Page 32 of Bottles & Blades
My mouth tips up. “Sometimes it’s the simplest things that are the most valuable.”
Her chest inflates and our eyes hold for a long, long moment.
Then she asks, so quietly I can barely hear it, “Did you learn that in your business dealings?”
“No,” I admit, telling her something else I’ve never told anyone. “I learned it when my wife left my daughter and I.”
Her face gentles. “You have a daughter?”
“Yeah,” I murmur.
“How old?”
“Would it bother you if I told you she’s about your age?”
She tilts her head to the side. “Why would it bother me?”
“I’m too old for you.”
Silence falls. Then she sighs softly. “I learned a lot while I was in the hospital, and far too much of it was about life being unfair. There are rules we’re supposed to follow, and some of them make sense, but a lot of them don’t—like why little kids get cancer, and why they sometimes die, and why health care in this country means taking out a predatory second mortgage on a house.”
I make a mental look to check into that.
And not just for Tiff.
“And so,” she says, “I learned that sometimes it’s okay to ignore the rules.”
“My buttercup is a rulebreaker?”
Her cheeks go pink. “In some things,” she whispers.
Christ.
I can’t resist it.
I give in to the urge to reach forward, to wrap my arms around her middle, and recline back against the armrest on my side of the couch, gathering her against my chest.
She doesn’t fight the change in position.
Instead, she exhales, then relaxes against me.
As though she trusts me.
As though she’d been wanting this too.
Fuck, that sits deep…andfuckI like it there.
“What about your life do you hate?” she asks into the quiet that falls between us.
“Forget it,” I say softly, stroking a hand down her spine. “It doesn’t matter.”
She pushes on my chest, lifting up enough to meet my stare. “Why do you think your feelings don’t matter?”
It doesn’t escape me that this is an insane conversation to be having.
I don’t know her.
And yet, I can’t shut it down, can’t get up from the couch, can’t walk out that door.
