Chapter 13
Sawyer
“Doin’ the right thing doesn’t make you a saint, it makes you a man.”
~ Grant Turner
Just do it.
Those three words played over and over in my mind, but the Nike slogan wasn’t quite getting the job done. I’d been sitting in my truck parked in my driveway for the past ten minutes staring at the text that I’d written, deleted, written, deleted, and written again. I knew that I needed to press send but I just couldn’t seem to bring myself to pull the trigger.
I was sure that my inability to do what needed to be done had something to do with the fact that I hadn’t slept. All night my mind wouldn’t shut off. I was kicking myself for not leaving after the last cabinet had been hung. If I hadn’t gone out to see the plans she had for the screened-in porch, I never would’ve told her about the conversation with my mom. I wouldn’t be thinking about her childhood and how she must’ve felt living in the shadow of the Turner Triplets and The Flower Pot. I would never have given into the impulse to touch her soft skin, to let myself indulge, just for a moment, in the fantasy of more with her.
All night, I’d lain in bed blaming myself for giving into the need to touch Delilah. I tried to pat myself on the back for being able to walk away even after I felt and saw how her body reacted to my touch. How my body reacted to touching her.
The deep connection that I’d felt for her at that moment was more than just physical, although that was a huge part of it. What I’d felt for her was soul-deep. It was powerful, pure, and sensual as hell. Walking away from it, from her, had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I still didn’t know how I’d managed to pull off such a feat, but I was confident that if faced with it again, I wouldn’t be so strong.
All three of my previous romantic relationships hadn’t just ended in heartbreak, they’d ended in tragedy. I was not about to risk anything happening to Delilah. Which is why I needed to send this message.
My thumb pushed against the screen and I immediately turned off my phone, so I couldn’t change my mind and undo what I’d just done. I glanced up in the rearview mirror to make sure it was clear. I pulled the gearshift down into reverse and noticed my reflection. I had dark circles under my eyes and hadn’t bothered to shave after my shower. Before heading out of the house, I’d thrown on a baseball cap. I looked rough.
As I backed out onto the main road and drove to Delilah’s I was filled with relief, disappointment, and frustration at the message that I’d felt forced to send. Today was not going to be a repeat of yesterday. I’d just made sure of that, and I was having a lot of mixed emotions about it.
The short drive did nothing to soothe my foul mood. I wished that we had more demo to do because it would be nice to take out my agitation by breaking shit. As bad as I was feeling now, I knew that after what I’d just done, I’d be feeling a hundred times worse by the time this day was over.
Running. That’s what I would be doing tonight. It was the only way that I’d found to exhaust myself, at least legally that is. In my late teens, I’d taken my aggression out in destructive ways, on people, on property. Now, when I had excess energy to burn I ran and had a job where I broke things.
I pulled up in front of Delilah’s house and I saw her in her front yard watering the grass. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and there were earphones in her ears as she spun in a circle spraying the hose.
Lifting my hand, I wiped the sheen of sweat that had broken out on my forehead. My body’s sudden increase in temperature had nothing to do with the heat outside and everything to do with the hot sight in front of me.
Delilah was wearing a thin white cotton T-shirt that was practically sheer in the sun, and I could see the outline of the lace bra she wore beneath it. Her cutoff jean shorts were frayed at the bottom and molded to her ass. They barely covered the tops of her thick, shapely thighs.
My sweat glands weren’t the only part of my body affected, either. My mouth watered and my dick grew hard. I hadn’t popped a boner like this since I was in sixth grade and got hard if the wind blew in my direction. And this was the second time it had happened in the same amount of days.
“Shit.” Taking a moment, I closed my eyes, tightened my grip on the steering wheel and inhaled slowly through my nose, trying to get myself under control.
Knowing that I didn’t have the luxury of letting things deflate of their own accord I tried to think of anything I could to help it along. I thought about baseball stats, taxes, safety reports…nothing was working. So I pulled out the big guns and pictured the time my friends and I accidentally ended up at a nude beach populated by a geriatric crowd.
That did the trick.
When I could be in public and not be arrested for indecency, I opened my eyes and saw that Delilah was walking towards me. As I got out of the truck, I reminded myself to try and keep my eyes above her neck. Otherwise, I’d be spending the day recalling very old, very wrinkly balls.
Look at her face. At her face.
“Hey!” Her lips parted in a huge grin as I shut the door behind me.
There it was. The smile I knew I could never get enough of. Keeping my attention focused above the neck might help one part of my body not swell with desire, but another part expanded to the point of pain. My heart filled with emotion, causing my chest to ache.
When I stopped in front of her, she took in a sharp breath, and her full, genuine smile fell. It was only for a brief moment, but I saw it. Then, she immediately replaced it with one that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Okay!” she clapped her hands together before putting up two awkward thumbs up. “Who has two thumbs and is ready to build a kitchen?” She pointed her thumbs to her chest. “This girl.”
As cute as I found her behavior, I sensed that she was as nervous as I was apprehensive about the day ahead. It made me wonder if her sudden discomfort had anything to do with my behavior last night at the door, if I’d made her uncomfortable.
She started to head into the house, but I stayed where I was and asked. “Are you okay?”
When she looked over her shoulder, the gold specks in her caramel gaze shimmered, reflecting the morning sunlight. “Yeah. I’m great.” She answered with false enthusiasm.
No. She wasn’t. She was on edge.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she answered with a forced cheeriness, her smile plastered across her face.
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t smile back at her.
My stoic silence was twofold. First, I’d found when I didn’t fill in awkward pauses with words that didn’t need to be spoken, people usually cracked and fessed up. And second, I was trying to find the right way to clear the air. I wasn’t sure if I should just say sorry for being creepy at the door. If I should tell her that I normally kept my distance to avoid situations like that happening.
But before I could figure out the right way to apologize, she did.
“I’m sorry, I’m just…” She waved her hand up and down in front of me. “You’re just…it’s a lot.”
“What’s a lot?” Was she talking about last night? At the door?
She squared her shoulders, and her lips moved, but no sound came out. I hadn’t tried to read lips since I was a kid and my brothers and I needed to communicate without my parents hearing us, so I was out of practice. But it looked like she was counting down. When she got to one, she said, “You. You are a lot. And sometimes I just…I don’t know…it makes me nervous.”
Shit. It was about last night.
Regret didn’t even scratch the surface of what I felt for making her uncomfortable. I was furious at myself. I’d kicked a dozen guy’s asses for crossing those lines and making women feel uncomfortable, in my late teens and early twenties before I found other ways to handle my frustration. Hell, I’d been ready to put Brady’s head through a wall for doing the same thing just a couple of weeks ago.
“I’m so sorry.” I apologized and was turning to leave when her fingers wrapped around my wrist.
“For what?” Her brow scrunched. “Where are you going?
“For last night. For making you feel nervous around me. I’m leaving.”
“What? Why? Last night…?” She shook her head and dropped her hand from its hold on me. “Are you talking about at the door?”
“Yes,” I said through clenched teeth.
A blush crept up her cheeks. “That didn’t make me nervous. I mean…it did but in a good way…in the best way ever. I was talking about you making me nervous because…I…because you’re…” she stammered as she waved her hands up and down in front of me.
I waited for her to finish her thought and when she didn’t I prompted, “I’m what?”
“You sure you want to hear the answer to that?” Coop walked up the driveway and slapped his hand on my shoulder.
“Hey, Coop!” Delilah’s eyes bounced between my brother and me, probably seeing if I was as surprised to see him here as she was.
I wasn’t. I’d texted him because he was my insurance policy. And for once, my brother’s timing was perfect.