Kiss My Boots (Coming Home #2)

“Goddammit,” she hisses, her voice sounding farther away, and I reckon she pulled the phone away from her face.

“What? Jesus, Q, you look like you’re gonna pass out,” another voice whispers through the line, muffled and only recognizable as female. I wonder if it’s her best friend, Leighton—sounds like it could be her, although older and more mature. Those two were thick as thieves when they were younger, and I reckon they’re still right close.

“Quinn?” I ask in concern.

When she finally speaks again, it’s in a rush of words, none of which are what I want to hear. “When you get back in town you can call the shop and talk to Barrett or Tank. Barrett would be best, but Tank will still get some kind of message to me. Figure out what you want done and how much you want to spend before you call and save them the trouble of pullin’ that outta you. I think it would be in everyone’s best interest if you dealt with them and they communicated your wishes to me. I’ll do this for you because I respected the hell outta your paw, but I can’t do this shit with you. Not now. Not again. Not ever.”

I see Ella, my dinner companion, wave at me curiously through the window, and I lift my chin in acknowledgment before giving her my back. “Quinn.” I sigh, not ready to let her off the phone but knowing she is too stubborn to listen to reason when she feels backed into a corner. I don’t even feel bad about doing it either, not when I know this is my key to getting close to her when I get back. I send a silent prayer of thanks to the gods that Davis Auto is the only game in town, any other potential body shops too fearful of the strong competition the Davis family represents to try their hand at the business. If there was any other shop within a twenty-mile radius of Pine Oak, I know I’d be shit out of luck.

“You have the shop number. I’ll let the guys know you’ll be in touch. I know this is an entirely foreign concept to you, but this, Tate, is what good-bye sounds like.”

Before I can open my mouth and demand her silence so I can say everything I need to say, the call is disconnected and the dial tone is echoing back in my ringing ear.

I pocket my phone and try to ease some of the tension out of my shoulders, replaying the phone call in my mind, hearing her voice, and feeling my body start to come alive for the first time in a long damn while from that alone. I’d stopped believing that I would ever see her again, let alone hear her voice, but now that I have, my body is humming with the reminder of what that husky sound can do to it.

- -

Back then, when I left her for good, I knew I was doing the right thing. It was something I had begrudgingly accepted as each lonely year passed that I longed for her. I would never have gone back, leaving her free to be lost to me forever when another man realized how perfect she is too. Hell, for all I know, that man’s already in her life. That was the one update I refused to let my friend Mark, who still lives back in Pine Oak, fill me in on. Ignorance is bliss, and all that.

It took me a while to accept that possibility when I gave in and left her. There were so many days that I wanted to fight the resistance keeping me back and give up everything for her—but it would have been selfish of me to do so knowing it would affect so many others. So I did the only thing I could: I learned to accept the life I was living. I have some good friends in Alpharetta, the town just outside of Atlanta where I live. The position I have in the labor and delivery department at Northside Hospital in Atlanta is challenging and rewarding, just what I always wanted. I date casually, the type of women like the one waiting inside for me to return—even if what I share with Ella isn’t special, it’s practical. Functional. Satisfying, more or less. Bottom line, I don’t do relationships. I feed my body’s needs when the loneliness threatens to become too overwhelming, and that’s it.

From the outside looking in, I have everything the younger me thought I wanted at this point in my life. I’ve become the man my parents pushed me to be—a doctor in a top-of-the-line hospital, far away from the private small-town practice I always pictured myself owning. I’m every bit the rich and successful man I appear to be. I could buy the damn world if I felt like I wanted to take it for a spin.

A dry laugh escapes me as I study my reflection in the window. I embody completely the “starch” Quinn and I used to poke fun of. The high-society image that my parents pressed upon me since my boyhood has taken over, when all I ever wanted was nothing more than to pull on some old jeans and get my hands dirty. I’ve become everything I always resented in my parents growing up, and I might as well be a world away from the only place—and person—that ever made me feel at home.

I wonder how I ever let it get this fucking far. I reckon I was denying my mind a trip down this path for so long, I didn’t even realize how bad things had become. Only difference this time is that I don’t have anything standing in my way. My mind is focused on all the things I can fight for now that the worst thing that could happen is rejection. All that’s left here in Georgia is a few loose ends to tidy up before I pack up the last eight-plus years and head back to Texas. Like my job.

And Ella.

My eyes roll involuntarily as I think of the situation with Ella and how out of control it’s gotten. We aren’t even dating. Hell, we were never dating. It was purely two busy people blowing off steam. Two doctors who used each other’s bodies instead of going home alone. She said she didn’t want anything more and I said I would never want anything more. She caught me each time when I had been letting that lingering loneliness choke me and it worked.

Until it didn’t.

Even if I wasn’t going back to Pine Oak—finally—this conversation would be happening. I probably would have put it off a few weeks, but once I knew I was going back to Texas an overwhelming sense of urgency hit. The reason I never wanted a relationship since I settled in Georgia was because if I couldn’t have it with the one woman I wanted, I didn’t want it with anyone, and now that woman is finally on the horizon, waiting for me to return—even if she doesn’t know it yet. So I tried to end things with Ella—and then I tried again, and again. The woman just won’t take no for an answer. She asked me to dinner tonight, and I begrudgingly agreed on the condition that we at last both come to the same page on our relationship, and where it would finish. Right here, right now, tonight.

But so far, there’s been a whole lot of talking on my part and a hell of a lot of eye-fucking on Ella’s part.

That’s going to end. Now.

With a clear mind and a new fuel of determination rushing through my body, I head back into the restaurant.