Wild Man (Dream Man #2)(52)

Oh God.

He meant what I thought he meant.

I was feeling warm and gushy again.

“No,” he declared firmly. “Tess will tell you it’s okay because Tess is sweet and she won’t want you to feel bad so, no. You aren’t talkin’ about this with her. You’re listenin’ to me tell you that shit you did wasn’t right. And you know,” his voice dropped, “you know, Jill, from watchin’ Austin, I gotta have this covered for a lifetime. That ghost shadows her, just like Laura, and I gotta have this and I gotta know my family has it too. So this is the last we’ll speak of it but before we’re done, I gotta know. Do you have this?”

A lifetime?

“Right,” he said quietly. Then, “I’m sorry too. It’s done. We’re movin’ on. Tell your daughters their uncle hasn’t dropped off the face of the earth. They both got cars; they can drive them to my place. Tess will have a cupcake waitin’ for them.” Pause then, “Right.”

Another pause then, quietly, “Jill, we’re cool, aren’t we always cool?”

A moment passed before I watched him tip his head back to look at the ceiling.

Then I knew why he did this when he dropped his head to look at his boots and said gently, “Babe, quit cryin’.”

Oh man.

I pressed my lips together.

Then Brock said, “You f**ked up, I called you on it, you listened, it’s done and we’re cool, darlin’, quit f**kin’ cryin’.”

I was thinking for the first time in my life that I was glad I didn’t have a brother at the same time contradictorily sadder than normal that I didn’t.

And I was also thinking it was high time I Skyped my sister.

Then Brock said, “Right. Me too.” Pause then, “Fuck, right. I’ll tell her.” Another pause then, “Me too, darlin’. Later.”

Then he snapped his phone shut and looked at me.

Then he announced, “Seein’ as I now have a woman I have assignments for Thanksgiving dinner, something, as a guy, I avoided for seven years and something, because my mother and sisters hated my wife, they never gave her the honor. But apparently you’re in charge of dessert and when I say that I mean enough dessert that’ll feed sixteen.”

My, “Okay,” came out sounding strangled because I was trying really, really hard not to laugh.

Brock wasn’t laughing. He was dropping the phone on the coffee table. It clattered but he ignored it because while doing it, his eyes didn’t leave me.

I would know why when he told me, “I can get pissed and when I do, I’ve learned to let fly. I bury shit, it is not good. So I let fly. But you, Tess, no matter how close you are to me when I flare or what pisses me off, you are never in any danger. I may lose it but I will never lose it in a way that I’ll hurt you. That’s a promise. No man who is a decent man would ever put his hands on a woman or child in anger. And I’m not your average kind of man but I know, even so, I’m a decent man.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“If you do, why are you shoved in a corner?” he asked.

“Because you freaked me out,” I answered.

He studied me. Then he sighed.

Then, softly, he said, “In future, sweetness, I’ll do my best to check that.”

I stared at him.

In seven years has one woman I’ve been with met my boys, or, for that matter, you?

I gotta have this covered for a lifetime.

In future, sweetness, I’ll do my best to check that.

He was going to try to change… for me.

He introduced his sons… to me.

He took me on knowing, we went the distance, he’d be helping me battle ghosts for a lifetime.

On these thoughts, I found my mouth whispering, “You like me.”

His head jerked and he asked, “What?”

I didn’t repeat myself. Instead I said, “I don’t want you to change who you are for me.”

“Tess –” he started but I shook my head, sat straighter and interrupted him.

“I can layer up so I don’t get cold in your truck and I can deal when you get so pissed you throw a beer bottle. I don’t want you to change for me.”

His head dropped and he looked at his boots but not before I saw his eyes close slowly.

“You know,” I told the top of his head, it came up and he looked at me, “you walked into my kitchen a month ago and I didn’t want to have one thing to do with you. But when you told me you threw a chair in reaction to learning what happened to me, I knew somewhere I’ve never known with another man that you would never let anything harm me. And wherever that somewhere is, it’s deep and it’s real and after nearly a decade of not feeling safe, not for a day, in that moment in my kitchen I finally did. So now,” I gestured to the couch, “here I am. So if you throw a beer bottle or two or shout the house down, I’ll deal.”

His eyes held mine for long moments then his long legs brought him to me in less than a second. Then I was plucked out of the sofa but right back in it and stretched on top of a Brock

“Slim” Lucas who was kissing me harder than he ever kissed me, sweeter than he ever kissed me but unfortunately not longer.

When he released my lips, I lifted my head, fought for breath and watched his warm, quicksilver eyes roam my face.