Part of Your World(41)

The way he said it made me instantly feel bad. Like I’d defiled him. Made him lower his standards for intimacy. I mean, he hadn’t asked me my last name. But then he probably thought I wouldn’t have told him. And honestly? I probably wouldn’t have. I’d sort of had one foot out the door since the start of all this.

But I didn’t really have one foot out the door now…

I was going to keep seeing him. At least for the time being. He didn’t need to know my whole life story, but I could give him a little more than I had been.

I gave him a gentle kiss. “Alexis Elizabeth Montgomery.”

He smiled so that his eyes twinkled. Then he leaned in. “Alexis.” Kiss. “Elizabeth.” Kiss. “Montgomery.”

I never knew hearing my name could make me smile so much. I arched an eyebrow. “Are you going to Google me now?”

“Not if you don’t want me to,” he said. “Did you Google me?”

“Well, yeah. What if you were a registered sex offender?”

He looked amused. “And? What did you find?”

“Five-star reviews.”

He laughed.

My cell phone pinged from wherever I’d dropped it on the floor.

Daniel nodded over his shoulder. “Are you gonna check it?”

“I probably should,” I said, running my hands through his hair. “What if they’re coming back.”

He gave me a final peck and got up and handed me my phone from the floor. Then he went to the bathroom to clean up.

I checked the text and grinned. “They’re going to the VFW,” I called out. “Something about trivia night?”

Daniel smiled coming out of the bathroom, zipping up his pants. “It goes until ten.”

“So we have three more hours?”

He climbed onto the bed. “We have three more hours.”

He wrapped around me in the biggest, sweetest teddy bear hug, and again I marveled that he was both this cuddly boy and the guy who’d screwed me senseless a few minutes ago.

He planted a kiss on my neck, then propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at me. “Why is it a bad breakup?” he asked.

I wrinkled my forehead. “What?”

“Your last boyfriend. You said you’re going through a bad breakup. Why is it bad?”

I hadn’t planned on talking to Daniel about Neil. It wasn’t really information he needed. But now that it was the reason I was pretending I didn’t know him in front of my friends, it seemed like a fair question.

I drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “The relationship was…abusive.”

His brows drew down. “He hit you?”

I shook my head. “No. He was mean.”

Daniel studied me. I couldn’t interpret the look on his face.

“What?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I would never be mean to you.”

The comment hit me right in the heart, it was so earnest.

No. I didn’t think he would ever be mean to me. Daniel couldn’t be mean to anyone, I suspected.

Whoever got him one day was going to be a very lucky girl.

When I didn’t answer, he looked at his watch. “I wasn’t expecting company, so I’m going to have to get creative with dinner,” he said. “I should probably feed you.”

He got up.

“Need any help?”

“Nope. But you can come hang out with me while I cook.”

He put on a shirt, and I followed him downstairs.

He had a pot of coffee on the kitchenette. “Mind if I have some of this?” I asked, already grabbing a mug.

“I can make you a fresh one.”

“No, this is fine,” I said, pouring it. “I got used to old coffee during my residency. Now I kind of like it. Reminds me of the little bit of downtime I used to get.”

He watched me take a sip. “No cream? No sugar?”

“No.”

He shook his head. “How can you drink that?”

“It’s coffee. You’re supposed to taste it. You can’t taste it with cream and sugar in it.”

He looked at me dubiously. “That’s like saying you can’t taste your eggs because you add salt and pepper.” He took my mug from my hand and put it to his mouth. He winced, handing it back to me. “This tastes like a burned tire.”

I laughed.

He looked amused. “I guess this proves strong coffee doesn’t put hair on your chest. Actually, maybe I should get a closer look.” He pulled the front of my dress open with a finger and I laughed, swatting him away.

It was amazing how good I felt. Like I’d had a full body and mind reset. And I didn’t think it was only because of the sex either. I was happy to be here.

Come to think of it, I’d felt like this last night after we’d hung up too. I’d slept better than I had in months.

Daniel was a vacation for me, I realized—like a break from my own brain or the reality of my current crappy situation. And we had that easy flowing conversation that you so rarely find with someone. I had it with Derek and Bri, but I’d never had it with Neil. With Neil, I always felt like I needed to say something important or smart for it to be worth bringing up. We spent a lot of quiet meals together.

At the time, I thought this meant we were good with comfortable silence. But now I realized it meant something else. Some strange, stiff, unnatural dynamic that I’d dealt with for so long, I didn’t know it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t a comfortable silence, it was just…silence.