Page 51

“Please, Conner.”
I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the way she says my name. Maybe it’s the word please. Whatever it is, it pushes me out from under the Chevy, and I find her standing over me, face angled down, her long fall of straight auburn hair casting shadows across her face. “I’m listening,” I tell her. Instead of speaking she reaches down and offers me a hand up. The ring I’d seen there earlier is gone.
“Did you get mugged or something?” I say, taking her hand before she has a chance to pull it back.
“Mugged?” she says like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “What—oh.” She turns her hand in my grip. “No.” She pulls me up, taking a cautious step back while fumbling in her purse to pull out a ridiculous lace-edged handkerchief. “It’s not even mine, really—”
“Not yet, right?” I say, throwing her earlier words in her face while I take the handkerchief from her and stuff it into the front pocket of my coveralls. “You said you want to explain.” I pull a worn bandana from my back pocket and start to rub at the dark smudges my hand left on her knuckles. “So, explain.”
“I took an earlier train,” Henley says, chewing on her bottom lip for a second before shaking her head. “I… I wanted—”
“How ‘bout we skip to the part where you came into the bar and failed to say, hey, Conner, it’s me, Henley before you let me bend you over the fucking desk.” I pull her hand toward me, focusing on its palm. “You lied to me.”
“I never lied.” Her fingers curl inward, making a fist around mine. “I manipulated, but I never lied.”
“I fail to see the difference.” I turn her hand over. “I also fail to understand your reasoning. Why would you—”
“Would you’ve done… that if I told you who I was?” She talks over me, voice raised and insistent. “Would you have bent me over that desk if you’d known it was me?”
“No.” I tell her the truth, all my attention focused on getting my filth off her hand. Suddenly, I can’t scrub hard enough. Can’t get her clean enough.
“That’s why I lied.”
I hear something in her tone that jerks my gaze upward. Anger. Hurt. Acceptance. I look up to tell her how wrong she was. How stupid and reckless, but then she does it. That pink tongue of hers pushes between her lips to touch the spot on her upper lip where her freckle used to be.
My freckle.
My wayward cock responds immediately.
“I’m not doing this. I need you to leave.” I let go of her hand, all but tossing it back at her. “Right now.”
“Why?” Now she looks like she sounds. Wounded. Angry. For some reason, I think about the night I kissed her. The night she offered her virginity to me. She looked just like this when I told her no. How did I not recognize her last night?
Maybe you did. Maybe she’s not the only liar in this little equation, huh, fuckface? Maybe you knew exactly what you were doing and who you were doing it to.
“Leave.” I turn away from her, stuffing my bandana into my pocket as I walk away. Hell, let’s be honest, I’m not walking. I’m running.
“I was good enough to fuck last night,” she calls after me. “But now that you know it’s me, you can’t stand the thought?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Daisy,” I toss over my shoulder. “I forgot about it before it even happened.”
I know what I’m doing.
I’m protecting myself by hurting her. It’s a shitty, selfish thing to do but I’m protecting her too. She has no idea what she walked into with me. What she’s asking for.
“Then what are you objecting to, exactly? Rich girls?” she shouts. “Redheads?”
I finally turn, nailing her with a glare I hope to Christ will get my message across. “Repeats.”
She squares her shoulders and looks me dead in the eye, even though that ugly red flush is creeping up her neck. “What if I paid you?”