He grabbed my hand, imprisoning it in his powerful grip. “I’m always fucking serious when it comes to you, Emily.”
“Right. Seriously pissed off?”
“Sometimes.” Diesel took a long breath. “Look, I know you’re feeling a bit bored, maybe lonely, but rushing into having a kid—”
“That’s not why.”
“Does Bennet know?” Diesel asked, suddenly changing track.
“No, why should he? Anyway, it’s not so groundbreaking that a woman in her early thirties would want to get started on having a family, Diesel. You’re the only one ploughing through life, ignoring all the things that normal humans want.”
“You think I don’t want all those things?” His voice was suddenly pained and annoyed. “You think I don’t think about them all the time?” Whether or not he’d realized it, he’d crowded me back against the sink, and I stopped short when I had nowhere else to go. His body pinned me there, and man, that felt good. Too good.
“Why don’t you do anything about it, then?” I wondered, genuinely bewildered. Diesel could have any woman he wanted, but the guy lived like a monk.
“Because if I can’t have the person I want to do it all with, I won’t have anyone,” he whispered. My heart thudded to a stop, and I shivered all over. Was he talking about me? It seemed impossible after everything that had gone before, and yet, there was something in his eyes that screamed at me.
He was talking about me, and we were right back where we were years ago after his discharge.
“Maybe you should re-examine your belief system, if you’re willing to give up having a family and a happy ending so easily,” I heard myself say.
Diesel jerked as if I’d punched him. “It’s not easy, sweetheart. It’s the hardest thing I have to do, and I have to do it every single day. Sometimes, every single minute.”
I considered those words that seemed to be stolen from his soul. Diesel and his damn rules. They had ruined my life, just as much as his, and he had the audacity to stand here and make me feel bad about it.
“That’s not my problem,” I murmured, pushing him back to give myself some wiggle room. There was only so long a girl could be pressed up against such perfection before something broke inside, probably my restraint, closely followed by my sense of dignity. “My problem is finding the man who I want to have a kid with, and I’m on it.”
With that, I turned away from the kitchen and headed toward the stairs. “You know where the door is,” I tossed back over my shoulder.
CHAPTER6
Emily
Age - 21
Frat parties weren’t really my thing, but my roommate had insisted we go to one tonight as she was desperate to hook up with some guy in her calculus class. I tagged along, and drank and danced, but my heart wasn’t really in it. Bennet was leaving soon to join the Marines, and I couldn’t stop worrying about him. He and my father had clashed so many times while he’d been studying about his major and his future that Bennet had finally removed the senator’s influence and did something big. When my older brother went big, he really went for it.
I was sitting out by the pool, watching drunk frat boys drag hapless passers-by into the water, when my phone rang. My heart jolted when I saw the name on the display.
“What’s up?” I answered quickly.
“I was just calling about your brother’s—” Diesel trailed off as the noise of the party grew around me when a group of new drunken idiots ran past. “Where are you?”
“Sigma Pie Gamma pool party.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Diesel’s judgmental tone immediately pissed me off.
“Yeah, I’m fucking serious. I’m twenty-one. If I want to go get wasted on jello shots, do a wet-shirt contest and hook up with ten dude bros, I am free to do that,” I snapped at him, the random comment about the wet t-shirt thing transporting me right back to that damn day years ago in the bathroom. It was a day I thought about way more than I should.
“No, you’re not.” Diesel’s snapped comment had me raising my eyebrows.
“I’m not what?”
“You’re not free to do that,” he elaborated. I frowned at the phone.
“Ok, except that I am. See you around, and thanks for checking in,” I retorted,and closed the phone, resisting the urge to toss it across the room.
It tookhim ten minutes to arrive. I froze as an extremely pissed off looking Diesel strode around the back of the frat house, looking around the pool area. His gaze zeroed in on me, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. I was sipping a beer, and one guy from my computing class had sat down to talk to me.