Craft (The Gibson Boys 2)
His grip loosens just a bit on my face and my eyes pop up.
Stop doing this.
My palm connects to his shoulder and I shove him away. It’s certainly not the punch I’d like to deliver, but it’s enough to make him step away. But, when he does it, his eyes are on fire.
“Feel better?” he asks.
“No. You’re still here.” My voice is wobbly now, his stupid kiss throwing me off my game. “Please leave.”
“Just talk to me. Or let me talk to you. You don’t even have to say anything.”
“Can I ever not say anything?”
He laughs, his hand moving through his silky locks. “Good point.” He tucks his fingers back in his pocket, his smile starting to fade. “Please let me come in. Ten minutes. Tops.”
With every decrease in his smile, my willpower goes with it. “Fine. But you aren’t coming in. I’ll come outside.”
His eyes spring open. “Fine. I won’t come inside. Let’s go for a drive instead.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“It’s chilly out here and I need to have your undivided attention for a couple of minutes, okay?” He looks at me without a trace of humor in his eyes. “Give me this and if you insist I don’t come back again, I won’t. You have my word.”
The thought of that twists my insides into a bundle, but I have to hold firm. “Not even to my office?”
“You installed a lock.” He raises a brow.
“Yes,” I say, reaching inside and grabbing my keys and a jacket. “I did.”
He waits as I lock the door, his proximity messing with my head. I can feel his energy swirling around me, teasing me, luring me in like the tempo of a Marvin Gaye song.
I start down the sidewalk but shoot him a look when I sense his hand nearing the small of my back. As badly as I want that contact, I know I can’t have it. Boundaries and all that.
He does open the door and I let him, climbing in and settling into the seat. I grin as he nearly runs around the front and jumps in, pulling the car onto the street as if I might change my mind before he gets us gone.
“I want to tell you I only came with you because I’m weak,” I say, looking straight ahead. “I won’t always be weak, but I will always hold it against you for doing this to me.”
“Doing what to you?”
“This.” I look at him out of the corner of my eye. “I’m taking some of this blame. I knew this wouldn’t end well. But I do feel like you pursued me, knowing I would fall in love with you and you would break my heart. So, at the end of the day, you, Lance Gibson, are a cocksucker.”
One hand releases the wheel, resting on the console between us as he laughs. “I’m happy to know how you feel.”
“Yup.”
“I am, in fact, a bigger cocksucker than you know.” The laugh falls from his voice, his hand going back to the wheel. He takes a turn at Carlson’s towards Goodman’s Gas Station as my heart falls to my feet.
This is going to be bad, worse than I thought. Not that I knew what to expect. I honestly didn’t think about it enough.
Damn it, Mariah.
“Why don’t you take me home?” I ask. “This conversation isn’t necessary if that’s what you have to tell me.”
He turns the opposite way of my house, heading towards Bluebird.
“I dated a girl once,” he says, his eyes trained out the windshield. “She—”
“I don’t want to hear about your app girls.” I grip the door handle to steady myself. I’m weak to him, even though I don’t feel it, and I’ll be damned if I sit here and listen to him talk about some girl I’ve already decided I hate.
I think he’s going to smile, but he doesn’t. “She’s not an app girl.”
He looks at me, the emotion in his irises bombing my soul. It shreds me, rips me apart, and I don’t even know what it’s about. My heart just hurts for him because I know he’s hurting and I’m pissed at myself for that, but what can I do?
I love him.
“I’ve been with two girls who weren’t app girls in my life,” he says, his voice barely audible over the roar of the engine. “One was the reason I started using apps, the other was the reason I quit.”
My breath stalls in my chest, the burn from not breathing only acceptable because I’m not thinking about it.
The other was the reason I quit …
“It’s not fair to do this to me,” I say on an exhale. “Do you hate me? Is that why you won’t just leave me alone?”
The car slows down as we hit a gravel road, the sun filtering through the trees. It’s gorgeous here, a lake to our right and a cow pasture to our left. We ride a few minutes in silence as I fight tears.