And Mr. Understanding and Patient didn’t let my negative ass stop his chatter.
“Reckon your grandfather could show me too if he ever stops hating me,” Jonah finished brightly.
My nose betrayed me with a snort. “Yeah, even if he didn’t hate you, you wouldn’t want him to show you how to do anything, trust me.”
“Is it that bad?”
I snorted again even though I didn’t want to. “The worst. When I was a kid, he tried to….” What the fuck was I doing? I shut up.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see him shift that big body in his seat as much as he could in my small SUV. “Lenny, you can tell me anything you want, you know.”
How could I tell him that I didn’t want to? Well, easily, that’s how, but…
Through the rearview mirror, I glanced at the car seat.
That was the relationship that really mattered, even if it hurt me a little to settle for it. She was more important than me and my feelings.
“Anyway, you’re right. It’s not that hard taking care of her. But it is scary. I still am, scared I mean, but not about the same things. Like not holding her head and neck correctly or holding her too tight or not feeding her enough. But I’ll show you what I know. If you want to learn.”
The Asshole didn’t waste a second. “I want to.”
I squeezed the steering wheel again, trying to find the right words. “Okay. You’d just have to… put up with me until you’re comfortable enough to be around her by yourself.”
He made a soft sound with his nose. “That wouldn’t exactly be a hardship, would it?” he replied. “Cheers for offering, Len. I accept.”
I should probably call Noah back so he could piss me off and remind me of what a douchebag was. That would be exactly what I would need to keep this meh-train going with Jonah. I was the conductor, and I wasn’t ready to retire.
I cast another glance at that handsome-as-hell face beside me and kept my damn mouth closed.
That big body shifted in the seat again, legs and shoulders moving one way and then the other. Then he went for it. “Are you seeing anyone?” he asked like he wanted to know what fucking time it was.
I didn’t see how that was any of his business but… fine. I guess it kind of was. I’d want to make sure, if he was in a relationship, that the woman wasn’t some kind of psycho. And if my chest felt a little weird at the idea of him being in a relationship with someone, I wasn’t going to linger on it. I hadn’t looked at his Picturegram account in forever, and I wasn’t about to start now. Maybe there was someone. Maybe there wasn’t.
I wondered then if he’d taken down the two pictures of us he’d put up there so long ago. One had been of us at Versailles, the first day we’d met. It had surprised the hell out of me when he’d shown me he’d posted it, hours after meeting. He’d started following me immediately after.
The second picture had been of us at Sacré-Coeur with the city sprawled out behind us on a beautiful day. I had really liked that picture. That one had been taken a month before his injury.
“No,” I answered him, ignoring the tingle in my stomach that felt an awful lot like disgust. “Are you?”
The second it took him to answer felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
“No, there’s no one,” he replied slowly. There was another pause. “There hasn’t been.”
Hasn’t been? Since when? Last week? Last month? Six months ago?
It was none of my fucking business. I wasn’t going to ask, and I wasn’t going to look to find out either.
I kept my eyes forward as I said, “Okay.” I tried to make the feeling that had moved from my stomach to my chest go away, but it didn’t want to go anywhere. It was going to happen. The dating. I was thirty-one. He was thirty. Now or never. “We should probably talk about that then while we’re on the topic, so we know what to do if—when—the situation rises. You know, when I decide to start dating again—“ His head swiveled toward me, but I didn’t see what his expression was because I didn’t look at him. “—or when you do, so that way we’re on the same page. I think it might be best to wait to