Calmly, Carefully, Completely (The Reed Brothers 3)

“I’m fine,” I grumble. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” Okay, that was crass and a little demeaning, but I’m still a little sore.

“You’re not fine,” she interjects. “I hit you.” She grits her teeth. “In the face.”

Silence falls over the cab of the truck like a wet blanket.

“I still have some issues from that night,” she finally says. She lays her head back against the headrest and looks up at the ceiling.

“Where’d you learn martial arts?” I ask. I may as well be sticking her full of pins and twisting them. And not in the good acupuncture way. I should let her off the hook.

“My dad taught me.” She looks over at me. She is so f**king vulnerable all of a sudden. “After what happened at college, I took a self-defense class. I realized I’m really good at it, so I kept going and got better.”

I press gently at my eye socket. Her face gets soft, and she looks so sorry. But she just left that comment hanging there in the air, and I feel the need to grab on to it. “Does it make you feel safer, knowing you can lay a man out flat?” I ask.

Her face pales, and she looks away. “Not right this second.”

“But usually?” I ask. Her face is still pale, and she her gaze skitters everywhere but at me.

“I like knowing that I can get away from danger,” she says quietly.

“You think I’m dangerous?” Lie to me, princess. Because my gut’s already twisting at the very thought of her being afraid of me.

“In that moment,” she hedges. “Can we just not talk about it?”

We need to talk about it. But I can tell she really doesn’t want to. “Okay,” I say, completely unbidden by me. It’s all her. It’s what she needs. “When I touch you, does your skin crawl?” I blurt out. I need to know what I’m up against here.

She nods and inhales deeply, acting as if I just tossed her a lifeline. “You make my heart beat faster, in a really, really good way.” She finally looks into my face. “I know you can’t forgive me, but I’m really sorry.”

I reach to take her face in my hand, but she flinches and draws back, so I let my hand drop into my lap. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you. It’s all my fault.” I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to make this right for her. If it were any other guy, I would be f**king ecstatic that she hit him in the face rather than let him grab her.

“It’s not your fault,” she protests. “It’s my fault.” I feel more than hear her say something under her breath that sounds like his fault.

“I just didn’t want you to walk away until I got to explain,” I say. “I grabbed your shirt.”

“And I felt like I couldn’t get away there for a minute. I know that wasn’t your intention.”

I shake my head. “No, that was my intention. I didn’t want you to get away. Your instincts were right.”

“But you didn’t intend to hurt me.”

“You had no way of knowing that.” God, am I stupid. I’m arguing with her about all the reasons why she hit me.

“Then my dad shoved your face in the dirt.” She looks a little irked by that.

“Hell, princess, if I watched my daughter clock some ass**le, I’d immediately assume it was his fault. Your dad did the right thing.” I believe that. That’s what dads are for. Well, mine wasn’t, but I have Paul and the others. They would protect me with their lives. Her dad did nothing less than they would have done for me. “Your dad knows all about the assault?”

She nods, biting her lower lip between her teeth. “Can you forgive me?” she asks.

“Nothing to forgive,” I say. She stares at me. “Forgiven,” I say instead. “I promise.”

She takes a deep breath. “Thanks.”

Are we going to discuss the elephant in the room? The reason why she was charging away from me in the first place. “I shouldn’t have made you feel like you had to get up and run away from me,” I admit. We could have avoided the whole punching-and-rolling-in-the-dirt fiasco if I’d just kept my mouth shut and not talked about my dick and how hard she made me. I get that little stirring in my lap just thinking about it. I groan beneath my breath.

“What?” she asks. “Are you hurting?”

Yep. I’m hurting. But not the way she thinks. “A little,” I admit. My wrist hurts.

“I like the way you like me,” she says. Her voice is so quiet that I can barely hear her.

“What?” I ask. I lean closer to her, but she leans away.

She grins and shakes her head. “I like the way you like me,” she says again, this time a little louder.

A smile tugs at the corners of my lips.

“You make me feel things,” she admits. Her face isn’t pale anymore. If anything, her cheeks are rosy.

“Right back at you,” I say.

“You can stop smirking now,” she says, but she’s laughing. This is good.

“You tell me you like me and you expect me to stop smirking?” I lay my good hand on my chest. “You have to be kidding me. I might have to do somersaults.”

“I don’t like men,” she says quietly.

“Oh.” I don’t get a lesbian vibe from her at all. Not a bit. But I’ve been wrong before. “You like women?”

She buries her face in her hands and lifts her head, laughing. “No!” she barks. “I don’t like women.” She does that little dance with her eyes again, looking everywhere but at me. “I like men. But you’re the only man I’ve liked for a long time.” She closes her eyes and flings her head back, groaning. “Being normal shouldn’t be this difficult!” she cries.