No Weddings (No Weddings #1)(55)

Silence. “Are you sure? I have coffee. Pellegrino.”

My mind raced through what else she could be making for herself. Tea? The last time I checked, tea didn’t involve whirring. “I’m sure. Make it two.”

A moment later, Hannah emerged with two giant coffee mugs. One she clutched through a handle, the other she balanced on her palm as she walked over to me. I grabbed the second one as she held it out. Then she backed up and took a seat on the couch across the room, curling her flannelled legs beneath her.

At a whiff of the contents, I looked down, furrowing my brow. I lifted the cup, taking a deeper inhale, examining the dark green mass with tiny bubbles sitting on top. “What is this?”

“A smoothie.”

Every smoothie I’d ever seen was pink. Or orange. Not this putrid green color. I wrinkled my nose. “Looks like pond scum.”

“How do you know it isn’t pond scum?”

I glanced up. Her face was dead serious. She held a mug the size of mine, but I hadn’t looked inside hers. “You wouldn’t poison me to get rid of me, would you?”

She slowly shook her head.

“You’ve got the same thing in your mug?”

Her eyes gleamed. Challenge was there. “Yep.”

“Do I want to know what’s in this?”

The corners of her lips twitched. “Nope.”

I nodded, taking a deep breath. When she made no move to lift her mug, I raised mine, waiting. In slow motion, she raised hers, watching me with a wary gaze, eyes narrowed.

On a steadying breath, I toasted the only thing that came to mind. Us. Now. “To friends.”

She raised her mug in toast, then took a sip.

I lifted my mug to my lips, taking a hit of the hideous smelling smoothie like a strapping Russian would take a shot of vodka. Walk in the park.

Lumpy fluid dissolved into a gritty mess as it filled my mouth. I felt like I’d swallowed a compost heap. I forced down the first swallow. I hoped to God it was like hard liquor, which got easier the more you drank, because I wasn’t moving from this chair in her living room.

“Okay, tell me what’s in it.” Maybe knowing would make it easier to swallow.

She’d been downing the thing and came up for air at my question. “Beets, cucumber, parsley, kale, tricolored carrots, and two apples.”

“Well, thank f*ck for the apples.” I took another sip, fighting the urge to shudder.

Instead, I focused on the returning healthy color of her face. She looked better. No more tears, but puffiness still persisted around her eyes. Hair, normally shiny, was dulled and tangled. And still, she looked amazing.

Her eyes drifted over me. “You look like shit.”

I fought a laugh. “Thanks. It’s what happens when you party with the Irish and then get no sleep for two days.”

Her mug paused halfway to her mouth, and she cocked her head. “You didn’t sleep either?”

“No, Hannah. I worried about you. I would’ve been here with you if I could’ve been. But I didn’t want to push you before you were ready.”

Shifting her legs fully beneath her and crossing them, she lowered the mug back to her lap. “What makes you think I’m ready now?”

I took another sip of the putrid liquid, hoping something in it would fortify my nerves. I was a guy. We didn’t do feelings. But Hannah did something to me on a visceral level. Around her, I felt myself change from the inside out, transforming into the person I’d always imagined I could be.

“Because I’m ready.” Bold, I know. But I needed to warm up to the touchy-feely stuff.

Her brows arched high. “Ready for what?”

I took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. Suck it up, Cade. She needs the whole truth.

Finding my balls somewhere in the green smoothie, I looked up, steeling my spine, meeting her gaze. “Hannah, you have to know by now that there is more than a physical attraction between us. You do know I care about you, right?”

Unafraid, she kept hold of my gaze and nodded once.

Good. At least we were on the same page about my…feelings.

Gaining momentum, I continued. “When you left the bar that night, I was devastated for two reasons. One, you needed someone to be there for you. I needed to be that someone. Seeing you shredded apart like that wrecked me, and I wanted to be the one to help take away that pain. Maybe I didn’t know how to right then, but I sure as hell wanted to be the person to try.

“Two, I stood there on that sidewalk abandoned. The crushing wave that sucked you under dragged me down too. All the jarring memories of my nightmare flooded back in on me.”

Her hands tightened around her mug. “So it’s my fault that you relived your hurt too?”

Treading on thin ice, I shook my head, rerouting the explanation in my mind to get her to understand. “No. Nothing was your fault. I get it. I get you. We’ve both been there, even though your situation was a thousand times worse than mine. But we’ve both run before. We’ve both buried our feelings, lied to ourselves that we were actually living.”

She took another sip from her mug, gaze holding mine, listening. Her expression was cool. I understood. She’d been burned deeply and wouldn’t yield her position easily.

Nothing worthwhile in life comes without a fight.

“I’m only explaining all of this so you understand where I’ve been since you left. I’ve relived my agonizing destruction. Then I replayed yours in my head, putting myself in your shoes, feeling your pain. I let the two situations, yours and mine, intertwine in my head because I wanted to feel your pain to be able to help you.”