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While I want to maim him, this featherhead is smiling. He doesn’t see that even if I wasn’t leaving, this wouldn’t work.Iwouldn’t work.

Game on.

“I slept with Ben,” I admit, causing his brows to pinch and smile to falter. “The bartender at Liberty Tap.”

“Okay. Well—”

“And a few of the cops you work with.”

“Okay,” he repeats, this time dragging the word out. “Not exactly what I was hoping you’d say but—”

“Well, you need to hear it,” I snap. “You keep coming over here like a dog waiting for a bone, but you’re ignoring the fact the bone’s been chewed. Repeatedly. By people you know.”

He looks at me, expression neutral. As if he knows I have more to say. Which I do.

“And I’ve never been in a real relationship, so, you know, there’s that. I flirt, I fuck, I flee, that’s what I do. What I’ve always done.” I laugh a kind of psychotic sound. “And I’m fine with that. It’smyidea. And nobody gets hurt.”

“You don’t feel hurt?”

“No.”

“You don’t lie in bed some nights and wish someone was there with you?”

“No.”

“You done?”

I huff. “For the moment.”

“I’m flattered.”

I glare at him.

“We’ve been apart a long time, but I know enough of you to still know this: You’re the biggest viper when you feel something.” He pecks my cheek. “You think that you’ll tell me all this and scare me off but I think you’re scared because you want all this. And—”

“No—”

“And,” he repeats over me. “Maybe if you let yourself have this you might have to accept you’ve been wrong about how people look at you and you look at them. Like maybe where you came from doesn’t matter to anyone at all. Like what happened all those years ago doesn’t have to mean you can’t be happy.”

“But—”

“Here’s the last thing I’m saying about it,” he continues. “I’m not gunning for a title—it’s not about you telling someone you’re my girlfriend or wife.” At the word wife, my eyes bug out of my head, and he chuckles. “I’m not forcing you into anything, Scotty, I’m being honest with what I need. Us being casual and you being able to push away whenever you want isn’t going to work for me. Not now. Not with Wren. You act like you do, I’m going to keep showing up. Proving you wrong. Proving this can work better than before. Trying to convince you not to run off to the damn desert.” My jaw drops; he grabs my hand and kisses my thumb. “I need to know you can handle that. And I think you want to say yes, you’re just scared.”

I scoff. “I think you have mommy issues.”

He vibrates with a laugh, rubbing his nose on my cheek. “If you say so.”

I lean against him, the prickly feeling of unshaved skin rubbing against my face and sending chills down my neck. “I say so.”

He grabs my chin, gently guiding my eyes to meet his. “Want me to tell you all the women I’ve slept with?”

I nearly gag, instantly jealous of a line of faceless vaginas. “No.”

“That’s a shame. So many good stories I could share.”

I level him with a look. “I hate you.”

He kisses me on the cheek and stands. “I don’t hate you even a little bit, but I have to go.”