Kick knew she was gorgeous. I liked that about her. She didn’t pretend like she couldn’t see herself in the damn mirror, didn’t act all surprised when heads turned her way. She was aware of the effect she had on guys. Confident in it. Cool with it. And I knew without her saying so that before I came along, she used that power over dudes to get what she wanted from them. Hell, there’s no way a girl could have been as smooth as she was the night we met if she hadn’t done something like that before.

Seeing her wander outside tonight, shoulders shrunken in, eyes cast down, hands tucked in her pockets, she didn’t look like a woman owning her beauty. She looked like a girl hiding from it, maybe even afraid of it. Something inside me twisted and I moved away from the people talking to me. Kick glanced up, looking around warily.

When her eyes found me walking to her, she sighed heavily. It was relief, and even as the twisting inside tightened, a warmth spread too. My body felt light and I wanted to pound my chest in pride. Kick was telling me with her eyes, with her body language, that she needed me. A woman like her. Needed. Me. Fuck, that made me feel more like a badass than a thousand screaming fans.

When I reached her, I rested my hands on top of the ones she still had shoved in her back pockets. Tugging her close, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

Her eyes drifted down to the space between us. “Can we get out of here?” she asked, just loud enough for me to hear.

“Yeah.” I knew we’d just showed up. I knew I couldn’t escape unnoticed, not anymore. But I also knew Kick needed me. If she wanted out of the party, she could have just left, texted me some excuse. It would’ve have been a shitty thing to do, but I heard the desperation in her voice. She came back into the crowds to find me.

So I took her hand and pulled her back through the house, trying my best to shrug off people’s attempts to stop to talk to me. Townie didn’t push it when I told him we were leaving after just arriving. He glanced at Kick, who still didn’t look quite herself, and nodded at me. “Yeah, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

It was quiet all the way back to her place. She was there with me, but not really. Kick’s focus was elsewhere. I didn’t know if she even registered me beside her as we made our way up to her bedroom. I wasn’t feeling so badass anymore. Actually, I was a little freaked out to see my girl like this. What the hell was going on? The last time she went distant on me like this was the second night at StageFest. After I sang Fireball on stage and called her my girl in front of our friends. I’d thought maybe it’d been too much too fast with us. This time, I got the sense it didn’t have much to do with us at all.

“Fireball, talk to me,” I urged as she turned her back and started to strip down, getting ready for bed.

She was silent for a minute as she slid a tank top over her head and stepped into sleep shorts. Even after being with her only a few hours ago, the sight of her naked distracted me for a moment. When she climbed into bed, I kicked off my shoes, threw off my shirt and jeans, and slid in next to her.

She snuggled her body close to mine and I suppressed a sigh of relief. She wanted to be close, even if she wasn’t letting me in her head.

Instead of answering my question, she asked one of her own. “Aren’t there some things couples aren’t meant to talk about with each other?” The uncharacteristically timid tone of her voice had me inhaling a deep breath.

“Like, what kind of things?” I wondered.

“The stupid shit we did before.”

I thought I knew what she was saying, but fuck, it hurt more than I expected. She clarified, “With other people.”

“Is that why you wanted to leave the party? Did you see someone” – I struggled to complete the thought – “you’d been with before me?”

Except that wouldn’t really explain the way she’d looked, would it?

“Not exactly. Look, Jack.” Kick took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not proud of the stupid shit I’ve done. I’m not trying to hide anything from you. I just don’t want to talk about it. What’s the point?”

She hadn’t answered my question, and I tried to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach. Something told me she wanted my comfort right now, and that was it. I still didn’t know Kick all the way through but I saw her enough to realize that pushing her right now wouldn’t get me anywhere. It would backfire.

“We don’t have to talk about everything in our pasts, Fireball. Not now,” I added, letting her know I wasn’t agreeing this subject was closed forever.

I had met Kick when she was a good-time girl. A girl who wanted to have fun, not treat life too seriously. She still had a little of that in her, but now I wondered what made her change. She wasn’t acting like a girl who just grew up a little, found things she wanted to take more seriously. Found a guy she wanted more than just a good time with. No, she was acting like she was scared of the girl she used to be. Like she didn’t trust herself.

What happened to that woman in leather pants and red lipstick who approached me in the alley? Led a group of people she didn’t know to a locked college pool and stripped down to a thong? Confidence like that didn’t just disappear. It was in there, somewhere, still, but I needed to know what was masking it. And why.