Chapter 6

6

What the hellhad I done?

What in the actual hell was I thinking?

I dropped my clothes on the floor and made my way into my bathroom.

“I’m so stupid,” I muttered at my reflection. “You’re a stupid, stupid twit.”

When I could no longer take the shame staring back at me, I turned and sulked all the way to the shower. What I needed was a bath to soothe the ache between my legs but that would take too long. I stepped in and turned on the water. I gritted my teeth as the cold spray blasted down on my overheated skin. I reached for the soap and immediately went to work scrubbing away my weakness.

No, it was worse than weakness, it was shame.

I’d attacked Garrett.

I’d kissed him, then hopped into his arms like a…like a what? A woman who hadn’t had a man in five hundred years. A woman who was desperate for a quick fuck against the wall. A woman who was still in love with the man who’d screwed her over and jumped at the chance to kiss him again.

I groaned and scrubbed harder.

“So stupid,” I hissed. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Ten minutes later the shame still clung to my raw skin. There was no erasing what I’d done. No take backs. No rewinding time.

Shit.

I slapped off the tap, got out, and did a half-ass job of drying off. I avoided the mirror, unable to bear the sight of myself as I passed it. I didn’t bother drying off my unconditioned, tangled hair and found a pair of undies—the ugliest pair of cotton period panties just because I didn’t deserve anything frilly or pretty. I yanked them up my legs, yanked out an old, ratty t-shirt and pulled it over my head before I fell face first on my bed.

Then when my face was safely buried in the mattress, I screamed my frustration. A few minutes passed and when no neighbor banged on my door to check and see if I was being murdered, I screamed again.

“Oh my God,” I whispered to no one. “What did you do, Melissa?”

I curled into a ball completely and totally mortified.

Totally and completely humiliated.

I only meant to lie there long enough for some of the embarrassment to subside.

Apparently, that took longer than I thought it would because the next thing I knew my alarm was beeping.

My eyes opened and it was dark.

Blackout curtains were a necessity in North Montana if you had east facing windows and you didn’t want to be blinded by the rising sun. However, it made waking up suck more than waking up at five in the morning would normally suck. I was warm and comfy and not ready to face the day, but the beeping had to stop.

I sat up but got no further. It was as if by the power of my thoughts, my alarm stopped blaring.

My gaze whipped across the room to my dresser—yes, I was one of those people who would hit snooze five times if the alarm was close, so it needed to be far enough away that I had to get out of bed to turn it off if I wanted to be on time for work.

But it was off, and I was still in bed.

I turned on the lamp on my nightstand, flooding the room with light.

Then I damn near came out of my skin when I saw someone sitting on the floor.

A scream lodged in my throat, like in a nightmare where you want to run away but your legs won’t work. My mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. I wanted to jump out of bed, but I was frozen.

The frozen I already was turned brittle when I regained focus and found myself staring into a pair of pain-filled hazel eyes.

Garrett.

“How’d you get in here?”

“The front door.”

His voice was full of gravel.

“Okay, why are you here? No, how long have you been sitting there?” I shook my head and changed my mind. “No, the why first.”

It was then I fully took him in. He was on the floor, his back to the small section of wall between the doorframe and my dresser. Legs bent, forearms resting on his knees, hands dangling in front of him. Red-rimmed eyes, his hair tousled like he’d been running his hands through it.

In other words, he looked tired.

“I came back around three. Which turned out to be a good thing seeing as you didn’t lock your door.”

I certainly wasn’t going to thank him for coming back even though it was a little scary I didn’t lock the door. It wasn’t like my apartment building wasn’t safe—and in general Blackhawk was a safe town—but still, I was a woman who lived alone so I always locked my front door.

“Why are you here, Garrett?”

An immediate change came over him. He wasn’t the new Garrett who’d told me he wished he’d never met me. He wasn’t the Garrett who’d asked me to marry him, either. It was like looking back in time and seeing the young man I first fell in love with. The boy before age and experience tarnished his innocence.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

His soft admission was as confusing as it was hard to hear.

“What?”

“You keep me up at night.”

I felt my heart start to pound.

“What?”

“Out of all the shit I’ve seen, the shit I’ve done, it’s you who keeps me up. It’s what I did to you that runs through my head.”

Garrett had hurt me in the worst kind of way. He’d shown me beauty then snatched it away. He’d loved me wholly and completely then reneged and took it back, leaving me alone with no hope of ever replacing it.

Yet with all of that I still hated he lost sleep over it.

I hated he was sitting on the floor battered and worn.

Maybe at one time when it was fresh and new, and I was at my lowest I’d wished him pain and misery. But now, I no longer had it in me to want that for him.

“Garrett—”

“I regret yesterday,” he announced.

Ouch.

Nothing like a kick in the teeth first thing in the morning.

“I regret how it happened and why it happened,” he went on. “That’s not us.”

Oh, yeah, that blow landed, too.

“There is no us,” I reminded him.

“That’s. Not. Us,” he clearly enunciated each word. “And you damn well know what I mean.”

I didn’t. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“I don’t know.”

“Baby, you gave me your virginity.”

