Southern Heart, Madison, Natasha [the little red hen ebook TXT] 📗

"I’m gonna tell your momma what you just said."

"Yeah." He smirks at me. "When you do, make sure you do it with my father there."

"Get out." I point at the door.

"I’ll be outside," he says.

"Peeping Tom!" I tell him, and he turns to walk out of the room.

"I’m going to be okay," I tell Amelia and look at her.

"You didn’t see how freaked out you were today." She blinks away tears. "I just don’t want…"

"He won’t let anything happen to me," I say.

"Oh, I know he won’t." She gets up. "And if he fails?" She puts her hand on the door handle. "Quinn isn’t the only one who will put a bullet in his ass."

I watch her walk out before I change out of my shorts into yoga pants and a tank top. When I walk out of the room, I’m met with silence. Walking to his bedroom, I see him on the bed trying to put a bandage on his leg.

"What happened?" I ask, and he looks up at me. I can tell that he’s angry.

"Nothing," he says, his voice tight. I lean on the door and fold my arms over my chest. "Why are you still here?"

"I’m not sure you want to know the answer," I tell him honestly. He chuckles, and I know it’s sarcastically as he shakes his head. "So I’m not going to answer you." He looks at me, shocked. I turn now, ignoring the pain in my chest as I walk over to the kitchen.

I wash my hands, looking out, and I see a couple of cowboys in the far distance as they put up something. Turning, I grab my baking stuff and get to work. "What the fuck are you doing?"

I look up now as I knead the dough I started. "I’m baking," I say. "It calms me." He watches my hands rolling the dough forward and then bringing it back. "When I was fourteen or fifteen, I used to go shooting when I got upset or pissed off."

"Why did you stop?" he asks, folding his hands in front of him on the island.

"I kind of"—I shrug—"sort of shot Quinn." He laughs, shaking his head. "It was a graze. But he got all ‘you shot me.’ He didn’t even need stitches, and it barely bled." I roll my eyes. "So my parents took away my guns, and every time I got angry, they sent me to my grandmother’s house. And it just stuck. Every single time I would get angry or annoyed, I would go on over, and she would teach me a recipe."

"What are you making?" he asks.

"Chicken and dumplings," I answer him. "Then I was thinking of some chicken potpie."

"Will you be making apple pie?" I look over at him.

"I may be persuaded to," I tell him. "Was Quinn okay with you?"

"He knows about…" he starts to say and taps the counter with his finger.

"He knows what?" I ask, not sure what he means. My mouth runs dry.

"That," he starts. "Apparently, you used to." He looks down, not sure of what to say.

"Follow you around." I laugh and make the dough into a round ball.

"He mentioned you following me to the barn." I look up at him.

"And I was trying to be all sly and shit." Turning now and grabbing a bowl, I place the ball of dough inside to rise.

"I remember," he says to me silently. "That day."

I look over at him, shocked he remembers that day. "What?" I ask.

"It was two years ago." He starts to talk now, and I don’t move from my spot. "I hadn’t seen you in over a year, and then you just showed up."

"I didn’t just show up. Amelia picked me up at school." I wash my hands and then turn to look at him, and just like that day, he makes my heart speed up and my belly flip and flop.

"You got out of the car, and the wind picked up your hair a bit." He leans back in the chair. "You were wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt tied at your stomach."

"I went to hug my grandfather, and I saw you walking away from the party," I tell him. "It took me over ten minutes to finally pry myself to the stable."

He gets up now and comes around the island to stand in front of me. "I was sitting in the barn with my head hanging down, telling myself you were perfectly wrong for me." He takes one of the strands of hair that’s fallen out of my ponytail and wraps it around his finger. "You deserved to have someone who didn’t have a house full of skeletons. You didn’t deserve a broken man."

"I went into that barn." I put my hands on his hips. "Because I wanted to see if it was all in my head," I say, looking down. "I wanted to see if it was just a stupid schoolgirl crush." I swallow. "I wanted to see if you were everything my head remembered." He shakes his head. "I walked in and saw you sitting there, and you looked up at me." My hand goes to the middle of his chest, making sure that this moment affects him as much as it does me.

"You took my breath away." His voice is but a whisper.

I blink away the tears. "You were sitting there, and you were so much more than I remembered," I say. "My heart was going so fast when I saw you look over at me. I tried to act cool, but all I wanted was to walk up to you and kiss you. I wanted to feel what it would have been like to kiss you."

"I looked at you, and I wondered what it would be like to kiss you." He comes closer. "I wondered what it would be like to hold your hand." His hands cup my cheeks. "I wondered all this, and then the truth would come over me. The truth that you were perfect