“I didn’t have a chance because you didn’t come back,” he argued. “I thought you would come back to Papillon after you graduated. Most everyone does while they’re looking for a job. You had a job waiting for you in DC. The first time you did come home, you brought Brad with you. Do you remember when you broke up with Brad and I showed up in DC three weeks later? That’s how long it took me to clear my calendar so I could pop up in your part of the country. And you were already dating Chad. You had a thing for preppy douchebags.”
“I had a thing for guys in suits, and you told me you had a conference you were attending.”
“Yes, it was the ‘romance Sylvie Martine’ conference, and I spent the whole time wanting to punch Chad in the face.”
She had a confession of her own. “Chad was a friend. He actually had a boyfriend at the time, but he agreed to help me out. I couldn’t stand the thought of you thinking I still pined for you.”
“Are you kidding me?” His hands tightened on her.
She’d believed everything he’d told her. He’d called and said he wanted to catch up with an old friend while he was in town on business. She’d recently broken up with one of the few men she’d dated for a long time, and she hadn’t been able to stand the idea of Rene seeing her vulnerable. “No. I did need time after breaking up with Brad. And I truly believed you didn’t want me that way. You did an excellent job at pushing me away. Did my brother help you game-plan that talk? Because Dre is usually much smoother with his breakups. He’s had plenty of them. He would be an excellent coach.”
Her brother was probably a better ex-boyfriend than he was a real one. The women he broke up with talked about how amazing he was. Rene really could have used his advice.
Rene looked like he was ready to explode one minute, and then the next he completely deflated, sitting back on the bed and staring at the floor. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I should give you time to figure out what you needed, what you wanted out of life. I knew what my life was going to be from the time I was born. I was always going to take over the business and live here. I was always going to slide right into my father’s life. You didn’t have to do that. You had choices.”
“You should have been one of those choices.” She said the words with a sigh, her anger fleeing because she was mad at a college kid who’d thought he was doing the right thing. “I don’t know if it would have worked out, but we should have decided to take the chance or to not take it together. You shouldn’t have decided I couldn’t make that decision with you. I’m worried you’re still doing it.”
He reached for her hand again. “I’m used to making decisions, but I don’t want you to think I don’t value your input. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I told you I inherited my father’s life, but I don’t want his marriage. I want something that’s meaningful to me. I’ve been trying to keep you at arm’s length when it comes to my family because I don’t want to scare you away.”
“Maybe instead of worrying about me being scared, you should trust me. I don’t scare easily. I’m not unused to criticism. I know Papillon isn’t DC, but you try explaining to Herve and his cousin that he can’t put a ramp over the highway to prove he can make it to the other side on an ATV.”
That brought a slight smile to his lips, and he pulled her closer. “Did I ever tell you how much I missed you?”
This was why he was dangerous. She’d been mad and unsure a moment before, and now she wanted to melt for him again. “If you don’t want your parents’ marriage, then you have to stop doing the things they would do. You said your parents had fairly separate lives.”
“They did.” He wrapped his arms around her, laying his head against her breasts, the sheet the only thing between them. “I don’t want that for us. I don’t want to scare you off. I don’t want my relatives to insult you and harass you the way they do me. I’m worried that my world is a bunch of don’ts right now, and that’s going to scare you off as surely as you figuring out how screwed up my life is will.”
A swell of sympathy came over her. He was so smart in some ways and uneducated in others. His college degree hadn’t covered how to build a marriage, and his parents hadn’t taught him how to have the kind he seemed to want. He’d been trying to focus on her every night, but she couldn’t be something pretty he took out and played with and put back away so she wouldn’t get dirty and broken. She’d lived long enough to understand that life could break a person over and over again. The worth of that life was in how a person put herself back together and moved ahead. She smoothed back his hair. “You can’t push me away again. Not even if you think you should. Not even if someone shows up and tells you they’ll kill me if you don’t dump me.”