Not that I want to play with her.
Holy shit, what?
I wanted her out of my house and my life.
Clearing my throat, I tore my eyes away, wishing my heart beat for an entirely different reason to the real one. The one that made me feel twitchy and tingly and wrong.
I shifted in my chair, my hand disappearing under the table to readjust the sudden tightness that wouldn’t stop swelling, no matter how much I commanded it to.
Hope at least distracted me from my impossible dilemma. “So…about my offer.”
“The offer I don’t want.”
She half-smiled. “You truly are hard work. You know that, right? I bet you don’t really want to argue all the time. You’re probably thinking something else entirely.”
The fact that her comment was far too close to the truth made heat travel up my neck.
Nudging my empty glass, I wished I had more whiskey. I glanced at the abandoned bottle in the kitchen but decided against getting more—not just because the thought of standing was too much to bear but because I didn’t want to destroy this kind-of-truce we’d formed.
Plus, the part of me that was turning my life into a nightmare was hard and aching and in no fit state to be seen by a girl—especially one who drove me insane and was unchaperoned in my house at daybreak.
She might see me as a pervert…or worse, a guy issuing an invitation.
She might touch me.
Kiss me.
And I’d break.
Like a fucking coward.
Raking fingers through my hair, I shook away images of kissing someone for the first time, of finding out how wet and soft her tongue was. To peel her clothes off and taste—
I gave up brushing my hair back and squeezed the bridge of my nose instead. It activated my headache, helping me ignore things like naked bodies and hot kisses.
Sure, I’d noticed girls at school. I’d had wet dreams. I’d come by my own hand.
But my fear of touch wasn’t superficial. It wasn’t something I could over-ride.
My need to stay apart from everyone had grown into a non-negotiable law that ensured I chose celibacy over connection because I was weak enough to admit I could never sleep with someone and not care for them.
The heart that’d cursed me to never heal from my father’s death had condemned me to a life of singledom because I wasn’t like the guys in my town. The guys who fucked girls and didn’t call them. The guys who spoke about their conquests as if they were toys.
Those bastards didn’t have hearts.
But I had a broken one.
And I could never experience sex.
I wasn’t prepared to suffer the level of sorrow my parents did on the night of my tenth birthday. I wasn’t capable of enduring tear-filled goodbyes, bloody and soul-shattered for eternity.
“Jacob…” Hope murmured, her chair creaking a little as she reached across the table to touch my arm. “Are you okay? Your headache bad?”
I dropped my fingers, moving away from her. “Yeah, headache. Uh-huh.”
I was gutless.
I would never tell her the truth.
The truth that I needed her to stay mad at me if I had any chance of surviving her.
“Did you want to go back to bed?”
Bed was the last place I wanted to be. I was in enough physical and sexual pain without staring at a mattress that could be used for pleasure, granting relief to my current agony and opening the trapdoor to a lifetime of torture.
Daring to meet her gaze, I shook my head. “No. Get it over with. Tell me your offer and then I’m kicking you out of my house so I can rest.”
“You’re saying my company isn’t restful?”
I chuckled despite myself. “I’m saying your company is stressful.”
“I don’t mean it to be.” She swallowed, fiddling with her fingers again, linking and unlinking, looping and unlooping. A habit. A nervous habit that I’d become familiar with, and I hated that I knew that. That we were building a relationship even though I fought against such a dangerous thing. “I’m sorry I’m so annoying. I’m just…I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your job.”
Her eyes caught mine again, snaring me with concern and complications.
I looked away, wiping my mouth with a suddenly shaky hand. “Look…”
“The actor who played you in the movie didn’t show what you went through as a kid adequately.”
“Excuse me?”
“Before I left Scotland, I kind of watched The Boy & His Ribbon.” She noticed my scowl, rushing, “I know what you’re going to say, and to be honest, I don’t like watching the flicks my dad acts in, but he is rather talented, and he made me forget he’s my dad, and I only saw your dad. Not that that’s any better, of course, but it’s a beautiful thing, Jacob, to watch a real-life love story. To know that age couldn’t keep them apart. That circumstances and judgments and monsters couldn’t stop them from falling in love and living happily ever after.”