Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
You couldn’t fucking stay.
I shuddered the thought away, deliberately replacing it with more productive ones, like what kind of tea I wanted with my bath, and whether or not I had a frozen meal I could nuke for dinner since the SERA cafeteria was closed between sessions.
But when I pulled past the other SERA buildings and into the gravel parking pad beside my cabin, I saw Patrick’s Jeep parked in my spot.
“Fucking Christ,” I muttered, throwing my truck into Park and resting my forehead on the steering wheel. “Fuck.”
I sucked in a deep breath, reminded myself of all the reasons Patrick and I didn’t work, and stepped out of the truck.
He was sitting in the shadows of my porch, his large, bulky frame shivering on the wooden swing. As much as I wanted to tell him to go the fuck home, the poor man looked miserable.
“Hey,” I said, tilting my head to the front door. “Want to come in and warm up?”
He nodded and stood. The lights from my truck were still on long enough to illuminate the tearstains on his stubbled cheeks. I held my breath to keep from audibly sighing. One of the things I’d liked about Patrick was the fact that the big guy was a teddy bear despite his huge, intimidating presence.
After opening the door and kicking off my boots, I shucked off several layers of gear and moved into the kitchen to start the kettle. “I don’t have any coffee,” I called back. “You want tea, hot chocolate, water?”
The only answer was a pathetic little sniffle before I heard him padding behind me into the kitchen. “I just want you.”
He leaned his forehead down onto the top of my head, but I shrugged him off gently. “That’s not happening,” I said as softly as I could. “Patrick, why are you here? We said everything we could have possibly said the other night.”
His eyes and nose were red. I resisted the urge to wipe his tears off with my thumbs and give him a big hug. This moment was for reconfirming our breakup, not being the one to give him comfort and affection.
“I want you to give me another chance. Give us another chance. Just tell me what you need me to do, and I’ll do it.”
I busied myself pulling mugs out of the cabinet and selecting a chamomile lemon tea for me and a hot chocolate packet for him. “I’m not going to have this conversation again. We already discussed it to death, and there’s nothing more to say.”
“But there is,” he cried. “You’re the first decent man I’ve met in years! I can’t stand losing you when I barely even had you.”
I inhaled carefully through my nose. “Maybe you need to find a way to meet more decent men,” I muttered. “Younger ones.”
“I’m a fucking lineman in small-town Montana, Trace. How the fuck do you suggest I meet decent gay men? And stop with the age bullshit. I’m twenty-eight. Hardly a kid. And you’re forty-six. Not an old man.”
The familiar sound of the hot water sloshing into my mug had a Pavlovian effect on my heart rate, calming me down as if the warm mug was already between my palms with its warm herbal aroma wafting up at me.
A conversation from six years ago tried nudging into my mind, one in which I’d sworn I’d never date anyone this much younger than I was.
“They need linemen everywhere,” I reminded him. “LA, Chicago, Atlanta… hell, even P-town.”
We both knew he’d never move out of Montana. He’d been born and raised in Joliet, and everything he loved was there.
Except maybe me.
Which was ridiculous. We’d only been seeing each other for four months when he’d dropped the L-word last week. Surely, four months wasn’t long enough to know you loved someone.
“I don’t need to move somewhere to meet a decent man, Trace,” he continued, his voice ragged. “I already found the one I want.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Did.”
I stirred the chocolate packet into his mug and handed it to him. “Sit.”
He immediately dropped into a chair at my kitchen table and took the mug with a grunt. I turned back to fix my tea.
After a moment, I felt his eyes on my back. “Why are you so scared of intimacy?” he asked.
“I’m not.”
“You are. As soon as people get close to you, you shut down.”
I slid the carton of milk back in the fridge and brought my tea to the table. The warmth against my hands wasn’t nearly as effective as I’d hoped. “You’re lashing out,” I said more calmly than I felt. “Don’t pretend you know about my previous relationships.”
He scoffed. “What relationships? You’ve been living in this area for years, and the longest you dated someone before me was a few months.”
“How do you even know that?” It wasn’t like he lived in Legacy. Joliet was thirty minutes from here. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I’ve been busting my ass with SERA the past few years. There was hardly time for a relationship.”