to go on this subject. “No problem. I’m cool not talking at all. When Cara gets through telling Noelle whatever important information she needs to tell her, we can all head our separate ways for the night.”
Kyle sat for a moment before reaching out and refilling his glass. “What game are you playing with her?”
“Game?”
“Yeah, with Noelle.”
Hutch shook his head. “I’m not playing a game. I’m into her. Way into her. I had all day to think about it and while we moved too fast, I don’t see why we can’t be together at the end of this. So I’m showing off my boyfriend skills.”
A brow arched over Kyle’s eyes. “Are you serious? Because that sounds…”
He honestly didn’t care what anyone thought. Another lesson he’d learned from Tag. The most badass thing he could do was be himself with zero apologies. “It sounds like what, Kyle?”
Kyle seemed to realize he was about to say something offensive and backed off. “I don’t know. It doesn’t sound… Whatever.”
He was not letting Kyle off the hook so easily. “Are you trying to tell me I’m not being masculine?”
Kyle shrugged. “I’m trying to figure out a way to express that without fucking up too badly.”
He could only imagine how a guy like Kyle would handle the situation. “I suppose you would club her over the head and drag her back to your cave.”
“Nope. First of all, I wouldn’t have decided that she was mine after a single night. Second, if she’d turned me down, I would have walked away with some dignity,” Kyle replied.
“Then you haven’t met a woman you truly care about yet.” Hutch wasn’t going to argue about the value of dignity. Or the meaning of the word. He wasn’t sure how fighting for the woman he wanted meant he lost his dignity.
“Or I’ve done the head over heels love thing and realized what a lie it is.” There was no way to miss the bitterness to Kyle’s words. “What you call love…it’s nothing more than lust. It’s a biological imperative to breed, and when you wake up you’re going to realize you don’t know this woman at all.”
Oh, so Kyle was projecting. Hutch had to wonder if this bitterness was coming from Kyle’s most recent relationship. “So my wanting Noelle is nothing more than my primal need to mate kicking in? Do you think Noelle is giving off hormones or something to attract me? I’ve had a lot of sex. I wonder why I’m desperate to mate with only her.”
Kyle’s eyes rolled. “Don’t be a dick. I’m serious. The love thing is bullshit.”
“Or you found the wrong one and you’re letting a bad relationship ruin any good ones you could have?” Hutch had been in therapy long enough to know a few things. “Your mom had two good marriages, right?”
He’d spent some of his afternoon studying up on Kyle Hawthorne. He’d been fifteen when his father had died in an accident.
“Sure, but that’s different,” Kyle countered. “My mom and dad were good partners, and she and Sean are similar. I don’t know that I would call it some great love story. I mean I know they have a good sex life. I wish I didn’t, but I get that the lifestyle stuff works for them. But what really works is that they have a great partnership. I would bet my mom and Sean never once had a real fight. She met him, realized he would be a good partner, and the rest was history. Sean is the same. He’s a solid guy. I would bet a lot he never lost his head over a woman.”
Hutch would totally take that bet. It answered one question. Kyle had no idea what his mother had gone through all those years ago. And he’d been through something rough with a woman. Had that woman been Julia Ennis? “I am going to ask the obvious question. Who hurt you, Kyle?”
He asked it with a twist of humor, though damn, he was interested in the answer.
“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is I learned my lesson,” Kyle replied, sitting back. “The question is how have you not been hurt enough? After everything you’ve been through, why are you so willing to throw the dice again?”
He could tell Kyle the truth he’d learned about the world, but he wouldn’t want to listen. He’d learned that often the adults who had the most heartache and trouble were the ones who’d never dealt with it as children. Kyle had lost