Charming as Puck(78)

My heart’s pounding in my ears, because fuck, I am not giving up on Kami, but she can’t take my damn cow away.

I love my cow.

“A man has to have a line, and that’s mine,” I tell her.

Silence rings through the car, and fucking shitbombs, I just yelled at Kami.

I just yelled at Kami.

My hands tremble on the wheel, so I grip it tighter. My lungs are shrinking like they did when I was a kid, heading out for recess when I knew that fucking Jeremy Winters would be waiting with his fucking gang of first-graders to shove me around and tell me my parents didn’t love me.

“Are you done?” she asks quietly, and there’s something in her voice that soothes my panic even though I know she’s going to give me hell right back, because I deserve it.

I’m throwing a fit over a cow.

A fucking cow.

A cow I love, but still—when did I start loving a cow?

And why am I being the idiot giving up on Kami over a cow?

Fuck.

“Yes,” I say tightly.

I’m staring straight ahead at the streetlights, at the cleaners and the dentist office and the barbecue joint just ahead at the T in the road, my jaw clenched, nose flaring as I try to get myself under control, when a soft hand cups my cheek.

“I love how much you love Sugarbear,” she whispers. Her lips follow where her hand was, and she strokes down my arm to rub the back of my hand over the wheel. “You’re a much better man than the world will ever know, Nick Murphy.”

I blink three times against an unexpected sting in my eyes while my breath whooshes out of me.

“She gets me,” I say gruffly.

“Every boy needs a dog,” she agrees, and there’s nothing mocking or teasing in her voice at all.

I risk a glance at her, and Christ, what the hell did I ever do to deserve that simple, unquestioning trust shimmering in her eyes?

I was fucking yelling at her, and she just sits there and takes it.

Because she’s Kami.

“I don’t deserve you.” The raw truth of it makes the words burn my throat.

“Nick,” she says softly, “there’s no one I’d rather be with than someone who gets upset over an innocent animal.”

“I’ve been a shithead to lots of innocent animals.”

“And you knew exactly where to go to make sure those animals were taken care of.”

“I took advantage of you.”

“Would you do it again?”

“Jesus, no. I’d leave the animals out of it and stick to cookies and books and newspaper ads.”

She doesn’t say anything, and I drop my head to stare at my crotch. “I know. I’m still a total dick.”

“You’re very dedicated to your causes.”

I’m a shithead. I pick causes like delivering dick cookies to my sister’s ex-boyfriends and donkeys to her husband’s pet monkey. I’m already plotting a new prank to pull on Zeus because of the whole fucking clown thing.

“I don’t like to lose,” I tell her.

She’s quiet again for a long minute while my heart pounds in my ears, and when I glance at her again, worry lines are marring her forehead.

“Is that why you fought so hard to get a second chance with me?” she asks so quietly, so haltingly, that my chest almost cracks in two. “So you wouldn’t lose?”

“No. Kami, I—fuck, I’m going to say this all wrong.”

“Well, you don’t have any better audience willing to give you five chances to get it right than the one sitting right here.”

There’s a note of self-deprecation in her voice that makes me want to hit something. Probably myself, because see again, I don’t deserve her.

But I still reach across the car to grab both her hands. “I’ve been an idiot for a long, long time. When you told me to go jump off a bridge, I was too stupid to realize the reason everything felt wrong was because you were gone and I hadn’t realized what I had. I knew I fucked up, but I’d never—I’ve lost friends before. I’ve never missed them. But you—I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About everything you always did for me that I never said thank you for. You remember at Felicity’s wedding, when Lavoie kicked my ass on that damn unicorn bull ride, and I was going to get back on that thing until I broke his record?”

“I’m pretty sure everyone even three islands over will remember that,” she says mildly.

I squeeze her hands. “Exactly. You talked me off the ledge without making me feel like a spoiled dumbass when we all know that’s exactly what I am.”

“You aren’t a spoiled dumbass. You’re just…a little blind sometimes.”

“You left, and I finally opened my eyes. And it shouldn’t have taken you leaving. I should’ve asked you out for real months ago, but I liked living in my little world where I got to have it all without dealing with Felicity being pissed at me and my mother getting ideas about grandkids and the fear that I’d fuck up and let you down and lose a friend and be the worthless baby shit those fuckhead first-graders told me I was twenty-something years ago. Not if I kept you as just a friend. I don’t want to just have it all now, Kami. I want to earn you. I want to deserve you. And instead I’m sitting here yelling about a cow.”