I laced my fingers through his hand that was draped over my waist. “Jessie was warning me and Claire about you and your man whoring ways. He called you a Sex Tricks Jedi and I got so out of sorts that my foot slipped off the brake and hit the gas pedal.”
“Ah, that’s why you called me Jedi the night we met.” He pulled me closer for a hug and kissed the top of my head. “I’m glad you gently bumped me. I’ll have to thank Jessie later for dogging on me, otherwise I wouldn’t have met you and that would have been a tragedy.”
I looked up and over my shoulder at him. “Yes, that definitely would have been a tragedy.”
He kissed my temple. “You’re not going to introduce me to your parents or tell them about me, are you?”
I turned back around so I didn’t have to look at him. “You wouldn’t be missing anything by not meeting them.”
“It’s okay. I get it.” I heard the hurt in his voice. He thought my reasons for not introducing him to my parents was because I thought he wasn’t good enough, but that wasn’t it at all. He was too good for them. That’s not how my parents would see it, but I at least owed him an honest answer about it.
I stroked my hand over his. “Nick, my parents have expectations for who I should date and a Collinsville guy planning to be a police officer doesn’t come remotely close to meeting their approval.”
“So I’m good enough to risk my life every day on the job so they can be protected, but I’m not good enough to date their daughter?”
Yep, he totally got it. “They’re ass**les and you’re better off not meeting them. But hey, you meet my approval and I’m the only one that counts. Besides, you are gonna look so yummy in that officer’s uniform.”
“Even when I cut all of this off?”
Cut what off? I turned over to face him when I realized what he meant. My heart stammered because I loved his messy hair. It was one of the things that made him so sexy. “No way. You have great hair. I won’t let you buzz it all off.”
He reached up and gave some a yank. “Police officers don’t walk around with hair like this.”
He was so wrong about that. “Sexy ones do.”
“Umm, that would be the kind that get paid to wear a fake uniform and strip it off at bachelorette parties.”
Whew! That had me thinking thoughts I shouldn’t.” We don’t need to talk about stripping police uniforms off so tell me about something safer. What about your mom? You’ve never mentioned her.”
Silence. At first, I thought he wasn’t going to answer me and I was about to tell him he didn’t have to talk about her if he didn’t want to. Then a moment later, something almost tangible squeezed my heart when he started to talk about his mom. “She left us when I was six.”
“Do you ever see her?”
He slowly shook his head. “Nope. Not since the day she walked out on us. I don’t have a clue where she is. I’m pretty sure my dad knows, but just doesn’t tell us.”
“Do you know why she left?”
I ran my hand up and down his arm as he told me what little he remembered. “I suspect there was another man, but I don’t know for sure. I asked my dad about her several years ago and he wouldn’t tell me anything. I dropped it all together but I have a vague memory of being in his closet and finding a file on her. I must have been pretty young when I found it because I don’t remember much about what it said, but I know she had remarried and had more kids.”
“So you have brothers or sisters you’ve never met?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. After she left, I was so hurt and angry that I told people she died. I was only six and I guess I thought it hurt less to think of her as dead than not loving me enough to stay.” He brought my hand to his mouth and kissed it. “You’re the only person I’ve ever told all this to.”
I held his hand as he told me what it felt like to grow up thinking no one could love him if his own mother didn’t. I wanted to go back in time and tell him how wrong he was for thinking that, but the best I could offer was to listen.
He might have been with a lot of girls, but he just gave me something he had never given to a one of them...a part of himself.
Nick’s mother was the reason behind that tattoo spread over his heart and the reason he tried unsuccessfully to find comfort in any willing girl. Her selfish choices had almost ruined him. Almost. I found myself hating a woman I would never know and wondered if I would be able to fix the cracks she left behind on his heart.
18 Say My Name
Nick
It felt good to open up and tell Payton about my mom and what she had done. Most importantly, I was finally able to admit how painful it was. When I decided to share that part of my life, I didn’t realize how I was opening my heart to her. With only one look into her eyes, I knew I was offering her a piece of myself and she was happily accepting it.
She didn’t try to give me generic words about how it wasn’t my fault or how everything was going to be okay. She simply held my hand while she listened to me tell her how damaged I was and that’s when I had no doubt. I loved this girl and I finally understood that place my dad warned me about...the point of no return.
Payton and I were stretched out on the sofa side by side in the dark with only the light of the moon coming through the window. It had been a little while since either of us had said anything. Payton was motionless and I thought she had fallen asleep but then she rolled over to face me and put her arms up around my neck. “Don’t go.”
I gave her a gentle kiss and tugged on her bottom lip with my teeth. “I’ll stay as long as you want.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She feathered a kiss across my mouth. “I’m not going to Tillie’s and I want you to stay with me.”
Any other time I would have taken that as an invitation for sex, but not with Payton after our discussion and I was okay with that. “I will if it’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want.”
“I’ll need to let my dad know I’m not coming home tonight.” I reached for my phone in my pocket and texted my dad.
“Staying at a friend’s tonight. CU in a.m.”
He would ask where I had been when I got home and I didn’t plan on lying. It would no doubt cause an argument so I guessed Payton and I were in very similar situations. When it came to our parents’ opinions about us being together, they would be in agreement on keeping us apart even if the reasons were polar opposites.