Under the Lights (The Field Party #2) - Abbi Glines Page 0,65
mine.
“You’d be devastated?” he asked. A very small upward turn on the corner of his lips made me smile. I was also blushing and that was silly, but I couldn’t help it.
“Yes. Of course.”
He glanced down at my hand, and then reached over with his and slipped it over mine. “I shouldn’t have run after the kiss,” he said, still staring down at our hands. “It just . . . was more than I expected. And . . .” He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “It scared the hell out of me. Never felt that before.”
The butterflies that Brady had once given me didn’t compare to the bats currently going off in my stomach as Gunner lifted his head and his gaze met mine again. Tonight I’d come to help him. Be his friend. I wasn’t ever going to do the girl thing and demand he respond to me or explain. He had bigger issues than a kiss right now.
So the fact he was explaining, and the reason why he had run, meant something. It meant something big, and that terrified me. Because I was also taught already that I wasn’t lovable and love hurts. I didn’t want to love Gunner Lawson. Not in a way he could break me. I was too broken already.
“When shit went down tonight with Rhett, I felt so fucking alone. Then there you were. The first one to me. The first one ready to help. And in that moment I knew. That kiss had shaken me because you were it. The it I didn’t want. The it I’d been so sure would never come my way because I didn’t intend to look for it.” He paused, then smiled and shook his head. “My brother was yelling drunken shit and I was supposed to be shutting him up, but in that moment all I could think was ‘I get it. Why people fall in love. I so fucking get it.’ ”
Tears stung my eyes, and I was thankful for the limited lighting out here. I didn’t want his words to affect me like this, but that wasn’t my choice. They were burrowing inside me and latching on. Making me want things I didn’t deserve nor could I have.
“I’ll always be here for you,” I told him, unable to say the other things I was thinking.
“I want more than that. I want you. I want to be able to kiss you anytime I want. I want to hold your hand in the halls. Hell, I want to be made fun of by the guys for wanting to be near you all the time.” He laughed at his words, and my heart squeezed so tight I had a hard time catching my breath.
This was moving at a pace I hadn’t expected. Although I wanted it too, I had to be fair. He had to know my past. All of it. And understand that I was messed up for life. Yet want all these things with me anyway.
My Plans for the Future Had Just Taken a Massive Turn
CHAPTER 40
GUNNER
“I didn’t tell you everything. The whole story. About why Poppy took her life.” Willa said those words as if they were being torn from her body and she wanted to grab them and pull them back.
I had just told her I was in love with her without actually saying the words, and she was wanting to tell me why her friend killed herself. I didn’t understand this, so I remained quiet and waited. It was something she needed to say, and I would do whatever she needed me to do.
“We were drunk . . . and high. But we were at Poppy’s house and that was safe. We thought. Staying home while her parents worked at their restaurant, we had friends over and partied there. No one drove. It was safe. We weren’t out causing trouble. I liked it. The escape it gave me. I wanted to forget that my mother tolerated me, but she and her husband both would have preferred not to have me around. I was the extra child. The one they didn’t want. But she was stuck with. So the weed and the vodka were my happy place. I didn’t care about anything when I was doing either or both.” She paused and twisted her hands tightly in her lap before staring outside as if she were there again. At the house. Seeing it all happen in front of her.