Fourteen?

“And I’m sorry,” he went on, thankfully not noting the blush verbally, though his eyes strayed to it. “I cannot say it enough or mean it enough. You just have to take me at my word on that and I’ll make it so you can do that because I’m gonna prove it by not fucking up that huge with us again.”

“What if I say I don’t believe you?” I tried.

“Rynnie,” he whispered.

And I failed.

But seriously, I could see it all over his face.

He knew he fucked up. He was sorry he fucked up. And I knew that not only because he’d now said it repeatedly, but that was what was all over his face.

And it might not have sounded like a knight’s vow, but I’d lost it last night, and he liked me, so something else written on his face was that he really did not like that he put me through that, and he wasn’t going to put me through it again.

To end, we were good together, when we weren’t fighting. I knew it. He knew it. So it was worth working it out.

To communicate I conceded this, I looked away and took another sip of coffee.

I swallowed and then didn’t have my cup in my hand anymore.

This was because Boone apparently read my nonverbal concession, took the mug away, set it aside, his with it, and then he had his back to the headboard, and I was curled in his lap and locked there with his arms.

Man, he was good.

And man, it felt good, being locked in Boone’s arms.

“So now we’re gonna talk,” he declared.

We’d been talking.

But I caught his drift.

“I do have a defense,” I began. “Considering not every day does a girl have some sex offender bent on destroying her life in the near term, and in the long term altering it forever, shot dead on her back deck. And you know the other extenuating factors of the day. But that does not negate the fact I went off half-cocked and didn’t think about where you were at about all that, or where Smithie needed to be with all of that.”

“I appreciate that, honey,” he murmured. “But you were right. I did it in the wrong order. I should have come to you and then you could have told Smithie.”

Okay, here was the hard part.

Well.

Whatever.

We were talking, we’d both screwed up, we were trying to fix that, and not being forthcoming was not the way to do it.

So, since there was nothing for it, I gave it to him.

“I would never have told Smithie, only partly because I knew he’d do what he did, but mostly because I didn’t want him worried about me.”

“Right,” he murmured.

“So, you know, obviously…” ugh, this was not easy, “if something bad happened with all that, that would have been on me.”

His murmured, “Right,” that time came slower.

But it also gave firm indication that was the end of that.

And really, that might have been the best of all of this (outside sitting in Boone’s lap, and of course, Boone being there at all) because Boone didn’t belabor it.

I said it. He heard it. He didn’t push it or dig in about it, rubbing it in where I’d gone wrong.

He let it go.

So I let out a breath.

“Okay then, you gave me that,” he said, but he wasn’t done. “I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“Boone—”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“You’re not responsible for what happened.”

“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

Whoa, there.

I shut up and took him in.

“And I walked out on you because I failed you, and thinkin’ on it, for too fuckin’ long, I get where that was coming from because I failed Jeb too.”

Oh boy.

There it was.

“Stop it,” I whispered.

“I failed him.”

“We can talk about that later. But let’s get this straight now, you didn’t fail me.”

“Ryn—”

I put my hand over his mouth and repeated, “Stop it.”

He settled in.

I took my hand from his mouth and asked, “You wanna know what I’ve really been thinking about these last days?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been thinking that when I feel something huge, I go off, riding that feeling wherever it takes me, and I say shit and do shit that I really should not. So getting to the meat of the matter right here, right now, with you and me, in order not to fuck us up again, I’ll try to do my best not to do that again. But maybe we should have some kind of other-times safe word where, if I start to do that, you can say that word, it’ll trip a switch, and I’ll take a beat and maybe not fuck shit up so badly.”

“You were right to be angry,” he noted.

“Thanks for that, but I took it too far,” I replied.

He gathered me closer, falling to his side, so I was half on the pillows, half on the bed, and Boone was half on me.

And super close.

Hmm…nice.

“You gave me that, I’ll try to curb the drama, and pull back on the pride. And to do that, I’ll get a safe word too,” he said.

“Okay,” I whispered, because with him on me, in my bed, his face that close, and us in full-blown making-up mode, I was losing interest in our conversation and hankering to move from the verbal making-up part to the physical one.

Still.

There were important things left unsaid.

“When you get in a mood, you interrupt me a lot,” I shared.

“Safe word on that too, baby.”

Well, that was easy.

I moved to the hard part.

“We should probably talk about Jeb,” I noted cautiously.

“And we should probably talk about how hard you fight letting yourself have an honest reaction when that reaction is something you apparently consider weak, like crying, and the fact you get embarrassed by it when you do,” he returned.

Um…

“Later,” I mumbled.

“Yeah,” he murmured, his eyes dropping to my mouth.

Oh yeah.

“We good?” he asked my mouth.

He was going to kiss me, so to my way of thinking, we were way good.

“Yeah, baby,” I answered.

He slanted his head and kissed me.

It was definitely a make-up kiss, deep, long, wet, awesome.

Then he broke that and touched his mouth to mine briefly before he took it again in a we’re-about-to-go-at-it kiss that was harder, deeper, longer, wetter and way, way more awesome.

We made out like that for a good, happy while before Boone broke our connection and ordered, “Panties off, Ryn.”

Okay.

Yeah.

Every inch of skin covered by my panties, specifically the internal parts, quivered.

Looking into his eyes, I shoved down my panties and wheeled them off so they were hanging on the top of my foot.

I kicked them to the floor.

The second they were gone, Boone moved.

He also moved me.

And he did it in a way that I was panting when he was done.

This being, he grasped my hips and adjusted me so I was righted in the bed, head to the pillows.

“Raise your arms, press your palms to the headboard and open your legs,” he commanded.

Oh God.

“Boone,” I whispered.