A Second Chance in the Show Me State - Jessie Gussman Page 0,24

ago, she would have laughed. It would have broken any ice that still lay between them, and they would have kissed and made up.

Not tonight.

“Very funny. I’m serious. I can go stay somewhere else. I don’t have to be here. And I’m not going to put up with feeling like you’re babysitting me the whole time I’m here. I’m an adult, and I don’t need you breathing down my neck.”

“You accused me of holding your hand, now you’re accusing me of breathing down your neck. Seems like you want me next to you. If you do, just say so. You know I won’t have a problem with it.”

Reid couldn’t seem to stop picking on her. He wasn’t trying to patch anything up; he was just trying to prod her for the reaction. He could feel her irritation, but he wanted emotion. Anything besides the cold detachment that she’d been showing.

“Whatever.” She huffed. “I don’t care what you do. I’m going to bed.”

“That’s the problem with the world today. Nobody cares.” The words sounded bitter as they left his mouth, but he couldn’t help it. He wasn’t talking about the problems of the world. He was talking about their problems. It truly felt like she didn’t care. Maybe it was a veneer, maybe it was her acting...but maybe it wasn’t.

Regardless, those words finally had the desired effect.

She whirled from the doorway, stomping over and slapping her hands down on the kitchen table, glowering down at him on the other side.

“You were the one that didn’t care,” she hissed. “You were the one that let me walk away. You were the one that didn’t do anything to stop me or to fix the issues. You were the one that didn’t care about the bills we had, and the solution I gave, because you threw it all back. If anyone didn’t care,” she spit those last two words out, “it was you.”

She was definitely anything but unemotional, with her heavy breath, the passionate words, and the slight tremble he could feel through the table.

Reid wished the light were on, because her eyes would be flashing and her cheeks red. The way she’d always look so beautiful to him.

Not that he wanted her anger directed at him, but at least she’d lost that ice princess façade she wrapped around her and pretended was her real personality.

His legs dropped, languidly, and he rose, putting his hands next to hers on the outside and lowering his head until their noses were just an inch apart.

“You can’t possibly believe those lies. I cared. That’s why I did what I did. It’s also why I didn’t do what I could have done.”

He wasn’t angry. Not really. There was just so much caught up inside him. So much that had been left unsaid, so much that had been left without being resolved. He wanted to grab her. Shake her. Talk sense into her. Kiss her. Make her stay. Apologize to her. Beg for her forgiveness.

Being outside today, knowing she was here, in the same country, same town, in—his—house had given him a certain buzz all day that even working with his boys couldn’t overshadow.

He’d been pulled toward her, wanting to go in, finding and discarding excuses to walk to her.

Maybe he was goading her, prodding her, picking on her, wanting to know that she felt the same. Wanting to know there was some emotion underneath that cool reserve. Wanting her to blurt out that she wanted him just as badly as he wanted her.

Of course she hadn’t blurted out any such thing, and as they stood staring at each other, noses almost touching, her breath coming in angry bursts, his slower, with all the longing of the last eight years in it, they squared off in the dim light across the table.

But nothing was resolved.

She slapped her hands down before pushing back. He could feel the air as she moved, smell the scent on her that had matured but not changed, sweet and powerful and a cheerful contradiction to her ice queen exterior.

Before she could say anything, he straightened too. “Where’s that fresh-faced country girl that I grew up with? Where’s the laughter, unbridled and coming deep from your stomach? Where’s my white-water rafting partner and the girl who put in sixteen-hour days baling hay with me? Where is she?”

Emerson had changed, grown up. So had he. But he didn’t think he’d changed that much.

Maybe he had.

He’d never stopped wanting her.

He needed to see that she still wanted him.