A Perfect Mistake (10 page)

Criminy, did he have
to be so damn cute? I brushed at my eyes, gaining control of myself.
I’d had so much practice in pushing thoughts, fears, regrets
and agony away for many months. My voice tight, I said. “I
don’t care if men cry. That doesn’t bother me.” My
cell chimed, but I ignored it.

“You don’t
think that’s weak?”

“No, I don’t.
I don’t think that’s weak at all. I think that’s
human. I’d be worried if a guy didn’t cry at the
appropriate time. I would think that was…off.” I’d
just recently seen a man cry, and it was a humbling experience. The
memory of that day was burned in my head, but I pushed it back into
the box I didn’t want to keep open too long.

“How about if
we cry at sappy movies?” he asked, so sincere, as if my answer
was really important to him.

I couldn’t
help it. I smiled at him and he smiled back at me. “I think
that’s very sweet.”

He made a face and
rolled his eyes. “Really. And of course that’s what guys
want to be known as, sweet.”

I slicked some
moisture away from his eye with my thumb and he reached up and
captured my hand, his palm against the back and his thumb massaging
my palm. I got momentarily distracted by his touch and the soft look
in his eyes. “Do you cry at sappy movies?”

“Ummm, taking
the fifth,” he mumbled, giving me a variation of that Outlaw
grin, just an upturn of one side of his mouth. It was just as sexy.

His thumb continued
rubbing against my palm, then moved down my wrist, all his fingers
now in play.

“I’m a
girl, so I get to cry whenever I want,” I said softly. I’d
shed a lot of tears this past year.

He chuckled. “Yeah,
that’s a good girl perk. Another one is being able to throw
like a girl,” he said. “Then you don’t get ribbed
for it.”

“Why, were you
ribbed for throwing like a girl?”

He stopped rubbing
and huffed out. “What? No. I was just making an observation. I
throw like a man. Although, if I had to throw right now, I’d
probably throw like a girl.”

I laughed and there
went that Outlaw grin again.

“Wow, I didn’t
know having a fever and a fucking headache could be so much fun.”

“What other
things do you like about women, Boone?” I totally knew this
wasn’t fair. This fever had loosened up his tongue. At least, I
thought it had. For all I knew, Boone would be this open, this
straightforward, even without a fever burning up his brain.

He scrunched up his
face, his eyes going wary. “Is this a trick question? You know
I’m delirious. Right?”

“It’s
not a trick question.”

“Where to
start. Girls are so soft. I love that, and when they touch you, it
feels so good. They smell good, even if they do leave their
unmentionables all over the bathroom, so a guy can’t pee
without looking at bras and panties.”

“I would think
guys would like that.”

“We do. We
just have to huff about it. Makes us feel better,” he said. He
closed his eyes and his voice softened and my heart skipped a beat.
“Then it’s the complexity. Sometimes you think what you
said was, like, easy and straightforward and totally logical. But,
then a woman will look at you and
bam
you realize you’re pissing her off.”

My heart melted,
just dissolved into a gooey pool in my chest. “And, that makes
you think, ‘What the hell did I say?’ But then you get
caught up in how her eyes look all cinnamony and stormy. Then, even
though you’re a guy, you want to talk to her and either make
her more pissed off so you can absorb all that energy she’s
generating, or you want to just kiss her mouth really hard, because
she’s turning you on without even trying.”

This man had charm
in spades. It made me want to take him up on his offer of a date,
because now I wanted to see what Boone was like when I wasn’t
arguing with him or he wasn’t delirious. I had a feeling it was
a bad idea, but I was compelled and intrigued and a little lost in
him right now. Losing my resolve, losing my mind, and maybe a tiny
piece of my heart.

“But I think
the thing I like best about women is they make stuff beautiful.”

“Like what?”

“Like
Christmas,” he said gruffly. “My mom went all out and
made the house look great, even though we were really poor. She would
also bake cakes we liked for our birthday. She always made three
separate cakes, and each one would always be something special to one
of us. She’d snuggle up and read to us. She would paint things
and hang curtains, and make us stuff. It was all beautiful.”

My heart swelled
with each word he said. “She sounds wonderful.”

