I didn’t touch anyone, not even the people that had grown up hugging me and loving me. But I was compelled to reach out a shaky hand and put it on his colorful shoulder. The puppy gave a yip of approval and I tried not to fall to my knees as the warmth from his tattooed skin blazed through my fingers and shot up my arm. It had been a long time since I’d let myself have any kind of human contact, and even longer since that kind of contact didn’t leave bruises and welts on my skin and tattered lesions across every surface of my soul. He felt so vital. So necessary.
“Are you okay?” The shoulder I was lightly touching tensed even tighter and I let go like his skin burned me when he righted himself and I ended up frozen in that frigid stare of his.
“No. I’m about as far from okay as I have ever been.” He let out a brittle-sounding laugh and narrowed his eyes at me. “When a pretty girl shows up trying to make the shit show that has become your life better, it should be okay, but it’s not.”
He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face like he was tired. “I can count on one hand the times in my life someone bothered to ask if I was okay, Poppy.” His mouth twisted into a wry grin that would look harsh on anyone else but with those dimples of his still managed to look downright adorable. “Most of those times have been Dixie asking. It wasn’t even the right sister.”
I was horrified and didn’t bother to hide it as I huddled the wiggling puppy to my chest like his warm little body could protect me from the images his awful words brought to mind. “That’s terrible, Wheeler.” My voice shook and the words sounded squeaky. I already knew too much about him and this was more information that I didn’t feel like I had earned the right to have.
“It is pretty terrible but not nearly as bad as my ex telling me that she’s knocked up with my kid.” I gasped and took a step backward as his words landed like blows. “A kid we definitely didn’t plan on. A kid I am in no way ready to raise with a woman I can’t stand to be around. A kid that is going to have to bounce between houses and be shuffled from one place to another always trying to figure out exactly where home is.”
He sounded shattered and he looked the same. Those eyes of his were colder than anything I’d ever seen, his skin was pale and taut over the sharp angles of his face, making the smattering of freckles that dotted his nose and cheeks stand out even more than they normally did.
A baby.
Those words always hit something delicate and unprotected deep inside of me. When my sister first told me that she was expecting a baby, I wanted to be happy for her but that happiness had to fight its way through remorse and sorrow so thick it felt like it was crushing me. The same thing was happening as Wheeler watched me. Everything inside of me wanted to unravel but I was holding it together, barely. He should be happy that he had a precious little life on the way, even if he was less than thrilled with the circumstances surrounding the arrival.
I took another step backward and almost fell over. Wheeler reached out a hand like he was going to catch me or stop my fall, but I flinched away and tightened my hold on the dog so much so that he yelped in protest. Frantically I pulled my sunglasses from the top of my head and shoved them back over my eyes. I could feel moisture building, and if I started crying I needed something to hide behind. He wouldn’t understand why his words stripped me bare and I didn’t have it in me to explain the reasons why they cut so deeply. I’d used up all my limited courage and nerve getting myself out of the car and offering up the puppy.
“Well, congratulations on the baby.” I didn’t sound like I meant it even though I honestly did. “I’m gonna take this little guy and head home and make some calls about who might be in the market for a puppy.”
I scrambled back some more and watched wide-eyed behind my sunglasses as Wheeler advanced on me. He followed me until my back was flat against the side of the car and he was looming in front of me with only the puppy to separate his chest from mine. It was the closest I had been to a man in a very long time, and even though he was irritated and riled up, I couldn’t say that I was worried about him taking out his feelings on me.
“I’m sorry, Poppy. If I was in a different place in my life I would be pretty fucking excited that a girl like you had me on her mind and went out of her way to do something really sweet for me. If I wasn’t already struggling to get my head around being a new father, I would happily take on the task of being a puppy parent.” God, he was nice. Even when he was looming over me looking not very nice at all. “There’s something about you, something about those eyes and the soft way that you speak, that makes me want to tell you all my secrets. Secrets that sting, like the fact that the last time my life was this fucked up was when my junkie mother was dropping me off at a fire station in some rinky-dink mountain town in the middle of a snowstorm. Our car broke down, because it always did. She didn’t take care of it and she sure as shit didn’t take care of me.” I felt my mouth drop open in shock but couldn’t move as his voice dipped lower and his eyes got even colder. His words sent shivers up and down my spine.
“I was lucky that it was a manned station and not one of the volunteer houses that sits empty until a fire is called in. There was a very nice fire captain there that took me in for the night. The next day I was dumped with child services and I spent my entire childhood jumping from one foster house to another. She didn’t even have a coat for me. She dropped me off in jeans that were too small, a T-shirt that was stained and torn, and in tennis shoes that were shit for the snow because they were mostly duct-taped together.” He blinked at me as I gasped in horror and that harsh scowl that cut into the pretty lines of his aristocratic bone structure was back. “I was fucking four years old.”
I wanted to hug him. I wanted to comfort the little boy he was and the man that was clearly struggling in front of me. Knowing that I would freak out if we actually made that kind of contact while both of us were so raw, I scooted to the side, careful not to brush up against him, and pulled open the door so I could put my panting, slobbering bundle down in the passenger seat. I kept the door between us as a barrier as I nodded vigorously. All I wanted to do was get away from his desperation and pain. I needed to take a minute to process the fact he had a baby on the way with a woman that had destroyed him and ruined the idyllic life they could have had together. That hurt in ways I didn’t want to pick apart while he was standing so close looking at me like he could see right into the center of my every thought and feeling. I had too much of my own hurt; I couldn’t believe that I was feeling his as well.