She rocks her hips up in an effort to move my hand lower, but I'm locked where I am, in no man's land, my palm just over the dip of her bellybutton.
"Winch?"
Her fingers are at the back of my neck, kneading a place that, for some reason, makes me crazy.
"Yeah?"
The word barely manages to choke out.
"I know you didn't think it was funny when I joked about the guys I was with. But it wasn't that many. And I was always safe. Always. So if that's what's stop--"
"Shh." I kiss her so she cuts her crazy confession short. "Stop it. Now. Stop." I look down at her. She's keeping her jaw tight and strong to offset her shaky, embarrassed words. "I don't care if you've been with a thousand guys before me, alright? We're together now. That's all that matters. It's not you, nothing to do with you. There's nothing--"
I break off and look her up and down, letting it show on my face how sexy I find every single thing about her. "There's nothing at all about you that's stopping me. Trust me, it's like an opposite problem. I feel like I gotta finish telling you some stuff. It's not fair to let you get involved with me if I don't. Alright?"
Her smile is supposed to make me feel all good, like nothing could split us apart and everything is a-okay, but she has no clue. Not many girls outside my family's circle would want anything to do with the life I lead, which is why everyone in my life is pro-Lala. And would be anti-Evan on principle.
You have to be raised our way to understand how we do things and why.
Even I don't always understand. But it's my code. So I have to make it work, and now that I got Evan involved with me, I have to at least explain it to her. Or try. Even if it means I'll probably get an invitation to back the hell off her balcony in a few minutes.
I give her one last hard kiss, trying not to regret all the things I'm going to miss when she tells me to leave. I thought I'd be able to keep her separate from the rest of my life. I didn't count on feeling this impossible-to-ignore need to tell her everything.
I sit up again and rub my hands over my face, trying to talk myself back into a few more minutes with her curled in my arms, but I can't do it. It's all or nothing with this girl.
I say a quick prayer that I might get another swing after I tell her everything anyway and just dive in.
"This tattoo isn't really my thing." I push my sleeve up and hold my arm out while I'm talking, like it's evidence in my criminal case, and I’m making one final appeal to Evan, asking her to save me from myself. "I got it to protect Remy."
She sits Indian-style, those gorgeous legs all folded up and long and tan and--
Focus, I tell myself.
"This tattoo was something I had to get." I flex my arm and the pooka jumps. Evan wants to ask, I can see her working to keep her mouth pinned shut, but she definitely wants to know, so I just tell her.
"Remy'd been fucking up and causing shit everywhere he went. He's always been..." I need to tell her more, but my inner loyalty sucker punches me. This is my brother I'm about to talk shit about. I have no business revealing his secrets to someone outside the family.
I look over at her, her eyes right on my face, totally trusting, and I realize that I trust her, too. Blood or not, this girl belongs to me in some kind of elemental way I can’t deny, and she deserves to know my truths.
"Remy's always been a fucking loose cannon. But nothing too serious. Then he met his ex or whatever they are, and things got good for a while. He got her pregnant, and then...he just wasn't ready I guess. He just didn't get that he needed to grow the hell up. It was like he was thinking he'd get to be an even bigger kid now that he was having one or something. And his girl got tired of all his stupid shit, and she left him."
I rub the heels of my hands into my eyes, wishing brain bleach were a real thing, because I'd love to sanitize some of the crazy, stupid, awful despair I watched my brother go through from my memory forever.
"I'm sorry for him," Evan says, laying her hands loosely in mine. "I know how that can be. To have someone in your life, and when they leave, it's like they were that last patch holding all the water back, and your ship just starts sinking without them. Even if maybe the two of you weren't right together."
I try to picture her that night in the orchard, the flames licking the grass, the mulch, the bark of those big old trees, and I bet I know exactly what she was feeling; this weird mix of panic, adrenaline, and newness, like the slate is finally clean.
The problem is, it never lasts. Destruction never solves the situation in the long run. Remington crushes things, smashes them, rips them apart, punches them, demolishes them, and feels that surge of satisfied power for about an hour or two.
When it all falls apart, when I come in to act as his personal cleanup crew and reluctant witness, all he's left with is an emptiness that he can't ever beat his way out
