“All the fucking time.”
She licks her lips and leans in. “That sounds like a line? Do you use it a lot?”
Irritation with Brodie rises. “I’m not that guy, Gentry. Not anymore. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be feeding you lines if I was. A player would have walked away as soon as he found out you’re the guardian to two teenagers and his best friend's little sister.”
“You did walk away,” she says, staring into my eyes like she’s trying to figure me out. “As soon as you realized who I was, you stopped flirting and ran away.”
I nod, my heart racing. I can’t keep hoping she’s just going to forget about my past mistakes, I need to be honest with her. “I was a coward, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”
She twists her mouth and blinks in disbelief. “Sure you have.”
“I didn’t hook up with anyone that night I kissed you, Gentry. Ask Brodie. But I could have called you, and I didn’t. That’s on me. I could tell you that Brodie was having a rough time and needed me, but the truth is you scared the hell out of me.” It’s seriously getting difficult to talk around my heart trying to pound up my throat and out of my mouth. This is so much harder than I thought it’d be.
“I scared you.” She scoffs. “Quit feeding me lines.”
“It’s not a line. I’ve always liked you, Gentry. You seemed so sure of who you were and what you wanted. That day when you invited me to the lake, and I had to watch you running around in a bikini all day, I finally admitted what I’d been doing my best to ignore.” I lean in and press a kiss to her nose. “You are seriously hot, Gentry Lendew. You are now and you were back then. But more than that, you’re fun and compassionate and smart. You were way out of my league, and I knew it.”
She jerks back, and I’m not sure if it was the kiss or my words that surprised her more. “You liked me so much you ran away?”
“Like I said, I was a coward. I’d just started working with my brothers, and there was no way you and I could be anything but long distance. You consumed me that day at the lake. I wanted to be close to you every second. There was no way I could do long distance with you. So, instead of trying or explaining myself. I just didn’t call at all.”
“You ran away,” she says, but the words aren’t an accusation, more like a new understanding of words she’s said many times before.
“I’m not running now,” I say. “And you’re the one who ignored my calls after I saw you in the drugstore. I took a minute to readjust, but you totally shut me out.”
She hesitates, pressing her lips together tight. “I saw you flirting with another woman. Like less than twenty-four hoursafter you insisted on taking me out to dinner, you were out there trying to pick up someone else.”
I stare at her, scanning my memory, trying to remember. “What woman? Where was I?”
“Morning Brew.” Her cheeks color and she looks away. Is she embarrassed that she remembers? I’m not. It means she cared a lot that I was flirting with someone else, even after she insisted we would never be more than friends. It means I have a shot. “I don’t know who the woman was. You both reached for the creamer at the same time and got into a very intense, very involved conversation.”
Still nothing. “I don’t…” And then it comes to me. “Are you talking about Dr. Anna Moore?”
“So you did go out with her.”
I laugh. “I think her husband might have a problem with that. We reached for the creamer at the same time, and she noticed my t-shirt, which had the logo for Sullivan Construction. She asked me about some work she needed done on a historic home she and her husband had just bought. She’s an adjunct professor at the university. Their house was my first job after I moved back to town.” I swallow hard, hating that this is the reason she ignored my calls. At the time I thought it was just her way of getting revenge for me ghosting her, but this is worse. “I’m a friendly guy, Gentry. I smile at people, even women, and I enjoy banter. I get that it can be hard to tell the difference between friendliness and flirtiness, but this—”
She’s gone pale and won’t quite meet my eyes. “Makes me sound like an unhinged, possessive stalker?”
Some of the heaviness on my chest lifts. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
She shakes her head, and chews on her lip for a long moment. “Especially after I told you I wanted to be friends.” She sighs. “Maybe I was just looking for proof that you hadn’t changed,because…” She lowers her head and mutters something unintelligible.
With one finger under her chin, I lift her head until her pretty eyes meet mine. “What was that?”
Determination steels her expression. “You scare me, too, Levi.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m not the guy you think I am, and I have no intention of ever hurting you.”
She nods. “And that scares me more than anything else. You know why my mother abandoned her kids?”
I brush a loose strand of soft hair off her face. “She got addicted to painkillers.”
“She abandoned us long before that,” Gentry says softly. “She loved my father so much, she’d do whatever he asked of her, and she chose him over us over and over again. If she had plans with one of us and he asked her to go out with him instead, she always chose him.”
I squeeze her hips, hating the wobble in her voice that makes it clear just how much her mother’s actions hurt her. “I’m so sorry, baby. She was wrong to do that.”
“She could have been worse, though,” Gentry says. “People tell me all the time that as long as I’m doing my best with my sisters it’s good enough, and that’s all I can give. But what if she was doing her best? What if she was broken in ways that made it impossible for her to put her kids first? Do I have to forgive her? Because I don’t think I can forgive her, Levi. I can’t forgive her for always siding with my father when I was a kid, and I can’t forgive her for choosing her addiction over her kids. I can’t forgive her for making me give up my art. And if I can’t forgive her, why should my sisters ever forgive me for all the ways I’m screwing up as their guardian every single day?”