“She is,”
he said with a smile. It faded and his voice dropped in pitch. “I
went to rehab for her. It was hurting her something terrible to see
me wasted all the time. She would fret. The thing is, she understood
why.”

My heart froze.
Rehab? “When?” I said sharply.

“Right after
the graduation party.”

Oh shit! I closed my
eyes. This was why I hadn’t been able to find him and his
brothers had stonewalled me. He’d been in rehab and they didn’t
want anyone to know, didn’t want Boone to have that stigma on
top of what he already had to deal with. I felt sick with the guilt.
I shouldn’t ask him. It was so personal, so intimate. But I
couldn’t resist. I wanted to know. I’d hungered for
information about Boone all through high school. I wanted to know
what drove him, why he always looked so lost. “Why, Boone?”

He shifted and
looked away, like he didn’t want to say, and I didn’t
pressure him. I shouldn’t have asked. We still barely knew each
other, and why would he trust me with that information?

He nestled his head
into the hollow of my throat and my arms tightened, cuddling him.
“I’m not proud of who I was in high school,” he
said.

“Who is?”

“You should
be,” he said against my throat. “You smell really good,
Verity,” he whispered. “You were something else. Always
so organized. Always so smart.”

“You were
smart, too, Boone.”

“Yeah, but I
never applied myself. I cruised. I was lucky to graduate,” he
said, his voice full of regrets. Then he looked up at me. “Do
you really want to know, darlin’? I guess you can’t think
any worse of me anyway.”

I was galvanized.
The secrets of Boone Outlaw, ready to be told, and all I had to say
was yes.

He’d dropped
my hand a little while ago when he’d slipped out of it, now he
reached up and laced his fingers with mine. Looking down at our
joined hands, he said, “When I was fourteen, I tried to apply
for a paper route. It was a simple job. I really wanted to earn some
extra money to help my ma.”

His voice was full
of emotion, and my whole being was riveted on what he was about to
say.

He took a breath,
and his eyes went moist. “But when I went to apply, the guy
took one look at me and spit at me and told me to get lost. He didn’t
need some thieving bastard’s offspring working for him.”

My arms tightened at
the cruelty of people, thinking about Boone trying to just help out
his momma.

“That hurt me
really bad. I went home and just sat in my room for a long time. I
might
have shed some tears…in a manly way, only, though. My ma came
in, and when she saw me, she made me some hot chocolate. I told her
about the mean guy. She was so mad, but she brought out some paper
and crayons and we drew and colored. I was fourteen years old, acting
like I was five again. That was beautiful, too. That fall I started
high school. And the memory of my dad leaving and what he had done to
us hurt really badly, too. It didn’t take me long to get sucked
into that I-don’t-give-a-damn-crowd. I figured if people
thought I was a good-for-nothing, I might as well prove them right.”

“Oh, Boone.
I’m so sorry. We’ve both been discounted in our lives.
That’s something we have in common.”

He looked up at me,
his eyes earnest. “Did I hurt you, Verity?”

“I thought you
had, sugar, but I was wrong. So wrong. I’m very sorry.”

This was so unfair
to him. Delirium made him say things he probably wouldn’t say
normally, and right now I just didn’t want to be the kind of
person who took advantage of his delirium.

“No. I don’t
do terrible things,” he said. “Just to myself.”

My heart hitched, a
cold wash of dread snaking through me, the realization hitting me
hard. I had somehow misjudged Boone. Had given in to the same
perniciousness as the town and judged him by the old gossip about his
family reputation. God, what had I done?

My anger seemed to
have dissolved. He was a tempting sweetheart. He was sarcastic and
teasing, but I was pretty sure I had made a terrible, horrible
mistake.

The knowledge of it
churned in my gut.

“I didn’t
drug you, Verity. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. It’s just
not me.”

“Shhh,”
I said. “Rest, Boone.”

He closed his eyes
and I held him as he continued to shiver on and off. I was relieved
when his fever finally broke in the early morning. I got him out of
the tub and wiped him down, towel drying his hair. Getting another
two bottles of water into him, I led him back to his bed. He
collapsed against the sheets, and this time he fell to sleep almost
immediately.

