Hold Me (Love The Way #2) - W. Winters Page 0,37
I should get my ass ready to go and be pampered.” I add for good measure, “And if I wasn’t ready on time, he’d spank me.”
Kam’s movements stop midway as he was picking up his napkin and the silverware clangs on the table. I can’t help but laugh.
“Well I’m glad one of us is smiling,” he chides.
“Oh please,” I admonish him in return, a genuine smile pulling up my spirits. “Since when did you become such a prude?”
Humor lights his eyes. He even smiles as he rearranges the cutlery and places the napkin across his lap as I have. “He’s controlling.”
“Like James was,” I reply without considering what I was saying until the comparison left me. Another wave of that anxiousness comes over me, but it quickly vanishes.
“And I told you to dump his ass too.” There’s a fondness, a nostalgia in Kam’s comment.
“I remember that,” I say and my smile falters only slightly. The rawness in my throat comes back but this time it carries a prick to the back of my eyes as well.
“I mean, obviously I was wrong about that one,” Kam says offhandedly and I realize we’re speaking about him. Talking about James in the past tense. I don’t have long to dwell on the thought. “He went from a good time,” Kam adds, lowering his voice at the insinuation, “to taking all your time.”
I can’t help but smile, even if there’s a painful longing in my chest. “He took his time, though.” I roll my eyes at the thought and resort to picking up my iced tea once again. It’s tart, making my lips pucker after a sip before I reach for the sugar.
“What was it? It took him what, a year?” he asks me, and it’s easy. It turns easy, thinking about how we came to fall in love. How he went from a man I wanted and enjoyed the occasional fling with, to a man who only wanted me and who I couldn’t imagine living my life without.
“Every third Saturday for …” I trail off, peeking up past the heat lamp and spot a small blue jay on the roof. “Maybe four months it was just that one night?”
“At Monet’s, right?” I nod in response, the memories filtering back to me. It was a good time. That’s all he was. We ran in the same circles. Knew the same people. One night, after I’d been avoiding him, teasing him, leading him on … we hit it off and had a romp in the sheets. It was a fling, a damn good fling. I thought it would only be that one night, but the next month, at the same gathering, he made it known in no uncertain terms that I’d be with him again that night.
“And then it was house calls and almost nine months later is when he got in that fight with Taylor.”
Kam’s brow raises and he lifts his coffee mug and then says, “Oh yes, and that would be the moment I told you to dump his ass.”
Biting down on my lip I remember that entire ordeal as Kam continues, “He couldn’t call you his girlfriend, but he could start some shit with Taylor.” Taylor’s no one really. He’s the son of a hotshot, who’s hot as fuck himself. He got through life on good looks. He’s nice enough, but he wasn’t looking for anything more than a good time. Which was fine, ’cause that’s what I was after too. I figured James only wanted me the once, or else he would have called. He would have reached out. So I made my move for Taylor and that’s when James intervened.
With a one-shoulder shrug I remind him, “I might have been the one to start it … technically.”
Kam’s laugh is as genuine as it is enthusiastic. “That’s right,” he says and his smile is contagious. “Now I remember that reporter with the press article that we had to pay off.”
I hum at the memory. “The truth was much better than fiction.” As the waiter brings the avocado caprese salad, which looks divine drizzled with a thick balsamic vinegar, I lean back in the chair to give him room.
“The truth always is better than fiction,” Kam comments and then smiles up at the waiter to thank him. I don’t miss how the waiter gives Kam a longer glance than he gave me.
Speaking of hot men, I think as I watch the tall young man, he’s got to be no older than midtwenties.