“Hi,” he said somewhat gruffly, then without waiting for a response, he pulled her from her stool, into his arms, and kissed the absolute living daylights out of her.
She made it past the first split second of shock, past the second split second of half-expecting a vision . . . and then she sighed a soft sound of complete and utter capitulation, threw her arms around him, and kissed him right back with everything she was worth.
He groaned, maybe even growled a little as he took the kiss deeper and a lot more carnal. On the fringes of her thoughts, she worried he'd clear the worktable with a single sweep of his arm, but decided it was a small price to pay as long as he didn't stop kissing her, didn't let her think, and didn't let her worry.
She gasped and whimpered a little when he finally lifted his head.
“It's late,” he said roughly, his eyes so intent, his gaze so focused on her, she wasn't too sure he wasn't having his own vision. Although maybe he was, at least about who and what he wanted. “And it's past time I did this. Come home, Honey. I'm done letting us figure this out apart. It doesn't make any sense. If we want to be together, then, dammit, we need to work it out together.”
He framed her face, brushed callused thumbs gently over her cheeks. “I miss the hell out of you.”
She smiled even as her eyes burned. “I miss you, too. I was just sitting here having quite the pity party for myself.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“I don't want to hurt you,” she said as plainly as she could.
“Well, you're already failing on that point.”
Her heart skipped several beats, then dropped right to her stomach. “I'm so sorry,” she said, forcing the words out past the thickness in her throat. “But it would be so much worse if I led you on, then couldn't hack itâ”
“Trying to make things work when we both acknowledge the problem going in is not leading anyone on. I'm a big boy, Honey. If I get hurt, I'll survive. So will you. It's a risk we should be willing to take. We could take the leap, and one of us could get hit by that proverbial truck the next day. So . . . what? Do you just say no thank-you, something bad might happen at some point and we'll get hurt? Well, guess what? Love is like that. It can hurt like hell. It can damage, destroy, decimate. But it can build, lift, energize, motivate, inspire, and push us to greater things, things we couldn't do alone. So if that's not something you see as worth fighting for, then fine. Go, leave, run, hide. I'll even help you. But don't you dare decide this for me. Like I said from the beginning. Own who and what you are.” He lowered his mouth, and she expected something intense, maybe even angry.
Instead, he shocked her straight to her core. His kiss was soft, so tender it made her heart quiver. He was gentle . . . sweet, coaxing her, wooing her, until her quivering heart filled right up and overflowed with love.
When he lifted his head, his eyes burned into hers. “I know it's fast. I know it's a lot. And I just don't give a shit. I want it fast, and I want a lot. I want you. All or nothing. I'm done being patient. That's where I stand. Figure out where you stand, Honey. And get back to me.”
He let her go, and she had to grip the sides of the worktable to keep from sinking right to the floor. He stalked through the door and a moment later she heard the bell jangle, but there was no slamming door following it, just the click of the lock.
It was, she thought, the most final sound she'd ever heard.
She sank back down onto her stool. She was shaken, dazed, confused, and not a little afraid. Afraid she'd screwed up what might have been the best thing to ever happen to her. She was also pissed.
Did he really think he was just going to storm the castle, kiss her senseless, then kiss her sweet, and demand she hop to it if she wanted the bad ass prince to stick around?
Really?
Without a thought to the clay pieces she'd been in the middle of working on, or anything else, for that matter, she snatched her keys off the rack by the back door, yanked her satchel off the floor where she'd dumped it the last time she'd come in, and slammed out the back door. His truck was gone, so she jumped in her car and tore off down the alley after him.
If he thought he was going to make demands . . . well then, she had a few of her own.
Chapter 20
“W
ell, that was quite possibly the stupidest, most dumbass thing you've ever done in your entire life.” Dylan swore under his breath all the way back to his house. He'd never, not once, manhandled a woman as he'd just done with Honey. But he'd never, not once, been pushed to his breaking point the way he had been with her. She'd looked almost fragile and lost when he'd set her away from him. Yes, she'd kissed him back, but then he'd gone and yelled at her and laid down his stupid ass law and she'd just looked poleaxed.
