Never Say Yes To Your Best Friend (I said Yes)

18. Evilla

Chapter eighteen

Evilla

W ild animals were never meant to be caged, and right now, my heart is going full-on wounded beast in my chest. Mont is giving me that look .

Here it is, THE END in screaming capitals, right when I was still basking in the warm, sunny glow of our beginning.

“You want to break up,” I mutter.

“No!”

Either I’m reading this all wrong, or him saying he wants to go to Scotland on and off for months isn’t code for sorry, I’m not into this anymore, so I’m going to bail on you with Europe as well.

Europe. It seems to be collecting a lot of men who were special to me at one time, men who still are. The land of freaking gone fiancés, dashed boyfriends, and crushed hopes and dreams.

Maybe I should clarify. Would he just bring me to this park bench, in public, if he wasn’t worried about causing a scene? He wouldn’t have picked me up and driven me here just because it’s nice, and he wanted to have a long heart-to-heart about how to make this work. That can’t be what’s going on here. Clarification. Yes, that’s exactly what I need.

I have no idea what is going on with my face right now. It probably has a hot mess car wreck spelled out all over it, whereas Mont’s is dead calm and serious. I don’t see any ulterior motives or guilt looming under the surface, and there’s no apparent relief that he can dump me and move on with his life, either. I can’t read anything in his inscrutable features. It’s highly terrifying. Is he doing the honorable thing and sitting me down to have this conversation?

“Is this you flaking off? If you’re not into it anymore, then there’s no use in pretending. If you want to go off and do your bucket list, then it’s all good. It’s important. I urged you to do that. You wanted to do that. You changed your mind because we…we became a thing. And I don’t want that to interfere with your life.”

“That’s not what I want.” No sigh. No long, dragged-out exasperated mutter. Just warm amber flecks in deep brown eyes and endless patience.

“What you’re really saying is that you want to take a break.”

“No!” He reaches for my hand.

I watch his huge palm engulf mine like it’s happening to someone else. How is it possible that I barely even feel his warmth? I’m sitting right here beside him on this bench at the edge of this busy park on a Saturday morning. There is endless foot traffic, joggers, and people on bikes, rollerblades, and skateboards. The world is still moving, and I seem to be locked into one position.

“As someone who has already been left behind yet survived it, I know I’ll be fine. I’ll heal. You don’t have to worry that this will wreck me.”

He nearly falls off the bench. Like, literally. He slips to the edge and has to catch himself and jerk himself back. It looks like someone losing balance at the edge of a cliff, swaying mid-air for a second, then throwing themselves back into safety.

“What does that mean, Evilla?”

I stare at our joined hands, and I can finally feel the warmth. It spreads up to my face, which heats up hot enough to cook a turkey. “I was engaged before. We dated for a year, and the engagement was fast. It was very public—one of those proposals you can’t say no to because there’s so much pressure. But I did want it. I think. Or the me that I was at the time wanted it. Eight months later, he met someone selling flowers at a farmer’s market. They went to Europe the next day and never came back. He texted me after he landed, breaking things off. I…I have no idea what he’s doing, if he’s still there, or if they even worked out. I don’t want to know. I’ve spent a good long time healing and moving past that.” There’s a feral gleam in Mont’s eyes at my words. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I just didn’t know how without bringing up the conversation about exes, and no one wants to have that. Shit. You do know the night at the restaurant was fake? Yes. Yes, of course, you know.”

Now comes the sigh. It does come, but it’s not an angry sigh or a patronizing one. Just a huge exhale tinged with sadness. That gleam in his eyes? I don’t think it’s because he’s mad at me. It honestly might have more to do with the fact that he would like to throttle my ex. His free hand pinches the back of his neck. Yeah, that’s totally a stress mechanism.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you.” He looks like he’s just been wounded or dropped from an impossible height to crash and crumble on the ground. I can talk about what happened to me without the same level of feeling I once had, but he’s hearing it for the first time, and he looks crushed. “I now understand why this conversation was triggering for you.”

