Page 96 of Slow Hands Cowboy

“People figure cats and dogs are helpless, but they want people to fix their own situation. And I get that. I’m not saying sometimes it isn’t true. Our mom could have done better by us.” He looked away. “Maybe she couldn’t have, Addison, I don’t know. But I’m really fucking angry with her, and she’s dead. So there’s nowhere for it to go. Cody looks at her like she’s a saint. This woman who was victimized by this relationship that she was in, but I don’t see that. I mean, I see how it was that way when it started. I really do. I feel for her. But at a certain point, the life you’re living is on you. We were just kids, we couldn’t make better decisions for ourselves. We couldn’t make better decisions for her either. We were just at the mercy of it. She would leave us home and go out all night. After working all day, or not working sometimes. But we would just spend long days in that apartment. And we had to get food somehow. It was pretty common for us to have nothing in the cupboards.”

“That’s horrific,” she said, her stomach twisting. This was the person that she had picked on. She couldn’t help it. Her eyes started to sting, and then a tear slipped down her cheek. “I’m just so sorry. I’m so sorry for the way that we all treated you. I’m so sorry that nobody helped you. That all people did was judge, instead of reaching out and seeing if you needed help. I just... I feel so awful about all of it.”

“That doesn’t fix anything, Addison. Feeling awful doesn’t fix things. And like I already said. Those challenges, they made me who I am. It’s also a sobering reminder that I’m cut from the same cloth as my dad. And maybe my mom.”

There was something he left unsaid there that was meant to come after that comment about his mother. She wished that he had finished it. Wished that he would tell her. Whatever that deep fear was.

But he didn’t, so she didn’t push.

“It must seem ridiculous to you that I have any kind of trauma.”

“No. Being abandoned by your mom is pretty fucking legitimate trauma. Maybe she did have her reasons, but she still left you. You get to be upset about that.”

“I barely let myself be. Because I turned her into a villain. And you can’t make somebody into a villain and then miss them, can you?”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t know. I miss my mom a lot. And I can’t even explain to you why. Maybe just because she’s my mom.”

“My stepmom is really sweet.”

“It doesn’t erase what it taught you when your mom left.”

She shook her head. “No. And you know... I bet a lot of people would have worried they weren’t good enough. Would have worried that that’s why their mom left them, but I knew that I was good. She was the one who was bad. And I just needed to make sure that I stayed, really, really good.” She laughed. “What a grab bag of disastrous issues.”

“No doubt,” he said, his gaze suddenly getting intense. “But no matter how many issues I have, I know I can make you come.”

And after that, there was no talking anymore. Her mouth was far too busy.

Chapter Twenty

Walker was impatient to get back to her, which was ridiculous.

He’d spent the night in his office again. The idea of sharing a bed just felt... it didn’t feel like a good idea. He decided that he wasn’t going to do that. But he also wasn’t going to kick her out of his room. Obviously, he could go sleep in her space, but his office was fine. Then, though, in the morning, he had stuff that he had to go out and do, and what he really wanted was to spend the day with Addison.

Last night had been unexpected. He hadn’t really meant to spill his guts to her. Hadn’t meant to catch all of the guts she’d spilled in return, but, lo, he had. He had never talked about all the shoplifting stuff. Even he and Cody didn’t talk about it. They both knew they’d done it. They’d tried to shield Lila from that. Tried to make her feel like their childhood was an endless adventure. That they were Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, not just wayward youths with nobody looking out for them.

He had been honest with her when he’d said discovering that being a bit of a con man was a natural, inborn skill set for him had been jarring. Had been enraging, even.

He had a gift for lying. And making the lie sound sweet.

Now that he knew where it came from, he hated it.

She was right, though, it had been a bit of an advantage for him. Kept them alive.

But what he didn’t like was the arrogance that he’d felt while doing it. The way he’d felt like he was outmaneuvering people, being smarter than them. He had been an angry kid, and that had been the shape it had taken.

He was angry now, honestly. He just didn’t like to think of it that way.

But he’d said that to her as well. That he used his anger. That he let it fuel him.

Boy, did he.

Now he was mad that he’d told his brother they would come over for a barbecue, because he just wanted to stay home and have her again. And that precious little bit of evening time before he left her sleeping alone in bed.

If you actually slept with her, you’d get a bit more time with her.

It was true.

But still, that felt like one intimacy too many, and he didn’t want to go there. He preferred his space. Especially when he was sleeping.