Page 91 of Slow Hands Cowboy

And she rested her head back against the seat and let out a primal scream.

Because what did she do anything for? What was her life? Her entire life was shaped around avoidance. And of what?

Her mom was a human being. She had made a stupid mistake. But she wasn’t the whore of Babylon trying to drag Addison down into hell.

She was just a person who had been stuck in a bad situation and who had made a bad choice in getting out of it.

And yes, it was actually easy—so easy, she knew, because many other people had said this in her presence—to say that her mom had failed at her one job. Being a mother. That she had let go of the most important thing. That she had lost sight of that. That whatever else she had done, it didn’t matter, but Addison just couldn’t believe that right now.

Because her mom was a whole person.

Because she had made mistakes as a mom, but she had found love as a woman, and she had built a life for herself, and in many ways it was probably really happy.

If this had happened to anyone else, Addison wouldn’t be excusing it, but it was her pain, so she was allowed to distance herself from it, to turn it over in her hand and examine it as though it was a detached specimen, and not her very specific childhood trauma.

All she knew was that she wanted to be free. She didn’t want to do things for her dad or for her mom, or against her mom, or against her dad, or for the town or against the town. She just wanted to be. And she didn’t know what that looked like.

The list. The list of all the things she hadn’t done. Not just with Walker, but in general.

Who was she, really?

Apart from all of this, with all this trauma set aside, who was she?

When she pulled into the driveway at Walker’s house and got closer, she saw that his truck was in the driveway. She put her car in park and got out, heart hammering.

They hadn’t discussed this. They hadn’t talked about sleeping together again, hadn’t talked about whatever that was, and she just didn’t care.

Because she knew what she wanted. Right now. Not in the future, not even tomorrow. But right now, she wanted his hands on her. Right now she wanted to feel something wild and frenzied. Right now, she wanted to be fully herself, in the moment, with him.

She walked through the front door without knocking, just as he came down the stairs wearing a pair of gray sweatpants, no shirt, barefoot.

He must have had a shower.

“Oh good,” she said. “You’re already half naked.”

“Hello to you too.”

He came down the last couple of steps, and she met him there at the landing, threw her arms around his neck and stretched up on her toes to kiss him.

Because that was what she wanted to do.

And in a whole sea of unknowns, that was one of the only things that she was certain of.

So she would grab onto it with both hands.

Chapter Eighteen

Walker wasn’t one to argue with a good thing. And he definitely wasn’t one to argue when he had his arms full of a woman that he wanted more than anyone else in recent memory. More than anyone else. He had been thinking about her all day, and he had been thinking that what he needed to do was try and set some boundaries, some expectations, but right now, he just didn’t want to. Right now, what he wanted to do was this. He growled, wrapped his arms more tightly around her waist, and pressed her back against the wall, consuming her.

She whimpered, hands moving over his bare chest as she kissed him deep, her tongue sliding against his. Yesterday, there had been a little bit of uncertainty. Yesterday, she had hesitated a few times before deciding to be bold. Not now. There was no hesitation. He growled as he tore her dress away, aided by the fact that it buttoned down the front, and the buttons popped off, scattering all over the floor.

She drew back, eyes wide.

“Come on now,” he said, breathing hard, his heart pounding so fast he thought it was going to go through his chest. “Every woman ought to have a real dress-tearing experience, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice breathless. She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him again.

And he gathered her up against his body, arched his hips forward and let her feel just how hard he was for her.