by Faber, Elise
“He broke up with me not long after my mom passed.”
“Asshole.”
Her mouth turned up. “Yes. Yes, he was.”
“What happened?”
“To my mom? Or with Steven?”
“Both.”
She didn’t think she could handle this conversation, naked except for a T-shirt, on her bedroom floor. She needed armor, barriers between her and the past. And this room with its memories of her mother, of her time with Steven . . . it was too much.
“I need to put on pants for this,” she muttered. “And maybe a bra.”
“Shame that,” Rex said lightly, but he stood and crossed to her dresser, opening the top drawer and holding up one of her most-worn sports bras. From the next drawer, he extracted her favorite pair of pajamas, lilac and covered with unicorns. They were threadbare and ready to split at the seams, but they were also so freaking cozy that she couldn’t bear to part with them. He seemed to study the waistband for a moment and Tilly wondered if he were checking the size.
Seemed a little nosy if anyone asked her.
But also . . . he’d been nose-deep in her vagina only minutes before, so it wasn’t like she had room to be outraged.
He knelt and slipped them over her feet, helped her slide them up to her hips then handed her the sports bra. “Have any alcohol in that kitchen of yours?” he asked. “Seems like you might need it.”
Considering the mere thought of her parents and Steven had driven her to drink many times before, Tilly couldn’t fault his logic.
“Vodka in the freezer. Sprite and orange juice in the fridge.”
“Screwdriver on steroids,” he said. “I like it.” A kiss to the top of her head. “I’ll make yours a double.”
“Why?” she asked as he started to walk from the room. “Why are you here?”
What could you possibly see in me?
That was the question running through her head.
And once again, he seemed to be able to read her mind.
He closed the distance between them and kissed her fiercely, one hand cupping her cheek, the other squeezing her hip. “You,” he murmured when he broke free. “I see you.”
He paused in the doorway.
“And that’s enough.”
Seventeen
Rex
His body radiated with tension as he strode down the hall and into the kitchen.
Only part of it was sexual because his cock was still rock-hard and throbbing. But he barely focused on that as he pulled out the bottle of vodka from the freezer, along with the Sprite and orange juice from the fridge, and that was saying something. Rex wasn’t the kind of man to forgo his own sexual urges in place of conversation, and he definitely wasn’t a man who was jealous over an asshole from a woman’s past.
Probably because he usually was the asshole from the past.
Snorting, he searched the cabinets until he located two glasses and then fixed them both strong drinks. Because the rest of his tension had been strongly from anticipation . . . or maybe dread.
Anticipation because he wanted to know everything about Tilly—the secrets and long-buried hurts, her hopes and dreams for the future.
Dread because he knew that if he wanted to have a snowball’s chance in hell of that future possibly including him, then he would need to level with her about his past in the very same way.
Talking and sharing feelings were almost as scary words to him as responsibility.
And yet here he was. Not running but digging in and preparing to stay.
To fight to stay.
Rex couldn’t deny that was one feeling he actually enjoyed.
Footsteps and creaking floorboards announced Tilly’s arrival before she walked tentatively around the corner and into the kitchen. Eyes landing on the glasses but not on him, she all but snatched one from his hand and downed the contents.
“Um. Okay?” he asked.
She nodded, took his glass and started chugging.
“I don’t think—”
“I do,” she said. “Because if I’m going to tell you about my parents and Steven, then I need alcohol in my life.”
“Well, then.” He refilled and held out her glass.
She took it, gulped. Then, cheeks pinkened, though this time not for a reason he viewed as particularly pleasant, Tilly lifted her chin and said, “My mom blamed me for my dad leaving.”
His brows drew together. “What? No—” he began.
“I’m not telling you this as some sort of emotional reasoning or baggage or hurt feelings a kid holds on to.” She put both glasses in the sink then began returning the bottles to their respective locations. “I’m saying this as an adult woman who is fully aware of her parents’ opinions because she lived them.” A beat. “And also because she told me in no uncertain terms.”
Shadows in those hazel depths. “The first time I remember her telling me that was as my dad drove down the driveway before he left us the first time. A dust cloud trailed him, lingering in the air for far longer than his car.”
“How old were you?”
“Six? Seven?” she said. “Young enough to not understand what he was doing and too old not to miss him once he’d gone.”
“Why did he leave?”
She leaned back against the counter. “I wasn’t exactly an easy child. I was a preemie and didn’t sleep much at all for the first two years. And I was energetic, needy. I couldn’t entertain myself, had to have an adult keep me occupied or I got in trouble.”
He frowned. “So you were a normal six or seven-year-old kid.”
“I guess.”
The silence stretched for a few moments before Rex asked, “You said the first time he left?”
“Oh, yeah.” Tilly smiled, but it wasn’t a happy one. “My parents were special. They couldn’t stay together, couldn’t live apart. They were like the most fucked-up drug addicts, but their relationship was their drug of choice.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, even though they couldn’t stay away from each other for long, they also couldn’t make each other happy.”