I looked down at
him, my arms locked around my midriff, standing in my damp underwear
in Boone’s bedroom, shivering from reaction and an awful fear.
Not sure my legs would continue to hold me, I left Boone’s room
and went into his laundry room. I found a t-shirt and a pair of grey
drawstring shorts on the dryer, so I unhooked my bra and pulled off
my panties and shoved both in to dry. Slipping on the too-big shorts,
I pulled the strings tight. When I put on Boone’s t-shirt, it
came to mid-thigh, and the scent of him clung to the cotton. I leaned
on the dryer, my vision blurring with remorseful tears.

For a full year, I
had blamed Boone.

And now I had to
reassess my assumptions and try to get my head around the truth.

He hadn’t been
the one who had slipped X into my drink at the graduation party and
ruined my life.

If it hadn’t
been Boone, who had it been?

Boone

I woke up slowly,
something heavy against my face, something soft wrapped around me and
smelling so damn good it enticed me to open my eyes.

And, for a minute, I
thought I was dreaming. Verity’s face was close to mine, her
lax hand, fingers buried in my hair, rested from my hairline to my
jaw, her thumb right against my lips. It was as if she wanted to keep
tabs on my fever in case it spiked again in the night.

Through the haze of
my delirium, I remembered her exasperated, concerned,
eyes-closed-turned-on, and guilty face.

The exasperation
made me smile.

The concern turned
me on.

The turned-on
look—yeah, big surprise—turned me on, too.

The guilt made me
forget about all the other stuff. And once again, I wanted to talk.
So this wasn’t just a fever-induced dream.

As usual, my morning
dick, which was always ready to go, grumbled WTF?

I was on top of
her—again. My leg between hers, the cool air on my ass telling
me I had part of me hanging out of the sheet, and she was just
covered by my body, her hip not far away from my eager dick. My upper
chest was snuggled right up against all that stuff that made Verity
female, and enticing, and irresistible.

Here I was all over
her, had been all over her last night. I’d just told her I
wasn’t the type of guy to slip her X, and now I was manhandling
her and not letting her go. But she’d taken care of me,
handling both my fever and my fever-induced mauling.

I felt myself slip a
little bit more into the essence of Holy Mary Verity Fairchild,
looking so young and vulnerable in her sleep. Remnants of the night
before tumbled around inside my still-pounding head. Floating in the
bathtub. Man, I remembered that. I also remembered I was buck naked
and she was in this hot, creamy, golden getup, the bra scooping and
accentuating her full breasts, the scrap of lace that was supposed to
be panties covering her lower region a complete joke.

I’m not sure
what I said, but I remember pulling her under me before the bathtub
thing, not wanting to let her go. Already freaking stark naked.
Geezus. She had been cool and hot against me. I think I kissed her,
too. Yup, and I was pretty sure I’d been naked.

Double fucking
geezus!

I started to cough,
and my chest felt congested.

She started awake,
and I think for a moment she wondered if she was dreaming, too.

“Hey,” I
rasped. “You look fucking beautiful in the morning.”

She blushed, and
instead of removing her hand, she slipped it over my forehead,
brushing back my hair gently. I loved the way she touched me.

“You are a
pain in the ass Boone, sick or well, asleep or awake.”

I smiled. “Is
that affection I hear in your voice?”

She snorted. “No.
It’s exhaustion.”

I laughed, then
started coughing again. She reached behind her and grabbed a bottle
of water and the bottle of pills.

I ignored them for
the time being. “Look, I’m sorry about all this. I just
told you I wasn’t the guy who took away choices and there was a
point where I wouldn’t let you go. Or, was that a
hallucination?”

“No, it wasn’t
a hallucination. You were pretty confident about what you wanted. But
you were delirious, and I knew I could leave if I wanted to. You
would have let me go.”

“But you
didn’t go, even when I stripped down.”

“I couldn’t
leave you alone. And seeing you…um…without clothes?”
She blushed. “Just, wow, Boone.”

My heart swelled and
my ego inflated…a lot. “Thank you, by the way, for
staying with me all night and putting up with my shit.”