Bitter Truth (Hawthorne Vines #1)

“So what was the deal earlier? It seems like you might have had more on your mind than just the tire.”

I nibble on the inside of my cheek, trying to decide how to answer. I want to keep talking to him, but the last thing I want to do is share all my dirty laundry. Ultimately, I settle on vague truths.

“Change is hard, especially when it feels like you’re not really in control of the course your life is taking.” I shrug and take another sip from my bottle. “I think earlier was like … a dam breaking, you know? The tire was just the last straw on a very large haystack.”

He bobs his head. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Even talking about it brings the emotional magnitude up to the surface, and I bat away a tear that breaks free.

“Hey now.” His gentle voice, warm like a blanket I want to crawl into, wraps its way around me. His hand reaches up and cups my cheek, his thumb stroking where another tear has fallen. “No more tears tonight, hmm?”

I give him a watery smile, my emotions calming again.

“You seem to be able to keep my tears at bay better than I can,” I tell him. “Maybe I should keep you around.”

His lips turn up at that. “Maybe you should.”

The world fades away in that moment, when our faces are so close together, our thighs touching and the evening humidity making everything feel hazy and warm.

I feel a little drunk, and there’s no way it’s from the wine cooler that I’ve taken only a few sips of.

No, it’s this man holding my face in his hands.

I’m intoxicated with everything about him, and what I do know is very little.

All I know for sure is that it’s been a long time since I’ve been this interested in a man.

So I do the only thing that makes sense.

I lean in and press my lips to his.

He seems surprised at first, but that fades almost immediately, and the hand on my cheek slips around to the nape of my neck as his mouth opens against mine.

The taste of mint and lime explodes on my tongue, along with something else even more heady that makes me groan just slightly.

I shift my body so I’m facing him more, and my hands reach out, bracing against his strong chest. I love touching him, feeling the strength and warmth of his body beneath my palms.

The kiss doesn’t last long, and he nibbles gently on my lower lip before we eventually pull back and look at each other, each of us with smiles on our faces.

“That was unexpected,” I say, trying to keep the smile on my face small so he doesn’t see how wildly incredible I feel. I’m sure I barely succeed.

“It was,” he replies, his fingers stroking gently against the back of my head before he lets me go.

We sit there for another ten or fifteen minutes, taking little sips from our drinks and glancing at each other every so often with knowing smiles. It’s the kind of magical night that I would have dreamed about back in high school, when I would have been up all night with a pen and a notebook, trying to capture the experience in lyrics.

When we finish our wine coolers, he hops down and crosses over to a trash can that butts up to the back of the gas station to chuck them.

“You think the tire will be enough to get you where you’re going?” he asks as he walks back to me.

“I should be fine.”

He nods. “Good.” Then he takes my hand and helps me down, my feet kicking up a little bit of dust as I drop to the ground. His muscles flex as he pushes the tailgate closed, and the sound of it slamming shut feels jarring against the quiet of the evening.

The toe of my shoe skims over the dirt between us, and I wonder if I should ask for his number. Or if he’ll ask for mine.

He watches me for a long moment, and my heart throbs rapidly in my chest, the anticipation of what he might say growing until it’s a living thing inside of me. As friendly as he seems to be, he’s also very hard to read.

“You know, in another life, I would be asking for your number right now,” he says. “But things in my life are …”