“And you were stuck in the crossfire.”
“Happily so,” she said, surprising him. Then added, no doubt at his confused look, “It was attention, and I was starving for it.”
His heart skipped a beat, and her eyes softened as she took in his face. He was still shirtless and when she placed her hand over his heart, the soft skin of her palm made goose bumps break out on his skin. “You know something about that, don’t you?” she murmured. “Know what it’s like to feel so lonely and isolated that you’ll take any form of attention.”
He nodded, sucked in a breath, and just laid his cards on the table. “I was the bad twin, never as smart or talented as Justin, so I stopped trying, and eventually, I learned to love the negative attention, took pleasure in their shock and disappointment.”
“Better a disappointment than ignored.”
Rex brushed his fingers over her cheek. “Yes. That.”
“But it’s not healthy.”
He shook his head. “No.”
“And when I was ten, my dad left for good.” Her lips pressed flat for a long moment. “I thought it would only be a matter of time before he came back. It wasn’t like that was the first time he’d disappeared for a few weeks to cool off.” She swallowed hard, pulled out the vodka bottle and splashed some more in her glass. “I remember getting home from school every day and rushing into their bedroom”—she pointed down the hall—“but he was never there. Then I’d stand here in the kitchen and watch through the window until he came home.”
“But he didn’t come back?”
“No.”
For some reason, the image of ten-year-old Tilly staring through the small window, watching the street for any sign of her father’s car coming up the driveway sliced him to the core. Okay, not for some reason, because he wasn’t a monster and didn’t want to see any kid hurt, emotionally or otherwise.
But it hit him harder than normal
because it was Tilly.
And he could picture it.
And he wanted to pummel anyone who’d ever so much as hurt her feelings.
“So—” He stopped, shoving the question of what she’d done after her father had gone deep down. They’d drudged up enough tonight and—
“We stayed in this house,” she murmured. “On pause for ages. Waiting for him to show back up, waiting for our lives to start again. I think that’s why I got into scents so much. I found an old bottle of my dad’s cologne and tried to replicate it.” Her smile was sad. “I think part of me thought that if I could just make the house smell like him again, then maybe . . . oh God, it’s so stupid now.”
“You hoped he might come back.”
She rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Shit, baby,” he said and took her in his arms. Rex had rarely comforted another person. It wasn’t his instinct or nature or . . . style, he supposed, to focus on someone who wasn’t himself. Or maybe he’d been so closed down that he hadn’t been able to recognize when someone might need something from him.
He definitely hadn’t been capable of giving it.
But over the last few years, things had begun shifting. He’d seen his brother and Kelly happy and hadn’t acted selfishly for once. He’d helped Bella. And he wanted to do the same thing for Tilly.
No. He wanted to do more.
“It was stupid,” she said, burrowing into his chest with a sniff. “To stop living for so long. But after a month had passed then two then more, my mom just sort of shut down, I guess. She stopped picking me up from school, and I started walking home. She didn’t cook dinner or buy groceries.”
“How did you live?”
“My dad sent money,” she said softly. “Enough for me to stretch after my mom stopped showing up for work and lost her job.” She shoved out of his arms. “This town never got it. They thought she was lazy, that she was just after a free ride.” Tilly paced away. “They didn’t understand she was depressed, that she literally could not get out of bed. I was fine. I cashed the checks, bought food, cooked.”
He snagged her hand as she paced by, tugging her against him, and this time she stayed in the circle of his arms. “Henry’s mom and dad were the only ones who understood. They never gave me those judgy looks and when I was old enough, I got a job at the diner.”
“How old was old enough?”
She smiled. “Fourteen. Not legal, I know,” she added. “But he paid me in food, and it was so much better than anything I could cook up at the time that it was like I’d brought home food from a four-star Michelin chef. My mom even perked up for a time.”
“Why do I sense a but coming?”
Tilly sighed. “Probably because there is one.”
“I was afraid of that.”
A shrug. “It’s not that unusual. She got sick. Things got even tighter. I made it work . . . and then she died.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.” She straightened her shoulders, tried to pull away again, but he wouldn’t let her. No distance between them. Not in this moment. “Luckily, I was only two months shy of eighteen, so by the time they figured out I was a minor, I was legal.”
“But you were alone.”
“I got used to being alone long before my mother passed.”
Silence stretched between them for a long moment, and Rex would be lying if he’d said he knew how to comfort her. The pain in her words had been acute, but it was also an old hurt, and he thought that harping on it might make things worse. And then there was the fact that she’d now bared her soul, and he probably needed to reciprocate and—
Cool fingers cupped his jaw.
“Too much?” she asked.
Rex slipped his hand behind her neck, held her in place when her gaze would have drifted away from his. “No,” he said. “I was just thinking that this meant I needed to tell you everything about my childhood, too, and—”
“It’s a lot?”
