Page 16 of Heartache & Playdates
When she left, I turned to him and said, “I haven’t asked you yet.” I’d been trying to work up the courage to do it for close to a month, but hadn’t been able to.
He just smiled and said, “Yes you did. You just didn’t use words to do it.”
He’d always understood me. Seen me. More than anyone in my life. More than Nonna, or Leo. Definitely more than my mother and father. They didn’t know me at all.
From the first moment we’d met, it was like he knew me and I knew him. Which made what I did to him even worse. I knew all about his abandonment issues. And yet, I still left without telling him goodbye.
Maddox lifted his hand to get Micah, the bartender’s, attention. When I looked up, I saw he was at the other end of the bar. His green eyes widened as he silently asked if this was the ex I’d told him about. Apparently, my face gave it away because his lips curled in a knowing grin.
I lifted my drink and sipped it, in an attempt to appear casual and unaffected, I ask, “How many times have you used that line?”
Micah arrived, causing my question to hang in the air.
“Whiskey, double,” Maddox ordered.
Micah quickly filled a tumbler glass with a double shot of whiskey and set the drink in front of Maddox.
I watched as Maddox wrapped his hands around the glass wear. I’d always loved his hands. Not just the way they felt on me, but also just to look at them. They were large, and even in his teens had a manly appearance. They just looked capable. Like he could handle anything, fix anything, do anything. And he could.
There was never a situation that Maddox couldn’t get out of or a problem that he couldn’t solve or an appliance or car he couldn’t fix. He was book smart, street smart, mechanically smart and emotionally smart. He knew people. He could read people.
He was a true renaissance man, even at fifteen.
My eyes traveled down his large fingers and that’s when I noticed the tattoos on his hand. I’d never had an opinion about tattoos. I knew some people who considered ink as catnip, but I’d never had strong feelings one way or another. Until now.
Seeing the ink on Maddox did things to me. It awakened a curiosity that I desperately wanted to satisfy. What other tattoos did he have? The ones I could see went up his arm. I gulped as I noticed ink peeking out from the collar of his shirt. He had a neck tattoo. And arm tattoos.
That meant he most likely had chest and maybe even back tattoos. His body was so filled out now. I imagined my fingertips grazing along the chiseled dips and lines of his muscled frame.
“Including just now?” Maddox asked, pulling me out of my fantasy.
“What?” I blinked.
Get a grip, Russo, I reprimanded myself. This was not the time for my mind to wander into Skinemax territory. I needed to be on my A-game. This was go-time. This was the moment I’d always secretly wished would come to pass even though I knew that it never should.
“You asked how many times I’d used the line. I asked including just now?”
“Oh,” I nodded. “Right. Yes, including now.”
He looked back down and his eyes narrowed slightly. His lips flattened in a straight line as he ran his finger around the edge of his glass. I’d never wanted to be the edge of a glass so much in my life.
When he lifted his gaze back to me my breath caught in my throat.
The deep vibrato in his voice echoed through me as he said, “Including tonight, twice.”
My heart skipped happily in my chest as I exhaled in relief. I knew it was ridiculous that I would care at all if he’d said that line to anyone else, but it did matter.
After it finished skipping, my heart ached painfully. I’d thought about Maddox Cruz every day, and every night for the past twenty years. My memories of him were crystal clear, but somehow I’d forgotten one of his best qualities.
I’d forgotten the way he could make me feel like the most special girl, the only girl in the world in a single sentence. It didn’t even have to be a compliment. What he’d just said wasn’t. But it was the way he said things and the meaning behind it.
The innocent comment unearthed emotions I’d packed away, buried deep in the soil of my soul, and built an entire life on top of.
I cleared my throat and sipped my drink once again. I wouldn’t allow myself to drown in the avalanche of feelings that were crashing down on top of me. No. I could have a nervous breakdown later. Right now, now I had to appear to be a totally together, functioning adult.
“So, how have you been?” I asked.
He held my stare, and I could see that there was a lot going on behind his coffee-colored gaze.
