Of course he was. His fiancé had cheated on him. He felt slighted.
“Well, let’s go.”
Ozzie raised his hand as if to touch me but dropped it back to his side. “Umm, okay.”
We drove toward town with the radio blasting Willie Nelson songs and me gripping the steering wheel too tightly. Beside me, Ozzie nodded to the music, his gaze lost in the passing scenery. The silence hung like a dead weight between us, punctuated only by the strumming guitar and Willie’s mournful voice. He tapped his foot to the rhythm of the song, and now and then, he would hum along.
Too many thoughts were swirling in my head, threatening to explode if I opened my mouth. What if I said the wrong thing? This wasn’t how I imagined our first outing since that night would be—filled with unspoken words and tension.
About a mile from the town, I couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled onto the shoulder of the road, gravel crunching under the tires, and I killed the engine. The abrupt silence felt louder than all the tension-filled quiet before.
“I knew something was on your mind.” Ozzie’s knees bounced. “If you’re worried about what we did—Gray, what are you—”
I cupped the back of his head and slammed my mouth to his. My desperate need swallowed his surprised gasp to prove my thoughts wrong. Ozzie hadn’t hooked up with me out of revenge. He wasn’t like that. I couldn’t be wrong about him.
He leaned into me and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer as he kissed me back with an intensity that stole my breath and set my heart ablaze. The kiss was harsh, urgent, a clash of teeth and tongues fueled by our lack of alone time after the last time we’d been together. It tasted like the conversations we’d had in the back of my truck, the shared glances, the desperate touches. It tasted like the truth I couldn’t voice out loud.
We broke apart, panting, our breaths mingling in the small space between us. Ozzie’s cheeks were flushed a beautiful pink,and his eyes sparkled with a mix of confusion and desire. I brushed away a stray lock of hair that fell over his forehead.
“Gray, what’s going on? You’re confusing me. Since we left the house, you barely said a word to me. I thought you regretted what we did.”
“Do you?”
He shook his head. “I know I should, but I don’t.”
I took his hands, brought them up to my lips, and kissed them. “You polished your nails.” I examined the subtle shade of the tan coat. He tried to snatch his hands away, but I held them. “I like it, but wouldn’t you prefer a brighter color?”
“I thought no one would see the tan. It’d be my guilty pleasure.”
I let out a sigh. “I hate how much you feel you need to hide yourself.”
“Not everyone looks at me the way you do, Gray.”
“Do you need them to?”
His mouth fell open. Then he snapped it shut again. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Try again.”
“When you’re an XXL, you learn how to not call anymore attention to yourself.”
“Ozzie, I can’t pretend to understand what you go through, but my wish is that one day you won’t feel the need to hide any part of yourself. That you’ll walk through this world just as you are, beautiful and unapologetic. You deserve to feel confident in your own skin.”
You deserve a partner who’ll tell you that every day so you never forget it.
His eyes welled up with unshed tears, and he blinked rapidly. “Can I be honest with you?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve been feeling more like my old self every day I spend with you. Lately, I realized that…situations and-and some people in my life may not have been as supportive and accepting as they should have been. But you…you’re different, Gray.”
His honesty hit me like a punch to the gut, raw and powerful. This was Ozzie, bare and open to me. Vulnerable.
I wanted to hide him in my arms from the shallow people who had chipped away at his self-confidence over the years.
“I wasn’t always like this, Gray. But the last two years…”
The time he’d been with Carter. It was just as I’d feared. My son had broken his spirit.
