Page 20 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

I knew, logically, that I wouldn’t actually die. Stupid lizard brain. All instinct, no rational thought. My fight-or-flight reaction was just the trauma talking, trying to keep me safe from anything that might do him harm. And harm, to my lizard brain, was disguised as kindness. Abuse? That was perfectly normal. It was what I understood and knew how to deal with. My instincts turned the world upside down.

And even though therapy made me more aware of the reasons behind my reactions, it hadn’t cured me of it. My inclination to turn tail the second my emotional well-being was on the line—before I could be fully emotionally invested—had been the death knell of every relationship I’d ever started.

The fact that I was feeling this way now, just from the touch of her hand on my knee, did not bode well for a friendship with Kate.

But dammit, I had to try.

Because the alternative was to give up. On everything. If I couldn’t even make a friendship work, how was I going to be a husband? A father? I wanted this. And when I wanted something, I put everything I had into getting it.

“Are you okay?” Kate asked.

I looked up from my beer to find her staring at me, concern furrowing her brows. “Yeah.”

“If you clench your jaw any harder, you’re going to crack your teeth.”

Now that she mentioned it, I could feel the tension in my face. I rubbed my jaw, trying to loosen the muscle, and took a sip of beer. “I get the feeling Luke isn’t that fond of newcomers.”

“Sure, he is,” Kate protested. “We’re only a mile from the Appalachian Trail, so we get thru-hikers all the time. Luke loves talking to new people, hearing their stories. He’s so friendly that visitors send him postcards from the AT.” She gestured to the back wall of the bar, where postcards were pinned to nearly every available space behind the bottles of alcohol. “He just doesn’t like seeing me with a man. Not that he wants me himself,” she grumbled.

“Do you want him to want you?” I asked. Because wasn’t that what friends did? Ask important questions? It felt awkward. Maybe because I didn’t want to know the answer.

Kate turned to survey Luke with a critical gaze. “I should. He’s hot, objectively speaking. Plus, I have it on good authority—from more than one source—that he’s an excellent kisser.”

I felt some kind of way about that. Not about Luke’s kissing skills per se. But about Luke applying those kissing skills to Kate’s mouth. It wasn’t a friendly feeling.

“But…” I encouraged, hoping there was a but.

She didn’t take me up on it. “That’s what I’m here for, you know.”

“To kiss Luke?” The unfriendly feelings intensified.

“To kiss someone.” Kate made a frustrated noise. “That was your advice, wasn’t it? To get out of the box this town built for me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as a widow. I don’t want someone else’s death, even someone I cared very deeply for, to be the thing that defines my whole life. I want to have all the things that everyone else gets to have. Flirting and kissing and sex and connection. I want more.”

I knew all about wanting more.

“Tonight, I thought, I’m going to do it. I’m going to take a step forward. So I put on this shirt and this lipstick, and here I am. Still stuck in the same box. I don’t get it.” She glared at her drink, using the straw to tamp down the ice cubes with quick, hard thrusts, only to watch them immediately bob to the surface again, unimpressed with her efforts to defy physics. “It was so easy with you. It just…worked.” She gave me a rueful smile. “Until I cried.”

I laughed, not unkindly. “We need a do-over.”

“I—yes.” She whipped around on her stool to face me. “Yes. A do-over. That’s exactly what we need.”

“Sure, we’ll just go back in time and—”

She swatted me lightly on the arm. “I’m serious. It’s the perfect solution. I don’t think I can go through that again, not with a stranger. But you’re not a stranger anymore. And we like each other, don’t we? It makes sense.”

I stared at her, every cell in my body suddenly on high alert. “Kate, are you propositioning me?”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

My dick was immediately intrigued. Unfortunately—fortunately?—my brain was in charge. “No, Kate, it does not make sense. I’m the principal of your daughter’s school. And—”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not saying we have to date, Max. I’m saying we should kiss. See where it goes from there. Just for…practice.”

“I don’t need practice kissing,” I said, much to my dick’s disappointment.

“Right.” She slumped on her stool. “Of course you don’t. Because you weren’t widowed at twenty years old. You don’t need practice because you’ve had real relationships. You’re normal.”

The absolute wrongness of her assessment of me made me laugh. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

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