Triggering? Yes, I suppose it was. I immediately thought the worst even though, after I was left behind, I spent so much time trying not to be that person who gets triggered. I don’t want to think people are there one minute and gone the next. That commitment and feelings don’t exist for everyone because they didn’t exist for one man. I never want to lump other people into the same boat that a single experience was born from.

“Evilla?”

“I panicked. I’ve tried to never do that. To never make assumptions or think I know another person’s mind. I know you wouldn’t do that. I know you wouldn’t just leave. I know you don’t want to break up, and still, I was so irrational.”

“This conversation must have been hell for you from the minute I told you my dad just bought a castle and wants me to help him fix it up.”

“I thought that was code for my armpits smell funny. Oh my god. Does my…my, you know, smell funny?”

“No!” I don’t know which one of us is more horrified. “Do my armpits smell funny?” He has the grace to say that with half a laugh, which pulls half a snort from me. At least we can laugh together. That’s a start.

“No. God no. Does it make me weird to say that even if they did, I’d probably like it?”

“Body chemistry is a good thing. And ours is great.”

“But…” There has to be a but coming. I just can’t believe this isn’t a break-up conversation. Mont is loaded, and he has every opportunity in the world available to him. Me? I’m just a girl who comes from a regular family, who is normal in every single way, and whose life revolves around pudding and crab legs. “If I’m just the wreckage of something that maybe could have been good, and you decided you don’t want it, and you’re leaving me behind in order to grow, that’s just how life goes. It’s better to be straight up about it and tell it like it is than to hurt each other and hope we’ll get over it. Unresolved stuff stinks, and no one needs more noxious vapor in their life.”

Mont’s hand lifts off mine and cups my cheek. “Evilla. Please. I’m not trying to tell you that I want to break up. I don’t want time, and I don’t want space. This is just me telling you that my dad bought a castle in Scotland because it’s been my mom’s forever dream to have one. It’s going to take years to fix it up, and it’s something he asked me to do with him as a family. He’s not trying to take me away from here, he’s not trying to divert my interests overseas, and he’s not trying to run my life. He asked. I could always say no.”

“No! Don’t do that! It’s important to you. It’s important to them.”

He’s never looked more intense before. Gah, my body notices how hot intensity looks on him. It’s not the scary intensity from that night in the restaurant when he found out I was an imposter. This is a different kind of focus—a straight-up looking into my soul focus that is reserved just for me.

“I really like you, Evilla. Really, really like you.”

I know what he’s trying to say. Oh my god, he’s dropping the L-bomb without dropping it, all while looking straight into my eyes. Fuck, if this guy isn’t considered a total dreamboat straight out of a romance novel or movie, then I’m not sure who would be.

“I really like you too.” Now I’m dropping the L-bomb.

We’re dropping it together, here in the middle of this park. Could that possibly mean he doesn’t want to go to Europe and never come back? Could it mean he likes my brand of normal? That he wants to keep exploring crab joints together and going for slightly possessed walks on the beach and having really good, steamy, sometimes slightly raunchy, but always amazing sex together? Does it mean he still wants to meet my parents one day, and he wants me to officially meet his parents someday, too?

“I don’t want this to be a summer romance. I do want to go and do this with my parents, but not if leaving is going to hurt you. I thought I could go for a week or two at a time. Not every month, either. And that maybe, if you’re comfortable, you’d like to come with me for a few weeks. Since I’ve met you, my life has been better in every way. I don’t want to leave you, and I don’t want to break up. I want us to keep getting to know each other. I want our relationship to get stronger, and I want our lives to one day mesh into this perfect and amazing path that we’re both so happy to be traveling. I know we talked about ideals, and I want that. I want that with you. All the ideals, no matter how idealistic they are.”

His voice gets thicker and thicker with every word, and I’m over here, my butt going numb from the metal of this bench, my throat getting thick as hell. It’s hardly possible to even swallow around the lump that just formed in it.

