“When did you have sex with her? Was it after we were already sleeping together?”
I lowered my head.
“No, look at me.”
Shit, this was harder than I’d thought.
“Yeah,” I rasped. “After the first time we did it. Like two days after.”
A frown creased Matty’s forehead, and he inhaled deeply, then let the breath out slowly. His grip on my hands had tightened, painfully so, but he didn’t seem to realize it, and I deserved that pain, so I didn’t say anything.
“Why? Was I not enough for you that night?”
“You were, but it was my first time with a man that way.” I filtered through the past, digging into memories I’d sealed in the crypt of my mind. “I didn’t understand all the feelings I had. I liked it way more than I felt I should have. Even when it hurt, that was the best sex I ever had, and I may have had a freak-out about it. Next thing I know, I’m at the bar in town. You couldn’t meet me because you and your dad had driven to the city to drop off Carter at your mom’s. And I missed you so much it scared me. I missed a guy who, for all I knew, was going back to campus to brag about how he made me a power bottom.”
“Is that what you thought of me?”
“I didn’t know what to think about you, Matt! We’d only just met. Within a week, you had me sucking your dick. A few days later, you’d fingered my ass so many times I’d lost count. Those first few weeks, we didn’t discuss anything serious, and didn’t get to know each other. We were hot and heavy, always naked and fucking around. Not to mention,you were only nineteen and in college. My boss’s son! You wanted us to be a secret?—”
“Because my dad asked me to be discreet. Not because I was ashamed of being with you.”
“Well, that’s how the whole Heather thing happened. I was drinking, and she was right there, convenient and offering. Next thing I know, we were in the restroom and…you know the rest.”
“So you randomly fucked someone without a condom after you made me use one? Is that why you insisted on us using condoms for a while?”
“But I did use a condom with her that night. I don’t know what happened, and I had my doubts, but we did the paternity test, and Ivy was really mine.”
“She got pregnant.”
I straightened my spine. “You saying you don’t believe me?” I dropped his hands. “Because if you won’t, what’s the fucking point of doing this?”
“Sorry. This is hard for me, okay?”
“You don’t sound sorry.”
“I’m in my feelings, man. I’m still processing that you were sleeping with her while I was breaking my mom’s heart that I wouldn’t be staying in the city that summer because I wanted to rush back to the ranch, to you.”
“I only meant to stick around Bristlecone for a few months. No more than a year,” I said, desperate for him to believe me. “You were in college. You had your whole life ahead of you. Of course I didn’t take you seriously at first. I thought it was a summer thing.”
“Maybe to you. The moment I saw you, I knew you were mine.”
“Is that why you tricked me about Junebug?”
His lips twisted in a sad smile. “That wasn’t the first time I saw you.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. The day before, I saw you strutting past without a shirt on. You looked so fucking sexy. My dad and Carter saw my interest immediately, and that’s when my dad told me to be discreet. You see, I might have had a fling in the past with a foreman who tried to sue us.”
“Yeah, I remember the rumors, which didn’t help me to feel any special.”
“Well, you were special to me back then.”
My stomach knotted. Were. Past tense. I should tell him to go. What was the sense of opening up old wounds just to watch both of us bleed?
“Back to Heather,” he said with a sigh. “That was the only time you had sex with her?”
“Swear it on my life, Matt.”
