She walked in, and stopped. The furniture had to be as old as the house. Wood framed with ancient, shabby cushions on the couch. The cabinets were painted the same green as the shutters outside, with little pine trees carved into them.
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah, it’s modest,” he said.
She looked at him, and she just... She didn’t know what she’d been thinking. She had been naked with him. Intimate. She thought that she had feelings that... Well, honestly, she realized they were impossible. There was no way for her to have the kind of feelings that she’d been sure she did. Because she didn’t know this man. She thought she did. She had convinced herself that she did. And then she’d been angry at him for not wanting to uproot his life—a life that she didn’t even know anything about—and stay with her.
Really, she just hadn’t known a thing about him. How had she tricked herself into thinking that she did?
“It’s fine,” she said. “Can I see my room?”
He nodded. He led her down the hall, and the floorboards creaked under her feet.
“I’ll have to fix that,” he said.
“I... It’s fine.”
“It’s just that I don’t usually have guests,” he said.
“Is that what I am?”
“Don’t know what else you could be.”
“Well. I don’t know. I’m sure there are choice words for it.”
He shrugged. “You’re the one with the hang-up about it, not me. Remember, I’m not the one who was a virgin.”
“I think you have plenty of hang-ups, just maybe not that.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.”
“So what... What now?”
“I have some work to do,” he said. “Gotta get out and pull my weight. I had a building project I was working on.”
“You... You build?”
“We’re all handy with whatever might need doing in a place like this. There’s no reason to hire someone when you can just get the job done yourself.”
“So you’re sort of a...general...handyman?”
He winked. “I’m a cowboy.”
She found that annoying. Because it was harkening back to when they had first met. When he was all charm and none of this other stuff. When it was all fun, with none of the hurt. They were supposed to be starting over, but she couldn’t look at him now and see the same uncomplicated thing she’d seen before. None of the sharp things. The hard things. She couldn’t start over, not clean. And honestly, it would be foolish. To forget. To forget what she knew now.
She wasn’t the sweet, innocent Violet that she’d been a month ago. She had been badly wounded, and she had firsthand evidence of the consequences of this kind of thing. Of the fact that it was not carefree fun.
A fling that would be temporary.
Nothing about this was temporary.
It was all... It was all a little bit too real. A little bit too heavy.
She blinked, and took a breath. “What should I do?”
“Whatever you want. Take a rest.”
“A rest?”