The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings #2) - J. R. Ward Page 0,125

found it impossible to go home.

FORTY-TWO

As Edward said the words in the middle of the busy restaurant, he was amazed at how good they felt. It was a simple chain of syllables, nothing too fancy vocabulary-wise, but the admission was a tremendous one.

I’m in love with somebody.

And actually, he’d already told Sutton the truth of it all. At the business center after they’d made love. He’d just done it so softly, she hadn’t heard the words.

In response, Shelby looked around at the other diners. The waitress. The people behind the counter and the ones cooking in the back. “Is she the reason you wouldn’t … you know, get with me?”

“Yes.” He thought of those nights they’d spent side by side in that bed. “But there was another reason, too.”

“What’s that?”

“I know what you’re doing with me. I remember what your father was like. Sometimes we do things over, you know? When we feel like we didn’t get them right the first time.”

Hell, it was the story of him and his brothers and their father. If Edward was brutally honest with himself, he had always wanted to save his siblings from the man, but the damage had been done anyway. Their father had had that much power, at once absent, and at the same time, totally controlling.

And violent in a cold way that was somehow scarier than outbursts of yelling and throwing things.

“I’ve done that myself,” he said quietly. “Actually, I’m still doing it—so you and I are the same, really. We’re both saviors looking for a cause.”

Shelby was quiet for so long, he started to wonder if she was going to walk out or something.

But then she spoke up. “I took care of my father not because I loved him, but because if he killed himself, what was I going to do? I had no mother. I had nowhere to go. Living with his drinking was easier than facing the streets at twelve or thirteen.”

Edward winced as he tried to imagine her as a little girl with no one to care for her, desperately attempting to fix an adult’s addiction as a survival mechanism for herself.

“I’m sorry,” Edward blurted.

“For what? You had nothing to do with his drinkin’.”

“No, but I had everything to do with being drunk around you. And putting you in a position you’re too goddamn good at—”

“Don’t you take—”

“Sorry, darn—”

“—my Lord’s name in vain.”

“—good at.”

There was a pause. And then they both laughed.

Shelby grew serious again. “I don’t know what else to do with you. And I also hate the suffering.”

“That’s because you’re a good person. You’re a really, really GD good person.”

She smiled. “You caught yourself.”

“I’m learning.”

Their food arrived, the chicken nestled in baskets lined with red and white paper, the French fries thin and hot, the waitress asking if they needed more soda.

“I am starving,” Edward remarked after they were alone with their food.

“Me too.”

As they set to eating, they fell into silence, but it was the good kind. And he found himself feeling so glad they hadn’t ever had sex.

“Have you told her?” Shelby asked.

Edward wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “What? Oh … yeah. No. She leads a totally different life than I do. She’s where I used to be, and I’m never going back there again.”

For more reasons than one.

“You should probably tell her,” Shelby said between bites. “If you were in love with me … I’d want to know.”

As she spoke, there was a wistful tone in her voice, but her eyes were not glassy from some kind of fantasy or sad from some sort of loss. And when she didn’t pursue the issue, he thought about what she’d said before, about her accepting people exactly where they were, just like she did the horses.

“I want you to know something.” Edward smacked the bottom of a bottle of ketchup to add more to the side of his fries. “And I want you to do something.”

“Do I get to pick which one you tell me first?”

“Sure.”

“What do you want me to do? If it’s about Neb, I’ve already scheduled the vet’s check-up for tomorrow afternoon.”

He laughed. “You read my mind. But no, that’s not it.” He wiped his mouth again. “I want you to go out with Joey.”

As she looked up sharply, he put his palm up. “Just a dinner date. Nothing fancy. And no, he hasn’t asked me to talk to you, and frankly, if he knew I was, he’d leave me limping worse than I already do. But I