things, and I knew it tore their asses apart. I didn’t even consider having any kind of serious relationship when I knew I could be deployed at a moment’s notice, but I still wanted to get laid. So yeah, I did my fair share of one-night-only deals if that’s what we both wanted.”
She sighed. “Was it really that bad if you both agreed to it? The military can be really rough on relationships sometimes, and you were young. You told me you had your college degree by the time you were eighteen, so I’m assuming you went in at the same age I did. I was young and dumb for nearly my entire enlistment, and I did some really stupid things, too.”
Jesus! Was there nothing I could tell this woman to make her see that I could be a major asshole?
“I earned my reputation, Harlow. I’m still the king of one-and-done when it comes to dating,” I informed her.
“Why?” she asked calmly.
“Why what?”
“Why are you always a one-and-done kind of guy?”
I shrugged. “If it’s not there, it’s not there. Why prolong the agony? It’s not like I wouldn’t have loved to find that woman who wanted to be with me more than she wanted to date a billionaire or a Montgomery. It just never happened. Not all of those women were first dates, either. It just so happened that the press never saw me with the same woman twice because none of my relationships lasted for long.”
“Dating is all about getting to know someone to see if you fit. There’s nothing wrong with looking for a person who clicks with you, even if it takes a while. Why did you keep letting the media write things that made people believe you slept with all those women and just dumped them?” she asked.
“Like I said, occasionally they did turn into one-nighters, or short relationships. And I’ve been a Montgomery long enough to know that you can’t stop the media from painting whatever picture they want. Making me into a playboy who slept with every woman I dated was a lot more interesting to them than the truth. Ultimately, I didn’t really give a shit what they wrote about me, and almost every woman I dated thrived on having their time in the spotlight,” I muttered.
“Was that before or after they threw up on their shoes?” she asked drily.
I chuckled before I could stop myself. Harlow was almost as sarcastic as I was sometimes. “Most of them didn’t have to be drunk to relish being seen with a Montgomery.”
“So is that all you’ve got?” she questioned. “Some one-nighters and short relationships because you dated some of the biggest idiots on the planet?”
“I wasn’t exactly in favor of Hudson’s relationship with Taylor in the very beginning,” I confessed. “I tried to talk him out of taking her home with him.”
“Why?” she asked in a surprised tone.
“Because I knew he felt guilty about what happened because she was there for Montgomery. I thought he was motivated by guilt, and I didn’t want him to get in over his head. I backed off once I realized he actually had feelings for her other than guilt, but I was an asshole. I should have known he wasn’t going to pass her care on to someone else, even during the rescue. It was a long damn hike back to the coast from the rebel camp, and he never once let me carry Taylor. I took both our packs, but he was insistent that he didn’t want her to wake up and not recognize who was carrying her.”
“How bad was it, really?” Harlow asked earnestly.
I wasn’t even going to pretend like I didn’t know what she was asking. “It was bad. I wasn’t even sure she’d live until we got her to the coast. It was a fucking miracle she still had a heartbeat when we got there. I don’t know how you two survived in that little shithole. It was sweltering when we broke in to get to Taylor, and it was the middle of the damn night. Under any circumstance Hudson and I could think of, Taylor was already dead from dehydration, but we had to try. Even if all we could do for her was bring her body home.”
“I knew it was bad,” Harlow said in a tremulous voice. “But Taylor downplayed it as much as possible. Thank you for telling me the truth.”
Oh, hell, maybe I shouldn’t have told her. I hated hearing her