He'd had to do something, dammit. He was all for giving her space, but at some point, it wasn't sitting and thinking, it was hiding and avoiding. He'd watched folks troop in and out, deliverymen, locals, repairmen, subcontractors. What he hadn't seen was her come out. Not once. There was plenty to do in the place to give her an excuse to not surface until next spring, if that's what she wanted.
But it wasn't what he wanted. So, faced with going home alone, again, he'd gone next door to have a calm, rational conversation. All he'd wanted was to put his two cents in, see if that mattered at all. Get some sort of idea about how it was all going and where her mind was after playing hermit all goddamn week. He'd taken one look at herâhair pulled up in a tangle, serious glasses, clay covered shop apron, creating a scene that looked like it was something out of a Disney movieâand his resolve had snapped.
If she could sit there creating happy little cartoon characters, then she wasn't exactly wallowing in self-doubt and worry, was she? That was something a happy person did. If she was that damn happy, why hadn't she come over to tell him about it?
So he'd kissed her. He'd wanted a reactionâsomething, anythingâto help him understand. And he'd gotten a reaction all right. Then he'd ruined it by throwing out ultimatums.
He pulled into his driveway, shut off the engine, and lowered his forehead to the hands still fisted on the wheel, wondering if maybe a few good whacks would knock some sense into him. The least she could have done was get pissed at him, God knows he'd have deserved it, but no, she'd stood there and looked . . . well, he didn't rightly know, but nothing about her reaction had made him feel remotely good about what he'd done.
He'd finally found one last brain cell she hadn't warped and gotten the hell out of there before he did anything more monumentally stupid. If that was possible.
“I told her I suck at this.” He slammed out of his truck, but slowed down his stomping steps and his temper when Lolly came trotting down from the side screened-in porch, tail wagging in happy greeting. He crouched down and gave her a good scratch behind the ears. “You don't know this, but I so do not deserve a happy greeting.”
“No,” came a voice behind him. “You don't.”
He gave Lolly one last good scratch, partly because he wanted to and partly so he could get his suddenly thumping heart and slightly wobbly legs under control. Then he straightened up and turned around. “Honey, I'm sorry.”
“I'll agree with you there.”
It made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but when she stepped closer and he got a good look at just how angry she was, he wanted to smile. Clearly, that was not the appropriate reaction. But a pissed off Honey was a hell of a sight better than a poleaxed, fragile looking Honey.
“Where do you get off stomping into my shop and telling me what I am and am not going to do?”
“I don't,” he said simply. “I should be flogged for even considering it. Although, for the record, I didn't stomp.” He walked down the driveway toward her. “I know you're mad, and you have every right to be, but I don't want to fight with you. I never want to fight with you.”
“Oh no. Don't you go and get all reasonable with me now. I get to keep my mad on long enough so I get my turn to tell you where you can step right the hell off.”
“And you should. And I know you will. Probably many times. I know I'll deserve it, every time.”
“Don't patronize me.”
“I'm not. I just . . . come here, sugar.” He reached for her, but didn't grab her like before. “Please?”
The fight went out of her body. Her shoulders lost their rigid, squared off look, and she shifted out of her braced stance, but there was still a storm going on in those eyes, one he'd be well advised to heed.
“You don't fight fair,” she muttered. “I get my turn.”
“I don't want to fight at all.” He stepped closer. “Can we kiss and not make up, then kiss some more until we both want to make up?”
She snorted, then she swore. “I really hate it that you can make me laugh right now.”
“I really hate it that you came here with me, and made a permanent mark on this place . . . then left and never came back.” Dylan lifted his hands out to her. “Come home, Honey. We'll figure the rest out. One way or the other. Just . . . don't go away again, okay? We need to do this together. We're better together than we are apart. That's all that really matters, right?”
She kept her arms folded tightly over her chest, looked down at her feet, and kicked a rock or two. “Have I mentioned that I also hate itâa lotâwhen you're always right?”
He took her elbows gently and tugged her close. She went grudgingly, arms still folded, but she went.
“You can be right next time. And the time after that. Now please, you're killing me. Come here, sugar.”
She finally lifted her gaze to his and he saw that her eyes were swimming in tears. It would have been easier and less painful if someone had stuck a knife in his gut. “Aw, now don't do that.”