“I know why you’d want that,” I rasp hoarsely. “It’s because I’m awesome shit.”

He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t even crack a smile. All I get is more solemness. “That’s right . You are awesome shit. I know you don’t like the word legacy, but if you had to leave one behind, I hope it’s after a lifetime of me because I’d be so honored. That’s getting ahead of ourselves, and it’s probably scary as hell, but that’s my hope. I’m not in this with you just because I think the sex is great, although it is great. Really great. And I’m not in it with you to satisfy my parents. This is real. It’s truly real. I’m not in it to ever walk out on you. We might have come from different places in our lives, but sometimes, that’s just two people lining up perfectly at the crossroads so they can walk a path together.”

“That’s very poetic and metaphorical. You should take up writing.”

His nose wrinkles. “Only if I go to Scotland. I’ll write then. I’ll write you the longest texts you’ve ever seen. Or emails. Shit, I’ll even write letters and send them the second I get there, and I’ll still probably beat them back.” His face says he’s taking a risk when he pulls me into his arms, but I snuggle into him willingly and feel his body relax beside me.

His breath is hot against my forehead before he kisses me there.

“I want my legacy to be a life well spent with you. I want it to be a hundred more flavors of pudding.”

“Only a hundred? Why stop there?”

He laughs, his body shaking me so that it feels like I’m laughing too, even though I’m just grinning this huge, foolish, epic, awesome grin. “I want my legacy to be our legacy. It can be whatever you want. Pudding, crab, friends, family, children or no children, a life here or anywhere else in the world, or a mix of both. It can be anything we dream up, but the one thing I always want it to be is love and kindness. If we have those, as well as compassion and empathy for each other, I think we can do anything.”

I angle into him, shifting my head so we’re looking into each other’s eyes again. “How poetic, Bergamont. I like that. Please don’t ever stop saying kind things and having all these huge hopes and dreams for the future. Also, please don’t ever stop being brave enough to say them and brave enough to share them. And please don’t ever stop buying pudding companies just because you’re intrigued by me. Wait. That’s already done. You don’t have to buy any other ones. I’m already yours.”

His breath hitches. It makes my eyes burn, and holy crabvioli and shakes, the new crab pudding flavor we’re going to launch, and all the other crab inventions in the world, there’s no way I’m going to be able to hold back these tears.

“I won’t ever stop. I promise.”

This is a moment. One of those sweet, fairytale moments people wait a lifetime for. It’s almost perfect. So, of course, I have to try one more time to make him laugh because things that seem too perfect are never that perfect. It’s always best to remember that they’re real life, and imperfection is okay. The way I want to remember this moment is with tears, smiles, and laughter.

“Are you sure my armpits don’t stink, Mr. Montfield?”

“I’m very sure, Miss Cowbush. Not at the moment, at any rate. But I promise I will always, always be into it anyway.”

“Eww.”

“I’m the guy who has a sheep’s butt on his wall. I’m into that.”

My laughter comes, trembling through me until I have to let it out. My heart isn’t a wild thing in a cage anymore. It’s more like a wild thing running free. I don’t have to be afraid, and I don’t have to be triggered. I trust this man. I care about him, and I know he cares about me. Did I freak out? A little. Okay, maybe a lot. And do I still have my insecurities? Yes. But is it Mont’s fault that they’re there? No. We haven’t been doing this for a terribly long time, but I’m safe with him. He’s not going to disappear on me, and he’s not going to hurt me. I believe that now. I believe him.

He and his crazy stuffed bear, the sheep’s butt and the rest, and all of him. He isn’t like anyone else in the world.

“I’m into it too,” I tell him.

“That’s how I knew you were a keeper.”

“It wasn’t the hornet stung nipple?”

“Maybe that, too.”

“Or my pudding genius?” I tease.

“A little of that as well.”

“Or how I’m—”

He cuts me off with a kiss. The most sensual, deep, breath-stealing, tongue-tingling, bone-melting, body-chilling kiss. “All of it,” he says after. “It’s all of it and all of you.”