Until Autumn

“What’s on your mind?” he asks as the engine rumbles to life and I feel it vibrate right through my body.

“Sex,” I blurt out before my eyes go wide. I slam my hand down over my mouth and gape at him in horror, unable to believe I just said that.

Thorne indicates and pulls out into traffic. “So, how do you want me to proceed here?” he questions, a teasing sparkle hitting his sky-blue eyes. “Tease you about it the whole night or pretend it never happened?”

I groan, hiding my face behind my hands. “Pretend,” I tell him, my voice muffled by my squished and ashamed face. “Definitely pretend it never happened.”

“Okay,” he laughs, reaching up and stealing my hand away from my face before he slips his warm fingers through mine. “Teasing it is.”

I groan, but I can’t help but laugh at the situation. Sure, it was the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to me, yet somehow he makes me feel so at ease.

Thorne pulls up at the best Italian restaurant in town, and I gape at him in surprise, though I don’t know what I’m so shocked about. I told him at the hospital that I liked Italian, so why wouldn’t he bring me here? It’s common sense.

Thorne hurries around and opens the door for me before offering me his hand and helping me out of his car. I’ve never been treated like such a lady in my life, and it sends a warm thrill sailing right through me. In just the first fifteen minutes of this date, he’s set the bar so high that no other man would ever be able to reach it.

Within only a matter of minutes, we’re sitting at the best table the restaurant has to offer with a bottle of wine chilling beside us. My nerves have completely gone as I realize that he’s having just as much of a good time.

We order our meal and the time instantly flies. Before I know it, I’m halfway through it and already sad that the night is half over. “So,” I say, glancing up over my wine glass. “I know this is cheesy, but how are you still single? A guy like you … you’re literally the most eligible bachelor in Nashville. You could have had any woman you wanted and she would have fallen at your feet.”

“To be honest,” he tells me. “I nearly did. I had the perfect girl, the perfect job, the perfect home. Everything was so right that I moved her into my place and the very day that I bought her a ring, I came home to find her fucking my best friend on my kitchen counter.”

I suck in a gasp. “No way. Are you serious?”

He grins as though it’s so far in the past that it’s now comical. “Yep,” he says. “Though, you’d think if you were going to fuck around that you’d at least lock the door.”

“Totally,” I laugh. “Common sense should always prevail in these types of situations. I mean, how is a woman supposed to cheat on her man and get away with it when she’s as dumb as a doorknob?”

“Exactly,” he says. “What about you? What’s your stance on cheating?”

I shake my head, his question bringing up memories that make my hands ball into fists. “I was cheated on three times during high school. One of the guys even made it some kind of competition and screwed three different girls on the same night only to break up with me in a text the next morning,” I explain. “The next guy was a little more serious, and after a year together, I caught him with his mom’s friend. And the last guy hurt the most. Each one of them killed me just a little bit more. Given they weren’t exactly my soul mates or anything like that, but it still stung enough to teach me what kind of person I wanted to be. The thought of cheating on someone … I could never.”

His brow arches, and for just a moment, he stares at me with such pain. “What are their names?”

I grin, rolling my eyes. “You’re not going to go and pay a visit to my high school boyfriends.”

“Please,” he says, his eyes sparkling and making it nearly impossible to resist. “I just want to go and say hi, maybe let them know that they’re nothing and that I could fuck their wives if I wanted.”

“Just like that, huh?”

He nods. “Just like that.”

I watch him for a moment, and as he meets my eyes, curiosity comes over him. “What’s up?” he asks, somehow already knowing me well enough to know that something is on my mind.

I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just wondering how this is supposed to work.”

His brows raise in question. “This?”