sighed, “but I really don’t know much about the woman. She’s Karla’s friend, remember?” Which translated to ‘you’re assed the fuck out’ because I knew there was no way Karla would tell me anything about Fallon, at this point. I already made Karla feel as if she had betrayed Fallon once already, there’s no way Karla would help me with this.
“The guilt is eating me alive, Trevor,” I admitted. “I feel like shit over the way I treated her.”
Trevor reached for a bottle of water out of the ice chest. “But why?” He twisted the cap. “You told me she said to just drop it and move on, right? That’s close enough to forgiveness, don’t you think?”
These next words were probably going to damn me, but Trevor was my best friend; I wasn’t going to lie to him. “I don’t want to move on,” I confessed. Trevor started choking on his water and I had to wait until he pulled himself together before saying, “I don’t want to pretend like she doesn’t affect me whenever I might run into her with Karla.”
“Holy shit,” he choked out. I watched as he shook himself out of his stupor. “When the hell did that happen?” I couldn’t blame his incredulity. “How did you go from trashing the poor woman to wanting to get her into your bed?”
“First and foremost, I’m a man, Trevor,” I snapped. “I wanted her in my bed the second I laid eyes on her. She’s fucking beautiful.”
The asshole rolled his eyes. “Sure, she’s beautiful, but since when did you ever fall stupid for a pretty face? You’re more of a personality kind of guy.”
This was getting me nowhere. “Does it matter? The fact is that, even if I didn’t feel like a goddamn heel for misjudging her, I’m attracted to her in a way that I’m not sure I can ignore.”
Trevor put the water down like it was a danger to him right now. “And you realized this when exactly?”
I knew the exact moment I was fucked. It was when she finally said my name after telling me to fuck off. She was running from an unknown threat. She was tired and scared. But even through all the shit she’s been dealt, she still had fire in her. She still had fight. And she had been alone in her motel room with a stranger, and she had still ballsed up and told me to fuck off.
Fallon wasn’t manufactured.
She was real, and she was strong, and the regret of my actions had hit me hard in that moment. I had misjudged her horribly and my attraction to her had made my regret all that much more palpable.
“When she told me to fuck off,” I told him.
“Jesus, Xan,” Trevor chuckled. “You never do anything easy, do you?”
“You are absolutely no help, Trev. None at all.”
He shrugged, knowing my conscience wasn’t his problem. “I know Karla better than anyone and even I don’t know what to do with the woman when she’s spitting mad. No man knows what to do with a pissed off woman, Xan. Keep groveling is all I can tell you.”
I gladly would if that’s all she required of me, but it wasn’t. The woman wanted me to leave her alone, but I wasn’t sure I could. Even if I wasn’t attracted to her, and she wasn’t Karla’s best friend, Brant was the size of a postage stamp. There’s no way I’d not see her around town, and I didn’t want to walk on eggshells every time I ran into her.
“Plug the damn saw back in, asshole,” I mumbled as I realized Trevor was no help at all. The fucker laughed at me, but plugged the saw back in, nonetheless.
The sound of the saw drowning out everything else gave me the opportunity to wonder how far I was willing to go to make amends with Fallon. I wanted things to be cool between us, and Lord knows I wanted the woman in my bed, but there was still the whole stalking issue she was dealing with. I knew if I pursued her, I could very well be getting myself caught up in something dangerous and confusing.
The man in me could appreciate wanting her to be safe because she’s a woman, and a woman should never feel anything but safe. However, the man in me down below took it a little more personally. If I got involved with Fallon, her situation would become my situation, and that was a bigger