“Trust me, I don't want to. You don't deserve tears.” She sniffled, even as her expression remained stormy. “I don't want this to be so hard. I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was trying to do the exact opposite of that. I wanted to make sure. Not of you, but of me. I don't know how to do that because I don't have a lot of faith in my ability to see it through. I'm a hider, Dylan. And you're a cave dweller. If I come out of hiding and take this on, I'm going to drag you into it with me. You're already so many things to me, everything I wanted and more than I ever knew existed . . . and I'm so afraid I won't be that for you. I'm afraid that you'll start out wanting this, then you'll realize you signed on for complete and utter chaos, and you'll walk away. I wouldn't even blame you. But you were wrong about one thing. You said if anything bad happened, we'd survive. But”âher breath hitched, and the tears leaked out, making tracks down her cheeksâ“if I ruined your life so badly that you had to leave, and you didn't want me . . . I don't think I would survive.”
“Here I thought I was the dense one,” he said, tipping her chin up, bringing her mouth close to his. “I love you.”
Her breath caught at that, and she pressed her fists against his chest. “Dylanâ”
“I love you, Honey Pie D'Amourvell. I know it's fast, but nothing about any of this has gone according to anything like a normal plan, and . . . I've never said those words before, to anyone. I wouldn't say them now if I didn't mean them.” He hurried on before she could say anything, suddenly way out on the longest limb of his life, and scared like hell it was about to crack underneath the weight of what he'd just put on it. “Don't say it back, don't even respond. I just want that to matter. If it does, well, then we'll figure out the next step, whatever thatâ”
She cut him off by grabbing his face and pulling him down into a hard, fast, tear-stained kiss. “It matters,” she said against his lips, then kissed him again before looking up into his eyes, her own still glassy and beseeching. “I just need to know, to believe, it will be enough.”
She caressed his face with work roughened hands, and it was all he could do not to take them, and kiss those palms, her fingers, so she'd know, she'd understand. But she either would . . . or she wouldn't. He couldn't make her love him back.
“You've become so much to me, so fast,” she said, and his gaze sharpened on hers.
“But?”
“No but. I've never said those words to anyone but family. You're more certain than me, more confident than me. This is all so new, and because it's happened so fast, I want to sort it out, make sure it is what I think it is, not rush into anything for fear I'm mistaking lust for love, or security for love. I have no experience, and sometimes I feel so naïve and so stupid about stuff because I've so completely cut myself off. You matter so much, more than all the rest of it. This . . . what we already have . . . it's everything. Everything. And that scares me because that can't be normal, right? Is it even healthy? Shouldn't I just pack it in and run now?”
She laughed and there was a slight edge of panic to it. “That's how my mind works because that's how I've managed to survive. While I want this new normal life more than anything, I don't really know what normal is, Dylan. I've never lived normal.
I'm
not normal. I can see it for other people, but what shape does it take on for me? No matter what, I can't fully engage in a normal life, I know that much.”
“Do you trust me?” he asked when she paused to take a breath.
“More than anyone I've ever trusted, even Bea.” She said it without hesitation.
And that branch under him got a little stronger. “Then that's where we start. You have to understand, I don't honestly give a shit about anyone else's idea of normal. I sure as hell don't live that way. All I care about is what works for me. So, you and I will figure out what normal is. For you. And for us. It's that simple, Honey. I know you. I know what you're dealing with, and I'm still here. It's not just a
you
thing anymore, it's an
us
thing. All that matters is what
our
normal is.”
“What is your middle name?”
He frowned, completely at a loss. “What? Thomas. After my grandfather. Why?”
She smiled through the shimmer of tears, and smoothed her palms flat to his chest over his heart, then lifted one hand to his face, and wove her fingers back through his hair. “Because, Dylan Thomas Ross, it's quite possible I love you right back. I sure hope you're ready for that. I have a feeling we have absolutely no idea what's in store for us.”
He took her hand and kissed her palm, curled her fingers inward to capture it, then placed it over his heart. “Well, see, that's just the thing, sugar,” he said, heart thundering so loud he almost couldn't hear himself speak. “I figure if anyone's gonna find out about that, it'll be you.”
Then he made her squeal by scooping her up in his arms and carrying her into the houseâtheir houseâwith Lolly barking excitedly at their heels all the way.