Finally, he spoke.

“You know, just sayin’, you said this shit to me like you just said it to me rather than yellin’ at my ass until the only option I have to stop you from yellin’ is to tap your ass, it might have penetrated about ten months ago.”

Something about that made me laugh. Maybe because it was funny.

And there was something about this that I liked. And there was no maybe about the fact that it not only seemed he listened to me, but he heard me and he got me.

And I liked that.

When I quit laughing, Ren was smiling down at me.

My heart skipped a beat.

I didn’t get many of those, seeing as we fought all the time and when we weren’t his mouth was engaged with doing other things.

But just like now, when I did get a smile from Ren Zano, it hit straight to the heart of me.

His smile downgraded to a grin and his eyes moved over my face, something happening in them I didn’t quite get. But whatever it was seemed to mean something. It looked like he was about to say something, but he thought better of it and kept quiet.

I didn’t.

“I dig the mountains, but me and the boys shot up here without provisions and I’ve got shit to do at home, so it might be time to get a move on.”

“Right,” he replied. “There’s a drugstore across the street. I’ll go over, get toothbrushes and shit. There’s also a coffee shop down the street. You wanna make coffee in that little pot on the dresser or you want me to pick you up a real coffee?”

I stared up at him.

We’d never done anything like this, acting semi-normal and not always crazy.

I was a little stunned he could be thoughtful.

No. That wasn’t true. I knew he was the kind of guy who could to be that way. He often demonstrated thoughtful tendencies. Like when I’d show at his house in the wee hours after a bartending shift, he’d ask me if I’d eaten and I’d find he’d made a batch of spaghetti sauce or some cannelloni and he’d heat it up to feed me. And I knew he probably didn’t make that just for himself, but also preparing to feed me later.

Shit like that.

But everybody had to eat, so going out of his way to be thoughtful? I’d never seen that. Mostly because I’d never given him the chance.

Except last Christmas, when he’d been really thoughtful.

So maybe I wasn’t staring up at him stunned because he was being thoughtful.

Maybe I was doing it because this demonstration of further thoughtfulness moved me.

Shit.

“I, uh…” I started and stopped since it took me a bit to shake it off, how nice it felt to be this way with Ren. But I managed it and kept going. “We’ll start with coffee here and get a real one for the trip home. But a toothbrush wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Gotcha,” he muttered, dipping close to touch his lips to mine, and he did this for no reason. Something else he’d never done. Then he pulled away, rolled off me and exited the bed. He yanked the covers over me after he did (again, thoughtful) and proceeded dressing.

It was then I lost the ability to think about anything as I watched Ren move, going from naked to dressed, so I laid there and let myself enjoy the fullness of that (as well as the heat it caused in me). The show was so good, I was rerunning certain parts of it in my head when it was over and this made me an unmoving target when Ren came back to the bed. He hooked a hand around the back of my neck, pulled me up and again touched his mouth to mine.

“Back in a few,” he murmured. He gave me a small grin that warmed his eyes in a way that ratcheted up that heat in me, then he walked to and through the door.

I stared at the door for a good long while.

Then the name he’d murmured in the back of my hair over a year before… a name he murmured while we were in bed, naked, he was holding me and he was asleep… a name that wasn’t mine… came back to me.

And it reminded me this wasn’t real.

I truly believed Ren wanted it to be.

But I knew it was never going to be, not in the way I needed it to be.

So I shoved thoughts of his warmth and thoughtfulness aside, jumped from the bed and started coffee.

I was in the shower when he returned and I knew he returned when he joined me in the shower.

Me wet and soapy, Ren wet and naked meant things happened, and those things included me getting an against-the-tiles-in-the-bathroom-of-a-moderately-priced-motel-in-a-small-Colorado-mountain-town orgasm.

Like every orgasm Ren gave me (yes, I said “every”, and that is no lie), it was freaking righteous.

I was in my bra and undies, Ren in his boxers. We were both at the small sink brushing our teeth while I braced myself against liking another heretofore unknown intimacy when Ren gave me the ammunition to forever put the “us” he wanted us to be to rest.

He did this by spitting out foam, rinsing and catching my eyes in the mirror after he wiped his mouth with a towel.

Then he said, “Got Ava and Stark’s wedding invitation. I know you’re in the wedding party but I’m gonna take you.”

I still had my brush in my mouth, but my eyes locked to his as my insides froze stone-cold.

I forced myself out of the freeze, pulled the brush out of my mouth and asked through foam, “Are you shitting me?”

His brows shot together and he answered, “No.”

I leaned forward, spit but did not rinse. I spoke again after I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth and my words came out biting.

“Tell me you’re shitting me,” I demanded.

He rocked back and crossed his arms on his chest, murmuring in a way I knew he was annoyed and didn’t expect an answer, “Jesus, what’s up your ass now?”

He was.

He was totally fucking shitting me.

And that burned through me. Not with anger.

With pain.

So much of it, my voice was actually weak—fuck me, weak—when I answered, “What’s up my ass, Ren, is that you just asked me to go with you to the wedding of the woman you’re in love with. That,” my voice—goddamn it!—broke on that word, but I kept going, “is what’s up my ass.”