WAYLON (Ruthless MC 1)

I shake my head, still not understanding. Like, at all. “So, you're saying that you chose me because I was hard to get?”

“I didn't choose anything, angel.” He shakes his head back at me as if everything he’s saying is obvious. “I woke up on the table, and I saw the woman I was meant to be with. Otherwise, I would’ve pulled the trigger and asked questions later.”

I screw my face up, unable to believe the words coming out of his mouth. “So you think this was what? Love at first sight?”

He lets out a consternated breath. “No, I wouldn't call it that. More like a lightning bolt hit me when I looked at you.”

He looks down as if he’s trying to figure out how to explain everything to me. “You were something I wanted. Something I planned to have before leaving Delaware. But I didn’t decide to keep you until I touched you and you slapped me.”

I glance from side to side, so confused it would be comical if I wasn’t standing in front of an exact replica of my dream house. “Why would me hitting you make you want to keep me? Are you not aware that’s the number one reason guys have ghosted me in the past?”

His face takes on a stubborn set. “I don’t know about who came before me. It’s not something I want to think about. But you and me….”

His face works, his chin moving up and down, and his chest caving like somebody trying to vomit something out. It takes him several moments to finish with, “We got some shit in common. Shit I don’t talk about. Ever. Except with you. Right now. If I have to….if you need me to in order to understand where I’m coming from here.”

I still. Everything inside of me quieting for the man who rules this town.

For once, he isn’t staring me down. He’s looking everywhere but at me.

I sit down on the top step. Think. Then think some more.

Then decide out loud, “Normally, I wouldn’t ask anyone to tell me anything if they weren’t comfortable with it. But if you’re willing, yes, I think hearing your back story might help me process all of this.”

I tell him that, and this time it’s me who chases down his eyes…and holds his gaze.

Several moments tick by. He’s standing the kind of still where anything could happen.

But in the end, he sits down next to me on the top step and says, “My mom…she wasn't the best. And it took her until I was in my 20s for her to kill herself with all the drugs she was taking. My dad left town after she got knocked up. And my abuela tried to take me when she could—gave me a little religion. But she died, so there wasn’t anybody to take care of me when my mom disappeared. And we lived in Nashville proper, not the compound like Colin and all of them. You gotta go to school with teachers and counselors, and they notice shit like that. My mom lost me a few times. I had to live in other places. Some of them good, some of them whatever. But one of them was bad. Let's just say you ain't the only one who got touched without wanting it.”

My heart cracks. Just splits apart inside my chest.

But when I reach out to touch him, to try to comfort him, he says, “Don’t. That’s not why I’m telling you all of this. I just want you to understand, not feel sorry for me.”

My first instinct is to tell him I’m not feeling sorry for him. My response is fully empathetic without any judgment like pity involved. But I sense that wouldn’t be helpful.

You can explain the healthful benefits of what’s inside a needle all you want to patients. But some of them just have to close their eyes to receive their shot.

“Anyway, if you’re wondering why I’m so fucked up, there you go,” he says, continuing on. “I don’t trust anybody or anything except for my own gut. I don’t ever try to get close with women. You’re the exception to that rule….”

He rubs a hand over his face as if he’s reciting a long exhaustive list, and he just has to get through it. “And I got the same reflex you got. Only I carry a gun. Somebody crosses me. Somebody pisses me off. I dead them. And that’s just me.”

I think about what happened at the roadhouse in a new light. How he apologized, not for killing a man but for letting one touch me. And my stomach sinks with a new level of understanding about his response.

He lets out a long breath like he’s run a marathon, and he fists his hands over his knees. “So you see, it was one thing when that lightning bolt struck. Then you saved my life even when you didn’t have to—cared for me even though you were scared. All I knew at first was I wanted to be near you for a while—stay in Delaware as long as it took for me to get strong enough to fuck you. Even if it meant laying up in your bed handcuffed for a lot of the day.”