Page 51 of Roughing It

I snort. “Except they never make it, and they don’t think that matters. They think if you dress rich and drive an expensive car and have a nice house, people will assume you have money, and that’s just as good as all those zeroes in your bank account.”

He grimaces. “Trust me, those zeroes don’t make you a better person.”

I cough through a small laugh. “Maybe not, but it would be nice some days not to have a panic attack about my utility bills.”

He bites his lip, then shakes his head. “I grew up rich. My mom assumed I’d go into law or medicine or some shit. My dad wanted me to go into finance like him. My siblings did the whole Yale thing, got married right after college. My first marriage was practically arranged with the daughter of a family friend.” He sits back and starts to pick at his cuticles, and I realize it’s a nervous habit. When I take one of his hands, he shoots me a grateful smile. His next words come out slow and deliberate, like he’s afraid he’ll get them all wrong. “My dad told me that if I was going to go into the military, I better make general so he has something to be proud of.”

“Gross.” The word just slips out, and Maddox throws his head back in a laugh, though it doesn’t sound particularly happy.

When he calms down, he looks at our joined hands and lets out a small grunt of frustration. “I want to kiss your hand.”

“I’m not stopping you,” I tease, but my smile falls when I realize what he’s saying. His brain is doing that static thing again. Not sure if I’m about to help or hurt the situation, I shuffle closer, then raise our joined hands to his mouth.

After a beat, he seems to connect again, and his lips gently brush over my knuckles. “Sorry, this is so embarrassing.”

Cocking my head to the side, I shrug. “I shit my pants in tenth grade once, in front of the boy I liked.”

Maddox stares, then chokes a bit. “Uh.”

“I know,” I tell him with a grin. “Sexy, right?”

His mouth stretches into a smile. “I want details.”

Shrugging, I slide the food away and curl up next to him, and he presses his lips to the back of my hand again and just kind of holds the kiss there. It’s maybe the sweetest thing a man has ever done, and I’m feeling some type of way about it. “I wasn’t joking when I said I used to make up shit about my background. I tried to get my mom to buy me a DNA test when I was in high school, but she refused. I don’t really know what she was scared of—maybe that I’d find siblings or something and reconnect with my birth parents.” I shrug. “Anyway, in high school, this kid whose parents just moved from India came over, and he asked me if I was too. He was so damn hot, so I just said yes. He invited me to his place to have dinner, and he was like, you want it Indian spicy, right? And—”

“You said yes,” Maddox says, his eyes shining.

I nod. “I had never eaten anything spicier than, like, the hot salsa at the Tex-Mex place my parents love. I had the most amazing poker face though, I swear to god. They just kept feeding me, and I kept eating. Then he offered to drive me home, and when he turned onto my street, my stomach started to… uh…”

He grins and leans in close, resting his chin on our joined hands. “I know the feeling. Been there once or twice.”

I don’t know why the hell I’m telling him this or why it doesn’t bother me. Flor told a whole group of strangers once when we got drunk and started playing truth or dare, and I didn’t speak to her for a week. And those were people I didn’t give a single, solitary shit about.

But hell if Maddox doesn’t make me feel safe and wanted.

I brush a curl off my forehead and drop my temple to the top of his shoulder. “We got to my driveway, and I was ready to bolt. I thought I could make a clean exit, you know? But then he reached for my hand and pulled me in for a kiss.”

“Smooth,” Maddox murmurs.

I laugh and shrug. “He was a terrible kisser, but my boyfriends didn’t get good at that part until I was in my twenties.” I pause when he nibbles on my knuckle, and I have to force myself to go on. “Anyway, I’m getting into the make-out session, but there’s all this churning happening. At first, it’s pretty silent, but then my stomach gives this massive rumble. I managed to get out of the car, but halfway up the sidewalk, my knees just gave out and… yeah.”

“Aw, darlin’,” Maddox murmurs.

I shrug against him. “He drove off while I lay there and cried. I thought maybe he’d give me, like, ashredof dignity. But a few days later, some kid sold me out for being a pathological liar—which I kind of was—and told him that I wasn’t from India. That my parents were super white and I was adopted. So, he told everyone what happened. I never got asked out again. Not in high school anyway.”

The story should sting. It used to sting, but those people are so long gone, I don’t even remember half their names.

“You know where I can find this guy?” Maddox asks in a low rumble. “I just wanna talk.”

A laugh escapes me, and I lift my head, surging into a kiss. “No,” I murmur against his lips.

Maddox kisses for a second, then pulls back to ask, “What’s his name?”

“I can’t remember,” I answer with a small grin. It’s not quite the truth. I do remember his first name—Rajesh. Even now, it was still one of the only times I ever looked people in the eye and saw someone who looked like me staring back. But it was high school, and everyone was an asshole. “He doesn’t matter anymore. And you know what—turns out I wasn’t actually lying when I told him about my background. I just didn’t know it at the time.”

“Yeah?” he asks.

“I took a test a few years later, and it came back with my paternal side solidly South Asian, and my mom’s a mix of Scottish, French, and German.”

He grins at me and shakes his head. “You’re something else.”

I don’t know if that’s a compliment, even if he sounds like he means it that way. People have said it to me in the past, but rarely to be kind. The way he says it, though, sounds like a declaration of something—a four-letter word I’m not going near.

But it is terrifying because the one thing I can tell about this feeling in my gut is that it’s absolutely and undeniably real.

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