7
ADDIE
I glancedat Manic as we drove along the mountain road. He’d been quiet the last thirty minutes. I tried to work out what he was thinking, but he was impossible to read.
“Are you okay?” I finally asked.
He looked over at me. “Yeah, just taking it all in, you know? Haven’t been home for a fucking long time, Adds. It feels good.”
He smiled and my heart kicked in my chest. I quickly squashed it. “It’s really beautiful up here.”
“Yeah. Mom’s an artist. She spent hours outside sketching these mountains. Then she taught me when I took an interest.” His gaze grew a little distant, and there was sadness there.
I didn’t want him sad. “So you’re like one of those mountain men on those TV shows? Killing deer and carrying them home all shirtless and covered in blood?”
A laugh burst from him. “Too fucking cold to do that shit shirtless, baby.”
There went the flutters again. Whenever he called me baby, I had thisswoopingfeeling in my belly. “What did you do to pass the time?”
“There was always work to do. We have a lot of land. So repairs around the property, vehicles that were always breaking down, and we had some animals, cattle mainly. Me and my sisters did homeschool with Mom when I was young, and when I got older, I’d hike up to our hunting cabin a lot.”
“On your own?”
“Yep.”
“Must’ve been lonely by yourself?” I imagined a teenage Manic all by himself in a snow-covered cabin.
“It could be, but it was kind of perfect for a teenager. No chores, hunting all day, venison for dinner, open fire, then the night wide open for whatever I wanted. I usually spent a good portion of it with my hand wrapped around my dick, honestly.”
I laughed until tears sprung from my eyes. “So you’ve always been a horndog, huh?”
His grin grew wider. “You know it.”
“I guess it was hard to meet girls?”
“Yeah, but my imagination got really fucking good.”
We bounced over some potholes. “Okay, so now I have to know how old you were when you first got busy with a real live girl and not one you’d dreamed up.”
He chuckled. “Seventeen. I went into town with my old man for supplies and there was some delay with a couple things, so we had to stay overnight. We stayed with a friend of his and the guy had a couple daughters.”
“You totally did it in the barn, didn’t you?”
He turned my way and flashed me his teeth in a wide grin. “Oh, so they must have a barn ’cause they lived in the mountains?”
“Am I wrong?”
He laughed hard, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. “Fuck. No, you’re not wrong. It was totally in the barn. We’d kind of grown up seeing each other, at least a couple times a year. We were both horny-as-fuck teenagers, and I’d swiped a box of condoms from the store like a year before and carried one everywhere. Ever the hopeful horndog. We were lucky it hadn’t expired.”
I was suddenly a little jealous of his barn girl. “How was it?”
His grin was still there. “I thought it was fucking awesome. It lasted a whole two minutes and I got to touch boobs. I was on cloud fucking nine. She was a year older than me and sure as fuck didn’t have as good a time. I didn’t know what a clit was and I assumed as soon as I put my dick in, she’d be crying out in ecstasy.”
I snorted, fighting back my giggles. “That poor girl.”
His laugh rumbled through the cab. “It’s all good. We tried again a year later, and I’d significantly improved—well, I at least managed to get her off.”
Now I was jealous again. “Did you make it an annual event?”