“I kinda know where I’m at, Boone,” I told him snippily.
“Where you’re at is you’re building that wall back up to keep everyone out, namely dudes who blow through your life, so they can’t break your heart like your dad did.”
You know what?
This really sucked.
I did not need guys thinking I was freaky because I liked my hands bound when I got fucked.
And I did not need guys thinking they could do whatever they wanted to me because I liked my hands bound when I got fucked.
But what I really did not need was a whip-smart guy who could read emotional situations rationally and figure out what I was thinking even when I didn’t know I was thinking it.
I took another sip of coffee.
“I’ll reiterate,” Boone said. “I fucked up huge the last three days, and I knew that before I got your last text, but definitely after last night.”
I felt my cheeks start to heat.
Okay.
What was that?
I was blushing because I was embarrassed?
What was I?
Fourteen?
“And I’m sorry,” he went on, thankfully not noting the blush verbally, though his eyes strayed to it. “I cannot say it enough or mean it enough. You just have to take me at my word on that and I’ll make it so you can do that because I’m gonna prove it by not fucking up that huge with us again.”
“What if I say I don’t believe you?” I tried.
“Rynnie,” he whispered.
And I failed.
But seriously, I could see it all over his face.
He knew he fucked up. He was sorry he fucked up. And I knew that not only because he’d now said it repeatedly, but that was what was all over his face.
And it might not have sounded like a knight’s vow, but I’d lost it last night, and he liked me, so something else written on his face was that he really did not like that he put me through that, and he wasn’t going to put me through it again.
To end, we were good together, when we weren’t fighting. I knew it. He knew it. So it was worth working it out.
To communicate I conceded this, I looked away and took another sip of coffee.
I swallowed and then didn’t have my cup in my hand anymore.
This was because Boone apparently read my nonverbal concession, took the mug away, set it aside, his with it, and then he had his back to the headboard, and I was curled in his lap and locked there with his arms.
Man, he was good.
And man, it felt good, being locked in Boone’s arms.
“So now we’re gonna talk,” he declared.
We’d been talking.
But I caught his drift.
“I do have a defense,” I began. “Considering not every day does a girl have some sex offender bent on destroying her life in the near term, and in the long term altering it forever, shot dead on her back deck. And you know the other extenuating factors of the day. But that does not negate the fact I went off half-cocked and didn’t think about where you were at about all that, or where Smithie needed to be with all of that.”
“I appreciate that, honey,” he murmured. “But you were right. I did it in the wrong order. I should have come to you and then you could have told Smithie.”
Okay, here was the hard part.
Well.
Whatever.
We were talking, we’d both screwed up, we were trying to fix that, and not being forthcoming was not the way to do it.
So, since there was nothing for it, I gave it to him.
“I would never have told Smithie, only partly because I knew he’d do what he did, but mostly because I didn’t want him worried about me.”
“Right,” he murmured.
“So, you know, obviously…” ugh, this was not easy, “if something bad happened with all that, that would have been on me.”
His murmured, “Right,” that time came slower.
But it also gave firm indication that was the end of that.
And really, that might have been the best of all of this (outside sitting in Boone’s lap, and of course, Boone being there at all) because Boone didn’t belabor it.
I said it. He heard it. He didn’t push it or dig in about it, rubbing it in where I’d gone wrong.
He let it go.
So I let out a breath.
“Okay then, you gave me that,” he said, but he wasn’t done. “I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
“Boone—”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
“You’re not responsible for what happened.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
Whoa, there.
I shut up and took him in.
“And I walked out on you because I failed you, and thinkin’ on it, for too fuckin’ long, I get where that was coming from because I failed Jeb too.”
Oh boy.
There it was.
“Stop it,” I whispered.
“I failed him.”
“We can talk about that later. But let’s get this straight now, you didn’t fail me.”