Page 30 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

But right now, I just wanted her. Kate. I wanted to sit with her, be with her, talk with her, play cards with her. Get to know her. That wasn’t for practice, for a future relationship with someone who wasn’t Kate. It felt urgent and present and real.

So, yeah. That surprised me.

“We’re fucking doing this, Kate,” I said in a voice that brooked no opposition.

Her gaze shot to mine, wide and startled. She grinned. “All right, then. We’re doing this.” Her cheeks flushed. “What do you want to do tomorrow for our date? I’ve never been on a date before.”

I paused, my cup halfway to my lips. “Never? What about George?”

She laughed. “George and I got together when I was sixteen. We didn’t go on dates. We hung out because that’s what everyone did in high school. And then, after Jessica… Well, we didn’t go on dates then. Mostly, he was deployed. When he was here, we parented. Or—” She stopped herself, biting her lip.

Or what? I had the feeling it was important, what she had left unsaid. But I didn’t want to push. Not yet, when everything between us was so new. I had no idea how to be a boyfriend, how to say the right things that made everything better. Later, I would ask her. When I wouldn’t screw it up.

I gave a one-shouldered shrug, as if I weren’t triple-analyzing every move I made. Cool and casual, that was me. Not. “Well, I’ve never done the whole meet the parents thing, so I guess it’s just a day of firsts for both of us.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “Wait, do you mean you never brought a girlfriend home to meet your parents, or your girlfriend never brought you home to meet hers?”

“Both.”

She stared at me.

I checked my watch, because yes, I always wore a watch even though my phone had the correct time. Phones were too distracting to be used as a timepiece. You checked the time, and then you might as well check email and social media, circling back to email, and suddenly most of an hour had disappeared. No, thank you.

She cleared her throat, and I looked up. “This is the natural point of the conversation where you share about yourself.”

I couldn’t help my grimace. “It doesn’t feel all that natural to me.”

“Right.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “Isn’t that why you’re here, with me? To practice? Because this is the kind of thing a girlfriend—and a wife, even more so—will want to know about you. It’s hard to feel connected to someone you know nothing about. That’s what relationships are. Connections.”

I knew she was right. I also knew, logically, that telling her wasn’t dangerous, but that didn’t stop my pulse from kicking faster. There was no rationalizing with my lizard brain.

“How old were you when your parents died?” she asked. “You must have been pretty young, if you never introduced them to a girlfriend.”

She took a sip of her drink and waited. I had the feeling she would wait forever if I needed it, just as she was. Sitting there, calm and kind, as though she had all the time in the world for me.

“I never knew my dad. For all I know, he’s still alive. My mom died when I was fourteen.”

Kate made a sympathetic sound. “I’m so sorry. Did you have grandparents? Who took you in?”

I didn’t want to tell her. I couldn’t tell her. Not Kate, whose crisp, elegant parents were stalwarts of Hart’s Ridge and sent their child and grandchild to private school. Our histories were so different. But then I looked at her, and her eyes were big and brown and full of caring, and I found that I could after all.

“My mom left me at a fire station the day I was born. She had managed to stay clean for seven months once she knew she was pregnant by telling herself it was just until I was born. She held on by the skin of her teeth, she told me, but once I was out, heroin was all she could think of. So, she wrapped me in a blanket and left me there. The man who found me and took me to the hospital was named Maximillian. The nurses gave me his name.”

Kate reached out and squeezed my hand. That gave me what I needed to continue.

“I was placed with a foster family for a while, but when they filed to adopt me, my mom came back. She was clean again and wanted to try to be a mom. It didn’t work out, and eventually, social services stepped in and took me. I was placed in another foster home, and then the cycle repeated itself. The last time she showed up, I was eight years old. I never heard anything from her again after that, until I was fourteen and a social worker told me she died of an overdose.”

“Max,” she said softly.

I shrugged. “I was unadoptable. Everyone wants babies. No one wants kids whose moms might show up again, especially when they’re older and…”

Unlovable.

I didn’t say it out loud, but that’s what it was. Loving was something kids were supposed to learn from their parents, even before they could form memories. I should have learned how from my mom and my dad—one of the many things they had neglected to teach me. Who wanted a child who couldn’t love?

“I bounced around foster families until I turned eighteen. At eighteen, you’re legally an adult, which means you’re not the state’s problem anymore. Fortunately, I had been preparing for that day. My grades were good enough to get me a scholarship.” I shrugged again, like it was nothing, even though I suspected she knew it was everything. “So that’s why I never took a girl home to meet my parents. As for why a girl never took me home to meet hers, I don’t know. That’s something you would have to ask them, and it never occurred to me to do that.”

Unlovable. I didn’t have to ask. I already knew the answer.

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