The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil #1)(56)

I stared at him, no longer feeling unsure about listening.

I was listening hard to every word he said.

He kept saying them.

“It would have ended there and I would have come to you, except folks talk, and they were talking, so by the time Margot and Dave got to the festival, what happened on that picnic blanket with the three of us was running rampant. Margot got in a snit, Shandra isn’t Dave’s favorite person either, so they decided to load back up in their car, show at the mill and give Shandra a few pieces of their minds.”

“Oh boy,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Margot laid into her and the result was mincemeat. She ground her to a pulp. I’d tried to be as cool with her as I could, but in that situation there is no way she’d think I was being cool. So Shandra had already taken a few lickings from me, and with Margot wading in she became a mess.”

“Yikes,” I murmured, beginning to feel sorry for Shandra.

I hoped Margot never was moved to make mincemeat of me because I figured she had a talent with that.

“Yeah,” he again agreed. “But Margot wasn’t done, because she jumped to conclusions about the fact Shandra and me were at the mill and she had a few things to say to me too. About Shandra and about you. Shandra hearing from Margot the depths of the wreckage of me she left behind meant she got it in her head that she might be the only one to salvage them, and even shredded she gave that a go. Me and Margo disabusing her of this considering you’d entered the picture and did it with staying power was insult to injury. She lost it, took off, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and most the night looking for her to make sure in her state she didn’t wrap herself around a tree while alternately trying to get you on the phone. I found her late, got her back to her folks safely, left her there and decided to sort you out this morning. You being you led us to straightening shit out the way we straightened it out, which, sp?tzchen, I’m not complaining since what we did against that wall was hot as fuck. And here we are.”

There we were.

That seemed very definite coming from Johnny, and all he had to say was illuminating and, if I allowed it to be, hopeful.

But even if I was right where I was, I didn’t know where we were.

“Where are we?” I asked.

His brows shot together and again they turned from manly and attractive to downright sinister.

Then he looked around my tack room, to me, both his arms curled around me and did it tight so he could give me a firm shake, and he asked, “Where the fuck do you think we are?”

I didn’t know.

That was why I asked.

But I made a guess.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” I told him carefully.

“Do what?” he asked angrily.

“Come after her. I don’t want to be—”

“Don’t fuckin’ say it,” he growled.

I closed my mouth.

“She was three years ago, Eliza. I loved her. That fact doesn’t change. I loved her and she wrecked me when she left because that was how much I loved her. I’m not going to apologize for that or deny it or walk on eggshells with you about it while we figure out what we got and why it’s so fuckin’ good and so fuckin’ intense and so fuckin’ everything.”

I blinked at him again.

He thought we were . . .

Everything?

He carried on speaking.

“I’d think you’d want that. I’d think you’d wanna know the man in your life could feel that deep for the woman he decided to spend the rest of his life with. But with her, that didn’t happen. She left. I wasn’t Sleeping Beauty, unconscious and unmoving, waiting for her to return. Life happens and it happened. I met you. She’s a memory that’s bittersweet and now back in my sphere, and unfortunately since you’ve taken firm residence in my sphere, yours. But the fact remains, she’s a memory.”

“She’s beautiful,” I told him something he was sure to know.

“So?” he asked.

“I . . . well, she dresses like you. You guys . . . you two . . .” I swallowed and finished, “Fit.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “Her rocker-cowgirl gig is hot. Always was. But I’m not fucking her. I’m fucking a girl who wears a dress that reminds me how much I like her tits with that neckline, baby, which isn’t hot. It’s smokin’. A dress that has fuckin’ birds on it and still, it’s so sexy I took one look at it and wanted the skirt around your waist, or better yet, the whole dress lying on the floor by a bed, my bed, your bed, I don’t care. But just saying, this isn’t the way it’s gonna be where I gotta reassure you that I’m with you because I wanna be with you and I’m not with her because of history. I’m not with her because I wanna be with you.”

I withdrew without physically withdrawing, and I knew by the irritable look Johnny gave me (or the more irritable look) he felt it.

Still, I couldn’t help it.

“So you wanna fuck me,” I said, and I couldn’t keep the injury out of my tone.

“Well, yeah,” he bit out. “You’re the best lay, bar none, Iz, I’ve ever had. No one even comes close. You’re not on a higher level. You’re reinventing the highest level.”

Well that was a kind of compliment.