Open Road Summer(68)

At this, his head snaps up, the flicker of a smile on his mouth. “Someday, huh? You’re gonna give me a someday? Sounds serious.”

He thinks he’s so funny. I wrinkle my nose, then stay quiet for a while, teasing him with my silence. I’m sure my face looks thoughtful, as if I am summing his good qualities and dividing them by his flaws. Of course, I’m in no position to catalog someone else’s faults, but I like to see him sweat it out. Finally, I tell him the truth. “I would like to know you for a while.”

I’m not thinking about the details now—if we will know each other but in separate cities, if we will know each other as friends only, if we will know each other in the biblical sense. I just know I want him around for longer. Beside me, Matt looks as though he’s been presented with a trophy, Grand Champion of Getting Reagan to Admit One Fraction of Her Feelings. “I would like to know you for a while, too. Especially with that kind of romantic sweet talk.”

I make a face, swatting at his leg. He plants a kiss on the underside of my wrist, and then looks up at me. “So you broke your wrist after falling in your heels, but you keep wearing the heels.”

I’m not sure why I didn’t tell him the first time he asked. I could have told him, with blunt delivery, My ex-boyfriend hit me. The nonchalance would have had a certain shock value, which I usually enjoy. But in this case, I worry that it exposes how screwed up my life has been. Obviously, getting hit by Blake wasn’t my fault. People have reminded me this a hundred times—my therapist, my dad, Dee, Dee’s mom—but they don’t have to. Believe me: I know. I have only a few hard and fast rules about how I live my life, and this is one: if a guy touches me in anger or if I wonder for even one second that he will, I’m done. Not done until he apologizes, not done until he promises it will never happen again, that he’s changed. Done forever.

The part that embarrasses me is that I chose to date a self-professed mean drunk with a history of selling drugs. I knew he was bad news, but I liked that he seemed a little dangerous. It seems so naive now. But maybe it’s time for Matt to get a glimpse of that girl. See if it’s enough to scare him off.

“There’s kind of more to it than that.”

“Oh yeah?” He sits up, face solemn, as if he can sense that there is nothing amusing about what I’m about to tell him.

“Yeah. But I don’t want you to say anything, and I don’t want you to look at me differently.” I scoot away from him so I can see his face, and I wrap my arms around my knees. “My last boyfriend cheated on me, and I caught him.” I say this quickly, reciting the facts from memory instead of reliving that night in my mind. “We fought, and he wound up hitting me so hard that I lost my balance. I fell on my wrist.”

His eyes flare. “He what?”

“I said don’t talk.”

He presses his mouths into a flat line, the muscles in his jaw flexed.

“In the months that I dated him, he never drank. He stopped drinking after he got busted in a bar fight.” I sigh. It sounds like I’m defending him, which I’m not—merely explaining him. “I have no idea why he had been drinking that night, but he was wasted, and he hit me.” I glance over at Matt’s face. The anger has melted into pity. “No, don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you feel sorry for me. Like I need to be saved.” My voice is huffy, defensive. “I can walk away all on my own—and I did. He’s an *, and it shouldn’t have happened, but I’m not locked in some vicious cycle of abuse. I don’t accept what happened.”

He’s quiet, and I can’t blame him. What are you supposed to say to that?

“God,” I groan, pressing my face into my hands. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No,” he replies, surprised. “I’m glad you did.”

I give him my most disbelieving look, and I suddenly feel completely naked—not in a good way. I wish I could grab the words I said out of the air and cram them back into my stupid mouth. From the nightstand, Matt’s phone rings, and he reaches over to turn it off without even looking at who it is.

“I really like you,” Matt announces, which somehow makes me feel more embarrassed. “You’re unpredictable and smart, and I basically want to spend all of my time with you.”

I bite the insides of my cheeks hard enough to leave imprints. His words fall inside the scope of people describing me, which I hate even when it’s complimentary.

“So you can understand why it would upset me that some * treated you like that. And how I want to hunt him down and kill him.”

“If anyone’s killing him, it’s me. Or my dad.”

“But I’m glad you told me,” he repeats. “I feel like I know you better.”

“Ha.” I push my hair off my face. “Yeah. Now you know that I really am a wreck.”

“You’re not a wreck.” Matt leans forward, kissing my shoulder. “You have a few battle wounds, like everyone else.”

He runs his hand down my back, stopping in the place where my shoulder blades jut out. I could get used to it—to his touch, to the sound of his voice, to all of it. Maybe I am used to it, which is a realization that startles me. I don’t know what we’re doing here, and I haven’t thought past the last tour stop in Nashville. I don’t want to think past it, because I know how things end. I slept here last night, the whole night, next to him, and that was really foolish.