Smooth-Talking Cowboy

She realized, dimly, somewhere in the back of her mind, that this all served the purpose that they had come here for in the first place. She wasn’t here with him as a date. She wasn’t. They were here so that they looked like a burgeoning couple. Which made him waiting for her, and them walking across the bar together, look romantic or something.

Of course, had she actually been here on a date with him, finding his name carved into the wall like that would have been even more upsetting. No. It would have been upsetting. It wasn’t upsetting at all as it was. She didn’t care how much of a whore he was. That was his business—and the woman’s. Whatever woman was crazy enough to try and get involved with him with any actual sincerity.

He paid Laz, and then put his hand on her lower back as they headed toward the door. She gritted her teeth, trying her best to keep her expression neutral until that first blast of night air hit her in the face as they walked out onto the street.

Then, she pulled away from him. She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked down the sidewalk, looking for the first crosswalk before making her way across toward the truck. He was already there. Because he had just gone directly across the street.

“That’s jaywalking,” she said.

“Do I look like I care?” he asked, rounding to the passenger side of the truck and jerking the door open for her.

“It doesn’t seem to me like you care about much,” she said, getting in and grabbing hold of the door handle, slamming it shut before he could do the honors.

He got in and started the engine, pulling away from the curb quickly, before she managed to get herself buckled.

“For the record,” she said, once they were on the road, “it’s illegal to start driving before the passenger is buckled, too. Like jaywalking.”

She didn’t know if that was actually true. But it sounded legitimate enough.

“Again,” he said, “I don’t care.”

Now he was starting to sound snippy, and he had no right to sound snippy. He wasn’t the one who had been kissed in the middle of the bar in front of everyone. Okay, so he had been. But it was different for him. Different for him because he was Luke Hollister, and he had kissed any number of women, and his kissing her wouldn’t reflect badly on him. She was the one who had kissed only the second man she had ever kissed in her entire life, and then seen his name carved on the wall because he had...

They headed out of town, the glow of the streetlights fading in the distance behind them, the evergreen trees that lined the side of the road absorbing any light that was coming from the moon or the stars, making them feel ensconced in darkness, only the narrow glow of the headlights illuminating a very tight path in front of them.

She kept her eyes on the double yellow line on the road, something comforting about having that familiar sight to rest her eyes on while the rest of the world felt wild, untamed and unknowable.

And she couldn’t even pretend it was because of the darkness. It was because of Luke. And the way it had felt when his lips had touched hers.

There was a certain point where she’d stopped worrying about unknown things in the darkness, because she had been convinced that she knew herself well enough she could find her way through anything. That she had decided firmly who she was, and who she would be, and had been at peace with that choice. But all of that assurance had crumbled around her in a bar tonight, and she didn’t know quite what to do with that.

So she stared at the yellow line and hoped that it would guide her home, because God knew she didn’t trust herself to do it. She certainly didn’t trust Luke.

“What exactly are you mad about, Olivia?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“You’re a terrible liar,” he said. “Things were going okay, and now you’re mad at me.”

“What does it matter? Nothing that happened tonight is real.”

“Something made you mad. I want to know what.”

“Like you care when I’m mad. You like making me mad.”

“Sure,” he said. “I like making you mad on purpose. Just a little bit mad. A bit of annoyance here and there. But when I do that, you can bet I do it for fun, and you can bet I don’t do it on accident. This is different.”

“Did you honestly have... Did you do...” She stumbled over the words, too embarrassed to talk about it in front of him. Which made her feel silly, and childish. She had no idea how to combat it. She cleared her throat. “With a woman. In that bathroom?”

He chuckled, the sound somehow absent of humor, flat in the cab of the truck, the only other sound the engine and the tires on the road. “You’re mad about that?”

“You kissed me,” she said. “I think I have a right to know where you’ve been.”

“I’m well traveled, kiddo, and I think you already know that.”

“In the bathroom?” she asked, incredulous. “And everybody in the bar knew what you were doing?”

“We didn’t have sex technically speaking.” He paused for a moment. “At least, not in the bathroom.”

“Then why is your name on the wall?” she pressed.

“Something happened in there, not going to lie to you about that. And Wyatt Dodge is a dick when he’s drunk.”

She could hardly imagine Wyatt, who was like a steady older brother to her in many ways, behaving like such a... Such a juvenile frat boy. “Wyatt carved your name onto the sex wall?”

Luke huffed out a laugh. “Yes. But seriously, Olivia, I was like twenty-four years old, and so was he.”

“I’m twenty-five,” she said. “And I think it’s immature.”

“You’re eighty down to your soul,” he said.

“Still,” she snapped, feeling particularly annoyed by that last comment. Mostly because it skimmed a little bit too close to the truth. “That doesn’t make you less gross, and it doesn’t mean that I want you to kiss me to prove points, unless we talk about it beforehand.”

Suddenly, Luke slammed on the brakes and the truck lurched forward. “That does it.” He steered the car off the road onto the shoulder, throwing it into Park, and then turned toward her.

Olivia shrank back, her heart thundering hard from the adrenaline of the abrupt stop, and from the sudden realization of just how small the interior of the truck was. How close he was to her.

“Not everything that happened tonight was fake,” he said.

Her stomach lurched, so hard, so far up that she was afraid it might come out of her mouth. “Yes, it was,” she insisted.

“No,” he said, his voice as rough as the road they’d just been driving on. “It wasn’t.”

Before she could protest, he reached out, wrapping his large hand around the back of her head, drawing her forward. And then Luke was kissing her again. but this wasn’t like The kiss in the bar. There was no audience; there was no excuse for it.

And this time, he wasn’t still. He wasn’t chaste or simple or careful.

He angled his head, forcing her lips apart with his tongue, and her world exploded behind her eyes.

This was Luke. Even in the dark there was no pretending any different.

She lifted her hand, with every intention of pushing him away, but then her fingertips made contact with the scruff on his face, those whiskers that had caught her attention on all those close examinations of him that she caught herself engaged in over the past week. She was touching it. Touching him.

There was only one word that echoed inside of her. A word that didn’t make any sense, but one that shouted loudly nonetheless.

Finally.

She squeezed her eyes shut, so tight that a tear leaked out from one corner. Only because of how tightly she had closed them, not because of emotion. Of course not because of that. This was Luke and she didn’t feel emotions for Luke.