When Rip turned his truck into an open graveled lot, with a new-ish rectangular home settled right smack in the middle of it, I knew this was where he lived. I parked my car behind his truck, watching as he got out and headed over, pulling mine open too before I really made much of an effort to beat him.
Rip gave me that one-cheek smile with a dimple in it as he took my hand and led me out, slamming the door shut.
“You made it seem like you lived in a dump,” I accused him.
“It’s no pretty purple house,” he tried to explain as he fiddled with his keys.
I took in the extended sides and length of his home. “Rip, I bet this thing cost almost as much as my house.”
He shrugged, giving my hand a squeeze as he slipped a key into the lock and turned it. “It’s still no pretty purple house.”
He was obviously never going to agree, even though I was right.
But in that moment, I couldn’t find it in me to argue with him over it. That was because… because… connected to the same keychain his house key was on, something dangled from it. Something that looked like an ice cream cone charm. An ice cream cone charm that I’d had on a necklace. A necklace that I had put on him after the car accident.
He’d kept it? He’d put it on his keychain?
I was a goner. I was such a goner that no one was ever going to find me again. Ever. It took everything in me to keep my mouth closed. To save the moment for later, since there seemed like there might be a later between us. I hoped.
He shoved the door open, leading me up the metal steps as he fiddled with a light switch on the wall closest to him.
Light blazed on inside the trailer just as
he pulled me in, closing a screen door and a heavier one as I took in the inside of his home.
I hadn’t been wrong when I told him his place had to be as expensive as mine. It was nice. Patterned tan and rich brown colors were used as the upholstery of two big, comfortable recliners to the right of the entrance. To the side was a table that could sit four. His kitchen, to the left, was way nicer than mine. The appliances were new and shiny, and there was a four-burner stove with an oven and a microwave. He had a nice kitchen island with storage beneath it. If my eyes didn’t deceive me, there were a handful of old-looking cookbooks under there, too. I wondered if they had been his mom’s and couldn’t help but hope he’d tell me someday. He even had a nice fifty-something-inch television on the wall beside a door that had to lead somewhere. The bedrooms? Bathroom? I didn’t know.
And it was clean.
Really clean.
“Are you always this clean?” I croaked, still soaking it all up.
His laugh was warm and rich and so natural, I had no defense for it. It slid underneath my ribs and settled right over my heart. “Not messy, but I might’ve been taking extra care the last few weeks in case you came over.”
I sucked in a breath and looked up at him standing right beside me, watching me even then. “Not for every girl you bring over?” I made myself ask.
He shook his head and fully turned to face me, his hand coming up and sliding across my throat, palming it. Those teal-colored eyes didn’t stray from mine for even a second as he breathed, “I told you I bought this after I moved here.”
“I know.” Did my voice have to sound so small? “It’s none of my business if you have—”
“Nuh-uh,” he said, still shaking his head.
I blinked. “But that was three years ago.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“But you didn’t even like me.”
“Oh, I liked you just fine, baby. I’ve always liked you just fine.”
Yep, I was a goner. “But you were mean to me.”
His smile was slow. “I was tough on you, not mean, and that shit ate me up for hours and days after.”
It had? “You could have always been sweet.”
“I thought I was too old for you. Thought I’d done too many shitty things in my life to have you in it, Luna,” he explained softly. “I didn’t want to care about you, and I fought that shit as long as I could.”
“Because of the bad things you think you’ve done?”
His face softened. “Because of the bad things I know I’ve done,” he confirmed, and that too snuck under my ribs.
I knew all about the guilt that came with doing things that you weren’t proud of. Necessary evils. Unnecessary ones too.
I took a step closer to him, my breasts brushing just across his chest. I felt his hand slip around my back to land on the small of it, pulling me in even more. “But what if I would’ve started dating someone?”
Rip tipped his head closer to mine, bringing his mouth just inches from me. “I would’ve made sure there hadn’t been a second date, baby girl. I know you went on seven of them until this bullshit recently. I know you went to dinner on three, to the movies on two, a baseball game on one, and Mickey’s on another. I listened. I know. I was there the night you got your place broken into. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
That was true. That was all true. “How’d you know that?”
I’d swear I could already feel his lips on mine. “I listen, I told you.”
“What else have you heard?”
“Everything.” His head moved, his mouth brushing my throat so lightly it was the best tickle of my life.
And just as soon as he brushed his pink lips over me, he pulled back.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him, trying to smile so he would know I was happy… and I hoped he was too.
One of those big hands went up to the top of his head and he scrubbed it back and forth across the top, still watching me with these eyes that said a dozen different emotions. The only one I could focus on was that uncertain one though.
“What is it?” I asked him, still holding on to my smile. At least until it hit me. Maybe… “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
He blinked those long eyelashes, and I couldn’t miss the way his eyes just kind of sort of squinted at me. “Baby girl, that’s not it at all.”
“What is it?”
But he still looked off. His hand came up and moved across his chest, from one massively rounded pec to the other and then going up to the base of his throat, where his fingers curled into the material of his compression shirt and he peeled it away from his neck maybe an inch. “I should tell you something first.”
Oh, no. “There’s something wrong with your…?” I dipped my eyes toward the lower half of his body.
That got me a blink. “Excuse me?”
All right, maybe that wasn’t it. “You have three nipples? Because that wouldn’t be a big deal. I’ve got stretch marks if you—Why are you looking at me like that?”
Because he was looking at me weird. He really was. “I couldn’t give less of a fuck about you having some marks, and I don’t have three nipples.”
I wasn’t surprised that my hands were steady as I set them on his hips, feeling the warmth of his body through his shirt. “What is it then?”
His hand tugged at his shirt again, drawing my gaze down to the inch of tattooed skin I could see… and then it finally settled in my brain.
Ohhh.
“You have a girl’s name tattooed on you?”
That had him rolling his eyes. “Let me tell you, yeah?”
I widened my eyes, watching as he gave his shirt another tug at the collar.
“I’ve got some tattoos…”
“I know. I’ve seen some of them.”
He shot me a look as he scrubbed at his head again. “Luna, I gotta tell you before I show you, all right?”
I nodded.
“I told you what I did with about twenty years of my life.”
I nodded because he had. How could I forget he’d been in a freaking motorcycle gang… club… whatever it was called?
“I got a lot of tattoos from those days, and I haven’t gotten around to covering them up,” he said in a quiet voice, and something just pulled at my heart. It just yanked it tight and crazy.
I loved this man. I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.
“Rip, I don’t care about your tattoos from back then,” I told him gently. “Unless you have another girl’s name on you somewhere, but you don’t, right?”
His face instantly softened so much I couldn’t help but smile. “Quit with the dumbass questions, yeah? And no, I don’t fucking have somebody’s name on me.”
“Okay then.” I tipped my chin up. “You have gang tattoos. Thank you for telling me.”