculous but wanting to try again anyway, Kenny pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and hit Tessa’s name. Unlike the hundred times he’d tried earlier, this time she picked up.
“Hello?”
“Tessa!” His shock at hearing her voice almost made him drop the phone, but he recovered fast. “Please don’t hang up.”
“Kenny, I only answered to tell you this won’t work.”
There was a soft sigh at the other end of the line and he could imagine her face at that moment: sad. He didn’t want to make her sad.
“Please, Tessa. Talk to me. Yell at me. Tell me I’m an asshole, but please stop ignoring me. It’s killing me.”
“Why?”
“Why am I an asshole?”
“No, why is it killing you? We’ve gone months without speaking before. You’ve never felt any great need to talk to me when you were off on tour before.”
Because he’d always known she would be there when he did get around to talking to her. She’d been his constant. His steady girl. There for him when he needed her, absent when he didn’t. Of course, saying that would make him an asshole. In fact, thinking it pretty much made him one, too.
“I’ve changed, Tess. I know that sounds like the biggest cliché in the world and anytime anyone says it, they’re lying. But I think it’s true. I realized something when I saw you again. Out of all the women I’ve had in my life, you’re the one I keep wanting to come back to. Then I thought about what it would mean if I didn’t have you to come back to because maybe you were with me.”
This was answered with silence, but Kenny had no idea if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“I want us to try and be something. A couple,” he pressed.
“That’s funny. Funny all of this should happen now with Reilly in the American.”
Kenny heard the derision in her voice but he didn’t understand.
“What does Reilly have to do with this?”
“Kenny, have you ever considered one of the reasons you like to come back to me is because of how I make you feel?”
“Yes. You make me feel great.”
“I make you feel like you’re the king of the world. I do that because I have always loved you and worshipped you and treated you like a god. That’s what you need from me. Not me the woman, just the worship. You joke about carrying Reilly’s clubs for a living but I think deep down it bothers you on some level. Makes you feel less than a man and the easiest way to fix that is a dose of Tessa worship. Now, she’s in the American and maybe you think you need a lot more than a dose of me this time, but it will go away. When all of this is over you’ll stop needing me and that’s what I can’t deal with anymore. I can’t take the fall again. I won’t. No matter what happens.”
This time it was Kenny’s turn to be speechless.
“You think that? Really? You think I don’t care about you?”
“What’s my middle name?”
A test. She wanted to give him a test to prove how little he cared. How could she not know… “Elizabeth. Tessa Elizabeth. You used to wish it was your first name.”
“That was an easy one,” she puffed.
“Okay, how about this for hard. You used to wear braces as a kid until you were fifteen, which was longer than everyone else so it made you self-conscious about your smile. To this day you try not to show them when you do smile, but sometimes when you laugh really hard, you forget. When you laugh really, really hard you snort and that always makes you laugh harder. You wanted to be a vet when you grew up but you couldn’t handle the idea of animals dying so you decided to be a teacher. You have a wicked soft heart when it comes to cute little things animal or child, but you have no tolerance for bullies. You like vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate but it has to be smothered with hot fudge and you make a mean apple pie mostly because you got the recipe from my Grams. I could go on for hours on the topic of Tessa Elizabeth. You think I didn’t care? That wasn’t why I kept leaving, Tess.”
