Page 31 of One Mistake

Hungover. And worse, I had full memory of every stupid word I said and every stupid thing I did. How I hurt Reese again. Fuck.

Just the girl I was fucking. I’d said some dumbass things before, but that had to be top of the list. She hadn’t kicked me out. Hadn’t asked me to leave. Hadn’t even spoken another word, just went into her mother’s room, closed the door, and shut me out. Not that I could blame her. I didn’t want to see me right then either.

But now it was morning. And I scrolled down my to-do list. Fix this. That was definitely at the top. Then find a way for Reese to keep the house. Finally, make sure my mom knew I was happy. Washing dishes and mopping floors might not have been the most glamorous job, but it was honest work.

But my mom wasn’t here and lottery numbers weren’t being drawn until Saturday, so since I was here… I knocked on the bedroom door. “Reese?” I waited a good two minutes then lifted my hand to knock again as the door opened.

“I thought you were leaving.”

I pointed to the pants on the floor in the attached bathroom. “You locked yourself in with my pants.”

She turned, walked calmly to the bathroom, snatched the jeans off the floor, and brought them back to hold out between us. When I didn’t take them, she shook them twice and the envelope of photos she’d sent Mom fell on the floor. She threw the pants over her shoulder then picked up the pictures.

“You went to see your mom.” She chuckled then shook her head. “Captain Obvious couldn’t have been more…obvious.” I knew the exact moment she figured it out. Her eyes went wide and she swiped her tongue along the right corner of her lips. “That’s why you…came here drunk.”

I shrugged and she waved the envelope then slapped it against her forehead twice. “You could’ve only gotten them from her.” I knew what she was thinking. All the same things I thought about my mother. Their first meeting, and every subsequent one since then, had been ugly. Thanks to Mom.

“She turned her back on you. Cut you out of her life. And for me, you went there?” Her eyes pooled with tears and one slipped down each cheek before she used the inside of her wrist on one cheek and the outside on the other to smear them away. “In light of this new information, I am definitely the asshole.”

I grinned. “Why don’t you hold your breath while you wait for me to argue.” Her words.

“That sounds fair, I guess.”

“Familiar, at least.” The anguish on her face made me want to hold her, but I remained leaning against the doorframe while she sat on the bed. I didn’t trust myself to move further into the room. But when she started to cry, I couldn’t stand there and not do something.

“Reese…” Hugging her made sense. Tilting her chin up to kiss the tears away, also reasonable. Lying back and holding her wasn’t even optional but required.

She laid her head on my chest and put her hand on my heart. “Every time I think I have you figured out, you go and do something…” Her fingers grasped a handful of my shirt. “There are always going to be those people who think you deserved worse than you got, and to some people, you’re always going to be the guy who videoed a bunch of unsuspecting women then made money off it. But to me, you’re always going to be the guy who went into the dragon’s lair to save me from…”

“The dragon lady.” I finished her thought because she wouldn’t. In all the time she’d known of the situation and how my mom behaved, she’d never said a bad word about her.

“Something like that.” But she hugged me tighter, curled into my side, and stroked her finger across the space above my heart.

I didn’t want all these minutes between us to be heavy, burdensome, and sad. “So, I guess what you’re saying is…I’m your hero.” This was the guy I wanted to be. The one she made me into. She gave me back all the pieces of myself I shit on when I installed those cameras.

“My very own knight in shining Levis.” She turned to rest her hands under her chin across my chest. I could see every fleck of blue in her eyes, every flutter of her lashes, every tiny freckle on her skin. Nothing in the world made me feel so protective, so enamored. “I’ve always wanted to say something to you.”

“Okay.” As long as she wasn’t telling me to get out again, she could say whatever she wanted.

She blew out a breath. “The day that we stopped talking to each other…” God, I wished I could erase that day from her memory. And mine. It shamed me, hurt that I’d lost her over my own stupidity. But I didn’t want to interrupt. “That day…it was…I knew you were having one of the worst days of your life, and I might not have been honest with, well, with myself. Or you. I blamed you, but like I said, I knew how awful things were.” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t call because…I didn’t know how I felt…about what you did.”

Not that I hadn’t expected it, but her words hurt, caused a physical ache in my chest. But not more than I deserved. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” She shook her head. “Brace yourself, because some serious self-enlightenment is on the way.” She smiled, but it looked almost sad. “I am not someone who should be allowed to judge the goodness of others.” She scoffed and tilted her head. “But I did that to you. Over and over. Hell, I did it last night.”

I deserved whatever she thought about me. Not only was I the reason there was a Glouster Four, I used it to hurt her. I was the hit that kept on hitting when it came to her. A better man would walk away again, but I wasn’t one of those.

“Reese, everybody has stuff…things to overcome.” I cradled her closer for a second. “Please, don’t make me recite my list. I don’t think we have that kind of lifetime.” Easy to joke when the joke was so close to the truth but not quite.

“I don’t need the list to know you.” She slid her body up so we were nose to nose and she could stroke my cheek. “You’re my dragon slayer.”

Oh, God. I was falling for her. Again. And I needed to apologize. Again. “I’m sorry for what I said last night. There was never a time for me when you were just the girl I was fucking.”

She closed her eyes. “I know.”

There were about a thousand things about her I didn’t deserve. Her compassion was a huge one. I wasn’t worthy. “You know?” Of course she knew, but… “Reese, I don’t want to be the guy who says things he shouldn’t and then has to apologize later. And it seems like that’s all I ever end up doing. Apologizing to you.”

She breathed in and buried her head in my shoulder. “You don’t always have to apologize.” But I did. “We’ll be better. Both of us.”