Page 115 of Faking Forever
“I noticed.” His dry voice teased another easy grin from her.
“And I find it overwhelming when everybody is always talking. Sometimes it seems like people talk just for the sake of it, you know? Like they’re afraid of the silence. And too often, I also find that the ones who talk the most have the least to say.”
“Which one am I?” he asked curiously.
He’d wanted access to that guarded mind and he was getting it in spades now. He was finding these uninhibited, animated confidences both charming and incredibly fascinating.
“You?” His question stopped her dead, as she tilted her head and stared at him consideringly. “Neither. You talk only when you have something to say. Granted, you often have a lot to say, but it’s never meaningless. I always thought—still do, of course—that you’re one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.”
She thought that? Seriously?
“Why?” The question slipped out before he could think better of it.
“Why? God, Smith.” She shook her head helplessly. “You’reso-soengagingand easy to be around. You attract people. Everybody in your immediate radius is drawn to you, wants to talk to you, be noticed by you. You have more natural charisma and magnetism than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“You grew up in a house full of dour arseholes,” he muttered, abashed, his cheeks going hot with embarrassment. “The bar is extremely low.”
Instead of taking offence as he’d half expected her to, she laughed, the sound bubbly.
“True, true. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons I was so drawn to you. Your openness. You didn’t feel the need to hide what you were feeling from me. And I found that so refreshing. It was only after we married that things went a little pear-shaped. You closed yourself off from me. I can’t even blame you for that. I know why you did it.”
“Self-defense,” he told her. “You were so distant and after the miscarriage, I needed to put up a few shields of my own.”
“I did so much damage,” she whispered mournfully, hanging her head.
“No, sweetheart. You were protecting yourself, and if I hadn’t had my head shoved so far up my own arse, I would have known that. I would have worked at earning your trust and lowering your defenses, instead of putting up my own.”
“But…”
“You’re breaking your no wallowing rule, Kenna,” he warned and she smiled at him through shimmering tears.
“I wasn’t sure we were still adhering to that one,” she confessed with a laugh.
“It’s a good rule. I vote we keep it.”
“Agreed.”
He smiled at her, the intensity of his joy at just being here with her was a little unnerving. He was naturally concerned that they were opening themselves up to a lot more pain, but he was helpless to deny them this opportunity at a?—
What?
A fresh start?
Or maybe a graceful ending?
Neither of those felt right.
And Smith was the one who had urged her not to label this. Not when it felt so impossibly fragile.
Like her no wallowing rule, it was good advice and he should probably stick to it.
Tina raised a speculative brow when Smith and Kenny walked into her home together later that afternoon. Thankfully, she did not immediately comment on the unexpected development.
Kenny had no doubt that there would be questions later, but for now the other woman’s tact felt like a reprieve.
“Smith, you can join Harris and Greyson in the kitchen,” Tina said.
She waved a hand toward where the Chapman brothers were both lounging around on bar stools next to the marbled island that divided the dining and living areas of the large open-plan space from the kitchen.