His statement was so bizarre I reared back.

“What?”

“You gave me that gift,” he went on. “And at no point in all the years we were together did I ever fuck you. That’s not us. That’s never been us or at least it wasn’t until yesterday. And that’s what I regret.”

He was right about that.

But still…

“We’ve had angry sex before,” I said to lighten the mood.

Or more to the point, lighten the guilt he obviously felt.

He dropped his head and looked at his lap.

Now that he was no longer looking at me it was easier to confess what I needed to confess.

“Yesterday, I was embarrassed. I was hurt—”

Garrett’s head shot up and he interrupted. “I thought you said I didn’t hurt you.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“You didn’t hurt me physically. My feelings were hurt. I was confused. Well, I’m still both of those things but yesterday I threw myself at you and I was ashamed I took advantage of you.”

“Advantage of me?”

A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bask in the beauty or slap it off his smug face.

“You’ve made it crystal clear you want nothing to do with me. Yet you barged back into my life and poked your nose in my business. I lost my temper, which I’m not apologizing for since it’s your fault. But I got emotional and when you put your arm around me, I lost it a different way. I forgot myself and I took advantage of you being close. Which I should apologize for but I’m not because if you hadn’t pushed me, I wouldn’t have thrown things at you, which was why you pulled me close. I was getting closer to my target—”

“You were aiming for my balls?” he huffed.

“Of course, I was.”

“You got a vicious temper and shitty aim,” he rightly noted.

“Only with you,” I returned.

“Lucky me,” he muttered.

We fell into an uncomfortable silence that left me very aware I was sitting cross-legged on my bed in nothing but a t-shirt and pair of hideous panties.

I glanced at the clock and noticed the time.

I needed him to leave so I could get ready for work now that I’d faced my fear of running into Garrett—literally faced it with my mouth on his, culminating with great sex—my phantom flu was over. Which was a damn good thing since I needed the money.

“Welp, if that’s it, I need to get to work.”

I tugged the hem of my shirt down and adjusted my legs, hoping I wasn’t flashing Garrett.

“Already saw ‘em, Mellie.”

“Saw what?”

He smiled one of his seriously annoying smiles.

The one that always told me he was getting ready to tease me.

“Spent a lot of years with you, Mellie Kate. Some of those years I lived with you. I’d know your period panties anywhere.”

My hands came up to cover my face. Unfortunately, they did nothing to muffle my groan.

“Why are you so annoying?”

“Why do you find it annoying that I know you like comfy panties when you’re on your—”

“Can we please stop talking about my period?”

“Seeing as it’s a fact of nature, you’re a thirty-seven-year-old woman and you’ve been having it since you were thirteen, I don’t see why it’s a big deal.”

Of course he wouldn’t understand, he was a man.

I also hated that he knew when I’d started. It was a sad reminder of how long he’d been in my life, sadder still that we’d been so close as friends—the best of friends that I’d told him everything. Hell, if memory served—and I knew it did—I’d told him the day I started. Some might think that was weird, a girl telling a teenage boy something so personal. But not me, not with Garrett. I’d told him everything.

“Though,” he continued, and I knew he was smiling. “They used to just be ugly. Now, baby, they’re hideous.”

“Period panties are supposed to be hideous,” I snapped. “Hello, that’s the point of them.”

“No, Mellie, they used to be ugly but cute. Those are bright orange with tacos on them.”

Gah.

I hated him.

“They’re my Taco Tuesday—”

I got no more out when Garrett’s laugh filled my room. It took me a moment of staring at him in awe to remember the man sitting on my bedroom floor teasing with me was not real. He’d switch back to the asshole who broke my heart then he’d leave and go back to his life out east and we’d go back to being strangers.

The way he’d made us.

And since he’d already seen my horrible Taco Tuesday period panties, I uncrossed my legs and scooted off the bed.

If he wanted to sit on the floor all day and laugh himself stupid, what did I care?

I was going to work and I was going to do that in complete denial that Garrett Davis hadn’t set me back to zero.

Zero being back seventeen years when the pain of losing him was so acute it was hard to breathe.

Only this time, I fully participated. I wasn’t blindsided with an ultimatum. I wasn’t young and naïve. I was a grown woman who made a monumental mistake, and I was going to pay dearly for it.

I was nearly to my bathroom when Garrett called my name.

“Yeah?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Mellie Kate.” He paused and when he did, he lost all pretense. “For everything.”

And with that accurately placed shot ricocheting through me, slicing and tearing apart my insides, I forced myself not to tremble—not to scream and shout, not to break down and cry, not to tell him he could shove his apology up his ass.

Instead, I remembered all that we’d had. All that was him and me and the love we’d shared, and I let him off the hook with a monumental lie.

“It was a long time ago.”

That wasn’t the lie, that part was the truth; he’d left me a long time ago. The lie was the feigned nonchalance. The way I shrugged before I turned and walked into my bathroom. It was the way I’d gently clicked the door shut. It was the way I’d held myself together from the moment I’d woken up to find him sitting in my room.

By the time I was out of the shower, Garrett was gone.

I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or grateful.

But what I did know was, I was screwed.