My mind goes blank and my eyes widen as I stare at him, my heart beating out of control in my chest. Oh, God… I was so happy and caught up in our conversation that I completely forgot about the fact that I know nothing about the last five years and the fact that I’m hiding that from him. Jesus. What a fucking mess! His gaze flicks between the road and me, demanding an answer. Swallowing my fear, I turn away from him and shrug.
“I haven’t been to the movies in a while.”
“Hey,” he whispers and as I turn back to him, he reaches across the truck and nudges me under the chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. “What did I do?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“Come on, Juliette. I may be a “dumb guy” but I’m not an idiot. Tell me what I said to make you so upset so I can fix it.”
This man is going to be the death of me.
“Nothing,” I assure him, grabbing his hand and holding it between mine. I hope he believes me because the last thing I want to do is ruin this by telling him the truth. “I promise.”
He studies me for a moment before nodding. “You want to keep playing? I think it’s your turn for a question.”
“Actually, I think I get two now since you stole an extra one.”
“Lay ‘em on me, baby,” he replies with a smile and I push away my past once again to focus on us. In a few hours, he’ll be dropping me off at a hotel and then who knows if I’ll ever see him again. I don’t want to spend the last few hours I have with him stressing about everything I left behind. Not when I have him.
Chapter Twelve
Juliette
“What kind of girls do you usually go after?” I ask, fighting back a smile as he turns to me, his brows creeping up into his hairline. What started off as twenty questions has just turned into hours of conversation and the rest of the drive has gone by in the blink of an eye. He scoffs and shakes his head as he glances across the cab.
“The wrong ones.”
I arch a brow. “What does that mean?”
“Someone recently suggested that I sabotage myself.” As he peeks over at me again, he looks so damn vulnerable that my chest aches.
“Is it true?”
He shrugs. “They might have been on to something.”
“Why do you think you do that?” I ask, studying his face as he scowls. It breaks my heart to think about him stopping himself from being happy because of some kind of pain in his past. After a second, he glances over at me and forces a grin to his face.
“Well, if I knew that…”
“No,” I interrupt. “Don’t do that. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine but don’t lie to me.”
“The way you call me out on my bullshit should be infuriating but I just can’t seem to care with you…” He shrugs as his words fall away and I grin at him as I tilt my head to the side.
“It’s a gift.”
He laughs before his face turns serious. “I don’t talk about this kind of stuff with anyone but I feel like I can tell you anything.”
“You can,” I whisper, reaching across the cab to grab his hand. He glances down and smiles as his gaze flicks back to the road. It’s quiet for a few seconds before he sucks in a breath.
“A couple of years after I joined the club, I met Molly; she was putting herself through college by working at a bar downtown and I was smitten from the first moment I laid eyes on her. I asked her out and to my surprise, she said yes. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with her. Everything between us was so good, you know? And after dating for nine months, I decided I was going to propose to her.”
Oh, no.
The pain in his eyes hits me right in the chest and I squeeze his hand.
“I went out and spent weeks finding the perfect ring and finally I stumbled across it in an antique shop. On the night I was going to pop the question, I came home and found a note on the kitchen table and all her stuff was gone.”
Guilt swarms me as I think about the note I left Gavin only yesterday. “What did the note say?”
“Just that she couldn’t do this anymore. That’s the thing that haunts me the most - I have no idea what I did wrong, no idea how to not make that same mistake again.”
“So you ruin things before anyone else can,” I whisper and he glances over at me with a curt nod.
“Yeah, sounds stupid, huh?”
I shake my head. “No, it doesn’t sound stupid. Have you ever thought that you didn’t do anything wrong at all?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, maybe she left because of something that was wrong with her, something she needed to figure out.”
“You sound like you speak from experience,” he says and I shrug. “It’s only fair to ask what kind of guys you usually go for since you asked me.”
“Honestly?” I ask, thankful that he opened up to me a little bit. He nods.
“That would be preferable.”
Heat creeps up my cheeks as I pull my hand away from his. My heart thunders in my chest as I take a deep breath and meet his gaze. “I usually go for guys… like you.”
“Oh,” he replies as a slow smile stretches across his face. “Is this one of those things where you say guys like me aren’t good for you and you need to pick someone better?”
I shrug, avoiding his eyes as I fiddle with my hands. “In the past, guys like you haven’t been good for me but…”
“But what?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come on, Juliette. I’ve been nothing but honest with you about everything.” He meets my eyes with a challenge and I sigh.
“My past is… complicated but being with you today… I don’t know. It feels like I’ve known you so much longer than that and I don’t know the right thing to say or do.”
He reaches across the truck and grabs my hand. “Just be honest. You’re not the only one feeling something so it doesn’t matter how crazy it seems to the rest of the world if it makes sense to us.”
“You feel different. This,” I say, motioning between the two of us with my hand. “This feels different to anything else I’ve ever felt but then I remind myself that it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since I first laid eyes on you and I have to wonder if I’m losing my mind.”
“If you are, then so am I.”
Our eyes meet and I suck in a breath as warmth rushes through me and butterflies flap around in my belly. My heart pounds and my skin aches to feel his hand creep up my arm. The truck vibrates as we hit the rumble bars on the side of the road and he rips his gaze from mine to turn back to the road but he doesn’t release my hand. City lights dance in front of us as he pulls into Baton Rouge and I smile, a feeling of peace settling within me. After rolling my window down, I lean back in my seat and let the sounds and smells of my city greet me. A different kind of warmth radiates from my chest and I sigh like I’ve just been wrapped up in a warm blanket. Every cell in my body knows that I’m home.
“Home sweet home,” Sawyer says. I open my eyes and find him already staring at me so I flash him a grin as I nod and squeeze his hand.