Show Me by Abigail Strom

Author:Abigail Strom [Strom, Abigail]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542048804
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Published: 2018-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Airin held herself absolutely still. The two times she’d kissed Hunter had been about unleashing desire, swimming in it, while this was about restraining it. Hiding it. Hanging on by a thread to a kind of self-discipline she’d never needed before.

It would be so easy to turn and kiss him. Her broken ribs wouldn’t stop her. With all the adrenaline pumping through her veins, she couldn’t even feel them.

But he’d told her today he didn’t want a relationship. He’d said nothing was going to happen between them physically. Maybe she could get him to change his mind if she turned right now and pressed her body to his. But what if he didn’t change his mind?

She’d already shared so much with him. She’d made herself vulnerable while he kept all his secrets. That, at least, had to change.

The question she’d just asked echoed in the space between them. He’d stopped brushing her hair halfway through a stroke, and for a few heartbeats they stayed like that, all movement arrested.

Then he finished the stroke. “Go ahead,” he told her.

“Why don’t you like talking about your parents?”

Stillness again. This time he stopped between strokes, so there was no point of physical contact between them. They were joined only by the energy that crackled in the air like a static charge.

“That’s a hell of a question,” he said finally, the brush moving through her hair again.

All the tiny invisible hairs on her arms were standing straight up. “You know things about me. I want to know things about you. It’s only fair,” she added.

Another stroke. “You have a way of putting things that’s not like anyone else. You say things out loud that other people don’t.”

Did she? “Well, it’s up to you whether you talk to me or not. All I can do is ask questions. You know what my childhood was like. What was yours like?”

Two more strokes, and then he answered. “It was pretty decent, for a while. My brother and I grew up on a ranch in Colorado. It was my dad’s ranch, in the family five generations.”

“And your mother?”

“She was a singer. Dad saw her at some bar in Colorado Springs and fell head over heels. They got married three weeks later.”

“Three weeks? Wow.”

“Yeah. In retrospect, not such a great decision. I think my mom was happy for a while, but when I was thirteen she took off.”

“Took off? You mean . . . she left?”

“Yep.”

“Did she ever come back?”

“No. Caleb and I would get postcards once in a while. She started singing again, traveling to honky-tonk bars in Las Vegas and Mexico and California. I still get postcards sometimes. The last one was six months ago, I think. She was in Bakersfield.”

She tried to imagine her own mother abandoning her like that. Just . . . taking off one day, never looking back.

There was a pain behind her breastbone that had nothing to do with her ribs.

“That must have been so hard. On your dad, too. He had to be both mother and father to you and Caleb.

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