I caught her hand in mine, frowning up at her. “Look, if you don’t want me to ride bulls anymore, consider it done,” I said. “Hell, after this, I’m not sure that I could even get on the mechanical bull again. I’m sure they loaded me up with painkillers, and I still hurt like a son of a bitch.”
“It’s not about the bull riding,” Vanessa said, shaking her head.
“What is it, then?” I asked softly.
“It’s that I’m in love with you, and you just want to have sex with me,” she finally blurted out. There was a faint blush on her cheeks, but mostly, she just seemed heartbroken to say it.
“Do you know what it felt like, to think that I might have lost you?” she continued, before I could fully wrap my head around her words. “I started thinking about what my life would be like if you never woke up, and I hated the thought of it. But then you wake up and all you care about is sex, and I-”
“Hey, slow down,” I interrupted at last, squeezing her hands tight. “Vanessa. Hey.” I sighed and looked away from her, remembering the dreams I’d had of my father calling me worthless. “Maybe I really don’t deserve you if I’ve made you feel like all I care about is sex. You deserve to be with a guy who makes you feel like you’re the most important thing in the world. Like he would go to any lengths to give you what you want in life. Everything that you want in life.
“I thought that maybe I could be that guy – that if I could just win this competition and get you the prize money, that you would be able to open your gallery and we could start our lives together here in White Bluff. But I guess that was a stupid dream.”
“I knew you were just doing it so that you could get the money for me,” Vanessa said, pulling her hands away.
“I’m not good at big, romantic gestures,” I admitted, shrugging as much as I was able to. “I thought that if I could help you open your gallery, that would be a start, at least.”
“A big, romantic gesture?” she asked uncertainly.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, looking toward the wall even though I knew that I ought to be a man and look her in the eye while I told her what I was about to tell her. “Vanessa, I am madly in love with you,” I confessed. “Have been since we were teenagers. You’ve been the bright spot in my otherwise mediocre existence.”
She blinked at me. “You really mean that?” she asked softly.
“Of course, I do,” I said. “Did you ever think for a moment that I didn’t love you?” She paused, and I held up a hand. “Okay, don’t answer that question,” I said, laughing. “Vanessa, I love you. You’re smart, and you’re sexy as hell, and you care about people in a way that just amazes me. I don’t even like art all that much, but I could listen to you talk about your gallery all day. And I really appreciate that you have stayed here with me the whole time I’ve been in the hospital. Even though,” I wrinkled my nose playfully, “you kind of stink.”
Vanessa stared at me for a moment and then burst out laughing. “You ass!” she cried, lightly punching my shoulder.
“Ouch, don’t hit the invalid!” I said, only partly teasing.
She sobered up quickly at that. “Sorry,” she said, bending down to kiss the spot that she had punched. Then, she looked deep into my eyes. Whatever she saw there made the corners of her mouth curve into a smile, and she leaned in to kiss my lips gently. “I love you, too,” she breathed as she broke the kiss.
“I know,” I said simply.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Vanessa
I looked around the empty space with my hands on my hips, surveying every nook and cranny. I already loved the place, and it hadn’t even opened as a gallery yet. But I could practically feel the potential of it. I couldn’t wait to harness that potential and turn the place into something truly special.
Just one more coat of paint on the walls, and it would be time to start moving in some of the installations.
I pulled my hair back into a messy ponytail and carried the bucket of paint over to the ladder that I had set up just for this purpose. With the money that Trethan had won for me, I could have hired a crew to paint the place and spruce everything up. But I liked having my hand in all of it, really making the place mine. It was exciting, knowing what was to come. And even though I still worried about how well the place would do, it felt great knowing that I was doing something. Something that I wanted.
The bell chimed over the front door, and I looked over my shoulder to see who it was, already ready to tell an overzealous, would-be customer that we weren’t open for business just yet, but the words died on my lips when I saw that it was Trethan.
“Hey,” he said, smiling warmly at me as I lowered my paint roller and climbed down off the ladder. He held up a paper bag. “I brought lunch.”
“Yay,” I said, bounding over to give him a kiss. Then, I pulled away, spreading my arms and indicating the rest of the place. “Well, what do you think?” I asked. “I mean, I know it isn’t much yet, but it’s coming along, don’t you think?”
“Sure, I do,” he said, nodding at me. “But you missed a spot.” He indicated the vast swath of wall that I was still working on.
I giggled and rolled my eyes. “No shit,” I said.
“I’m going to be glad when you have something more than white walls for me to look at, because I’m starting to run out of things to say in response to them,” Trethan said, grinning at me.
“It’s not as though you care about art anyway,” I said. “Once I start asking you what you think about the latest installations, that’s when you’re really going to have to come up with creative ways to talk about things that really bore you.”
Trethan smirked. “Maybe I’ll just talk about how beautiful I think the gallery’s curator is,” he suggested.