“Nothing when compared to what you went through, which makes me a giant asshole because I spent so many years acting like—” He sighed. “And you were dealing with all this— And I wasted so much fucking time just being—”
She placed a finger over his lips. “There’s a lot happening here, but I think the first thing you need to do is finish a sentence.” Her mouth curved. “And know that just because I told you a bunch of shit about my past doesn’t mean you have to reciprocate in turn tonight.”
He pressed a kiss to her finger then lifted it from his face. “But—”
“Shh,” she said and rose on tiptoe to slant her lips across his. Then she dropped back down to the balls of her feet. “Enough,” she said. “For tonight, let’s just let this be enough.”
He hesitated, warring with himself, knowing he should share but fucking terrified to put himself out there. It was easy to fix a car or to buy a phone. Emotions, on the other hand? Scary as shit. But as he watched Tilly, her eyes soft and kind, no trace of disappointment or anger in her expression, he thought that perhaps they weren’t so scary after all. Though, it wasn’t a thought with one hundred percent certainty, because when she laced her fingers with his and tugged him over to one of the many bowls on the counter, waxing poetic about the scent she’d come up with for his cinnamon roll candle, he didn’t put the activity on pause.
Instead, he went along for the ride.
He let himself enjoy the process, soaked up Tilly and spending time with a woman because she was fun and smart and witty.
Soon he’d have to lay it all out there.
But tonight, he’d just take this moment.
And for the first time in his life, instead of throwing it away or treating it as casual and unimportant, Rex clutched it tight, tucked it safe inside his heart.
Where Tilly had already made a permanent place for herself.
Eighteen
Tilly
She taught Rex how to make cinnamon roll scented candles and then he helped her fill her outstanding orders that had come in with sudden, shocking frequency.
“I don’t know how she got my name,” Tilly said, holding up the paper with the information. “I don’t think I ever met her at the couple of craft fairs I go to, and yet she’s ordered six dozen toiletry sets. But,” she added with a smile, “if this keeps up, I might finally be able to open up my own place.”
“Seems to me, it’s finally your time to shine,” Rex said, tongue poking out in rather adorable fashion as he filled lip balm tubes with her lemon-raspberry concoction.
Maybe it was the way he said it or perhaps it was knowing that he’d been behind her car and her phone, that finally a niggle of something penetrated her thoughts. “Please, don’t tell me you have a warehouse of my candles and shampoos somewhere.”
“What?” He jerked, overflowing several of the tubes, and glancing up at her with a definitely guilty expression.
“Oh, my God,” she moaned. “You do.”
She clanked the spoon on the counter, turned off the heat on the wax she was melting, tears filling her eyes, and mortification burning through her. The phone, the car, and now he’d bought close to ten thousand dollars in candles?
Well, candles, shampoos, face wash, lip balm—
Not the point, Conner.
She should have known this wasn’t something she’d done on her own. This was another fucking handout.
Rex might like her, might want her in bed, but he was just like everyone else. He didn’t think she was a fully capable human being, didn’t think she could make things work on her own, even though she’d always managed, had clawed and squeaked through tight spots more times in her life than anyone ever should have.
She’d told him everything . . . and he was just the same as everyone else.
Not fair, her brain cautioned her, but it was too little too late. Her temper had sparked, and she was vulnerable and embarrassed and—
“Get out,” she snapped, brushing by him and picking up her lapt
op.
“What are you doing?”
“Canceling the fucking orders,” she gritted out. “Refunding your money. I can’t believe you’d buy—”
“Why wouldn’t I buy it?” he asked. “It’s fucking incredible. But I—”
“I told you to leave,” she said. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to think that things would be different, that I would finally get out of debt. Or worse, that someone might actually think I could be a fully capable person all on my own.”
Rex closed her laptop before she could actually cancel anything. “You are!”
She growled, tried to open it again, but he didn’t let her. Instead, he snatched up the computer and shoved it on top of the fridge. And because she was a short motherfucker, she couldn’t reach it without getting a stool.
Which she did. Snatching it from the pantry and plunking it down in front of the fridge.
Tilly clambered up, reached on tiptoe and—
Nearly fell.
Nearly because Rex caught her and set her firmly on the floor.
“I don’t need a rescue!” she screamed, shoving away from him and trying to sprint from the room. “Just go,” she spat, when he snagged her arm to stop her. “Go, like all the rest of them and save me the heartache later.”
Rex froze, not speaking for a long moment, then he cursed, yanked her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her in a hug she really wanted to pretend she didn’t want.
“What is it, exactly, that has you so upset?”
Tilly huffed, tried to squirm free of his hold.
“You’re such a fucking asshole.” She glared up at him when he held firm.
“That we all know.” One brow came up. “So, care to share?”
“No,” she muttered, feeling extremely childish and still not willing to give in.
“Fine,” he said and tossed her onto his shoulder. He spent a moment at the stove, and though she couldn’t see him since she was getting an eyeful of an attractive ass she didn’t want to admit she was staring at, she still heard the click of the knobs, the slight whoosh of the gas turning off. “Will they be okay?”
