Page 32 of When the Walls Come Down
He arched an eyebrow. “Does it sound like I have a problem with relationships?”
Yes. Pretty much exactly that.
I slanted my head to the side. “Have you ever been in a bad relationship?”
“What constitutes a bad relationship?”
What the hell was he hiding? In the grand scheme of things, I didn’t have much of a right to ask, but a game was a game. I was nothing if not competitive.
“Have you ever been divorced?”
Yeah. I’d been wrong earlier. That was the moment terror hit his face. Only this time, I was the one who had put my foot in my mouth.
Damn. Why had I asked that? This was not the conversation for the morning after sex, leading into breakfast before another day spent full of orgasms. This was a total psycho, too-much-too soon, tell-me-all-your-dirty-secrets-before-I-even-know-your-middle-name conversation.
Waving a hand in the air, I threw in the proverbial towel. He could take the victory if it made things less awkward—and not the charming, sweet, good kind of awkward things usually were with Shane. “You know what, don’t answer that. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
Relief flashed across his face, but it made my stomach knot.
So he was divorced. That was fine. He was thirty-three. I couldn’t possibly have expected him to have been living under a rock up until we’d met two days ago.
But why the panic?
What could have possibly happened in his past that was so bad that he’d looked like he would rather bolt for the door than talk about it?
In a husky voice that sounded nothing like the playful guy I knew, he asked, “Wanna trade back?” He lifted the mug of coffee in my direction.
“Absolutely,” I whispered.
We did another switcheroo, but this one was stilted. His fingers didn’t brush mine. His gaze didn’t linger on my mouth, and his teasing smile was nowhere to be seen.
I’d never hated anything more.
“So, breakfast,” he mumbled, heading to the kitchen, obviously feeling every bit as uncomfortable as I did.
My mind raced as I fell into step behind him.
Divorced. Okay. Studies showed that some fifty percent of all marriages ended in divorce. It didn’t make him a leper or anything. Maybe he’d gotten married right out of high school or college. If he’d just told me that, I wouldn’t have thought twice. I would have laughed and then given him my best “this is why you shouldn’t get married until you are done living your life” lecture.
But none of those scenarios explained why all the color had drained from his face.
Or why a suffocating weight now blanketed the air between us.
Or why he kept his back to me as he unloaded two bakery boxes from the bag.
Understanding dawned on me with the force of a lightning strike.
Damn. Shit. Fuck. It wasn’t the word divorce that had freaked him out.
I set my coffee on the counter as bile crawled up the back of my throat, but never one to bite my tongue, I blurted, “Are you still married?”
I couldn’t see his face, but his back shot straight and the muscles at the base of his neck strained.
Damn it. I really didn’t want to be right about this one.
“Look, I’m not trying to pry or anything. The last thing I want is to be a crazy woman who demands you pour your heart out on the second date. But you gotta give me something here.”
I held my breath as he slowly turned to face me. Ugh, this was going to suck. We barely knew each other, but at some point over the last twenty-four hours, I’d started to hope that we’d have the time together to change that. If he was married, that was a hard limit though.
His face was utterly blank when his eyes met mine.
The air trapped in my lungs started to burn as I rocked onto my toes, waiting for his answer.
And then he finally put me out of my misery once and for all. The side of his mouth tipped up into a gorgeous grin. “I’m not married, Peach. And I’m certainly not the kind of dude who would be with more than one woman at a time.”
Relief that I was nowhere ready to read into tore through me. I opened my mouth without the first clue of what was going to come out, but I was interrupted by a grizzly bear.
“Where do you want this?” one of the movers called out.
I spun on a toe and found two guys holding my mattress. “Oh, um…” I pointed to the corner of my studio farthest from the door. “Over there is fine.”
The guy turned, causing the mattress to hit my already crooked love seat, slamming it into the wall. So much for that six-foot pathway. With this crew, my living room furniture would have been safer dangling off the side of my balcony.
As the men fumbled my mattress through my apartment, I took a few seconds to collect my thoughts about what the hell I was going to say to Shane. Funny how the relief didn’t last long. Embarrassment flooded my system.
