Damn him.
I force my feet to keep going forward. This is dangerous. He is dangerous. My willpower is skirted, chipped away with every interaction, and I’m feeling very bare these days.
You must stay strong. Don’t give in to temptation. Don’t . . .
He reaches over his head, his shirt pulling up so I can see the skin on his side. The thick muscle that wraps from his front to back bulges, rolling as he moves.
I’m so screwed. No, I’m not. I’ll hand him his wallet and go home. No sex. Well, maybe. No! No sex, Danielle.
I’m not screwed. I’m about to be fucked.
Like he has all the time in the world, he glances over his shoulder. Bit by bit his face is revealed to me. His sculpted cheekbones are followed by his sharp jawline peppered with a five o’clock shadow. His full lips are displayed, then his brooding eyes that light up as they meet mine somewhere over the gravel between us.
“Hey,” he says. His voice is balmy, welcoming, but he doesn’t move.
“Hey.” I try to suck in a breath to regain my composure but am hit with the essence of Landry and blow it out instead. It’s not helping. “I have your wallet.”
My words stumble out of my mouth. Something about seeing him in a place that I don’t hold the advantage has me flailing a bit, my typical confidence floating somewhere on the little ripples in Lake Freeman. I have to get it back. It’s the only weapon I have against this force sitting in front of me.
I glance around the park, only to find it deserted. Royal purples and lively pinks spatter the blue sky as the sun hovers over the top of the evergreens as it descends.
Turning to face him, I extend the leather in my hand. I wait for him to take it. He doesn’t. After a few moments, my hand falls back to my side, and he scoots across the table, making room for me.
“I love it here,” he says, taking in the ducks bobbing on the water. “It reminds me of a lake at home. My brothers and I all learned to swim there.”
“How many brothers do you have?”
“Three. Assholes, all of them,” he says before glancing down at the picnic table. “You going to sit or what?”
My brows tug together, and I want to say no, that he should take his wallet and I should go. Instead, I find myself climbing on the bench and resting beside him. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a look of satisfaction splashed on his face.
“I was kidding about my brothers being assholes. They’re all good guys. My dad would still whip the shit out of us if we weren’t.”
“Yeah, well, my dad is an asshole,” I huff before I can think about it. I fidget with his wallet in my hands. “I think my father was so disappointed that I was a girl that he was afraid to try again. Try growing up knowing that.”
“Maybe he thought he hit the jackpot and was afraid of being disappointed the next go-round.”
Trying to return his smile, my attempt lacks any genuineness. There’s nothing to smile about when it comes to my parents. Lincoln picks up on it, watching me curiously.
“I’ll save you the trouble of trying to figure it out,” I offer. “My father wanted a boy more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life. He named me Ryan Danielle. That’s how bad he wanted a son.”
“Ryan is kind of sexy,” Lincoln whispers.
My shoulders rise and fall as I try not to focus on the fact that it does sound sexy coming out of his lips. I also heave away the little fact that I’m sitting next to him, talking about our families. “It doesn’t matter. I hate it,” I spill. “I grew up knowing I would never be good enough for my parents, and my name is just another reminder of that.”
“Is that why you always correct me when I call you Dani? Because you think it’s a boy’s name?”
When I don’t respond with words, just the sobering of my features, the playfulness vanishes from his. “That’s bullshit,” he gruffs. “Your name is who you are. You shouldn’t get a bad vibe every time someone says it.”
“Well, I do. I can’t help it.”
His lips twist together, his foot tapping on the bench. We sit in silence for a while, the autumnal wind making me pull my knit jacket tighter. I do it out of knowledge that it’s probably cold and that’s what I should probably do. I don’t feel anything other than the warmth from sitting next to Lincoln though.
This is unexpected. The flirting, the joking—that I was prepared for. But this side of him? This serious part, this section of his personality that’s almost like I’ve known him forever rips the guard right down from around my heart. It’s as easy to talk to him about these painful things as it is to joke about his body. That’s both amazing and nerve-wracking.
“I’m going to keep calling you Dani. You need to embrace who you are. And,” he says, leaning so close to me that I can feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek, “you are seriously hot.”
The smile stretches across my cheeks before I can stop it. He delights in my reaction, his own cheeks splitting with a wide grin. I thrust his wallet in his hands and laugh, not able to look at him.