she’d wanted something from him that he couldn’t give her, and that was good.
Ish.
No, it was good because they needed to talk about this. And jealousy was a weird emotion. He was jealous of Ted. Fucker was a prince who was living with Tasha. And it wasn’t just about them sharing a bedroom and a bed, but fucker got to eat dinner with her every night, and go to movies and plays, and talk about books they’d both read and loved and... Okay, maybe telling her that would make her think his jealousy wasn’t strictly platonic, so he went with fourteen-year-old. Yeah, that was safer to discuss.
“My inner fourteen-year-old still tears up at Christmas when I realize I don’t have to find the perfect present for my grandmother,” Thomas told her. “But my inner fourteen-year-old also insists I make mac and cheese from her recipe a coupla times a year, and I always love it when I do. A little self-kindness—and acknowledgement that that was then and this is now—goes a long way.”
That was then and this is now. He was congratulating himself for pulling that tired but useful adage out of his ass when she again went point-blank and blew him up.
“But what if that was then, and this is also then?” Tasha asked. “My inner twenty-three-year-old is still mortified as fuck.”
And yes, she was currently twenty-three, which meant that she, sitting right there, wrapped in her blanket, was currently still mortified as, and yup, she’d said fuck. Because adult women—which she was one of—said fuck. It was children who were discouraged from using more salty verbiage—grown-ass women had earned the right to use whatever words they damn well wanted.
“For ambushing you,” she continued earnestly. “God, for thinking it was a good idea to climb into bed with you—hello, consent...? And for thinking that you’d just... automatically want... me. Like that. And at the same time, I’m still so disappointed that you didn’t.”
She was still disappointed that he didn’t want to have sex with her.
Okay. Okay.
He’d wanted brutal honesty, and he was getting it. But damn... Thomas forced himself to meet her gaze steadily, trying to figure out what on earth to say in response. Brutal honesty was good, but damn. “Right from the start, my job was to protect you—”
She interrupted. “And it’s not just about sex,” she explained. “It’s the Thomas-and-Tasha-ness, too. The ease of being myself with you. I mean, I’ve been feeling little bits and pieces of that even here. Jeez, even when we were in the hide with the spiders, when you, like, let yourself forget that I’m now some horrible annoying problem to be handled.”
“The annoying problem here isn’t you, it’s the dozen armed men who are—” he started but she cut him off again.
“What if you just let that go?” She leaned in, and again he forced himself not to move. To sit still instead of leaping up and pacing—instead of running away. “Just let go of everything you think you should be to me and everything you think I should be to you? Because what if you’re wrong?”
“I know I’m not wrong about wanting to protect you,” he countered.
“Yeah, yeah, I know and I’m not mad about that,” she told him. “In fact, I happen to sincerely love that I’m up shit’s creek with a Navy SEAL paddle, I really do. But you’re not the only adult in the room anymore. I mean, you were just a kid yourself when we met, and yeah, you hit the grown-up marker before me, but I’ve been an adult, too, for a long time now.”
A long time? He could try to argue that, but he knew it wouldn’t fly. “Okay,” Thomas said instead. “Yes. You are an adult. I agree, but...” He didn’t actually have a but that was more lucid than mindlessly screaming in panic, but he knew Tasha wasn’t even close to done. And having this conversation was important, but holy flipping shit.
She filled in his silence. “What if you suck at dating, as you yourself said, because you’re still looking for that... that... ease of being, too,” she suggested. “Maybe it’s not that you just haven’t met someone you can relax and be yourself with. Maybe it’s that you already have—and I’m sitting right here.”
Oh, God, no, because sweet, holy Jesus, what if she was right? No woman he’d ever dated was ever good enough, smart enough, funny enough...
Tasha kept going. “What if... What if you met me, for the first