“I’ve known Candace a while, but we were never in a relationship. It was just…” He halts, appearing uncomfortable.
“Sex,” I finish for him.
He squeezes his eyes shut and his expression conveys he really doesn’t want to be having this conversation. After a few seconds opens his eyes. “Yeah, but it’s done, Sophie. You have nothing to worry about.”
Except for the fact that you had sexual relations with a whore. I still don’t feel very good about being with a guy who had sex with someone like her. Though there probably aren’t many guys who wouldn’t have sex with her. Hell, there probably aren’t very many who haven’t had sex with girls like her.
“Sophie,” he takes my hand, “I’m not the kind of guy you need to worry about. I’d never hurt you.”
I open my mouth to speak but stop. I can’t say it. I don’t even know why I started. I shake my head. “Never mind.”
He scoots close. “No. Say it. I need to know what you’re thinking.”
I open my mouth then close it again and take a large sip of my whiskey. “I can’t.”
“Well, you have to because I won’t let this go until you say it.”
“I don’t want to ruin this.” I wave around at the beautiful setting.
“You won’t ruin it,” he insists. “Sophie, I want you to always be honest with me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
I stare into his eyes seeking confirmation that I can indeed say anything to him and that he’ll understand. “She and I are nothing alike. If that’s the sort of thing you go for, how can you possibly be attracted to me?”
“Sophie that’s not the sort of thing I go for. She was just… available.”
The word “available” causes me to flinch. Again, I’m not sure if his honesty makes me feel better or worse. This conversation quickly reminds me that Rooter is indeed human and not the perfect being I’ve often dreamed him up to be. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”
“Sophie, you must believe me.” The look in his eyes is earnest. “I have never wanted anyone the way I want you. Tonight is a case in point. I have never dated. Ever. You make me want things I’ve never wanted.”
This revelation rocks me to the core. He must be in his mid-twenties and he’s never dated? How is that even possible? “Never dated? How old are you?”
“Twenty five, and no, not even in high school.”
“How do you go twenty five years without dating?” I ask skeptically.
“I was never interested in relationships,” he answers frankly.
“Oh.” He was only interested in sex. I take another swig and drain the glass.
“Like I said, you make me want things I’ve never wanted. I want to date you.” He shakes his head. “No. I want to make you mine.”
My pulse quickens. “Why me?”
“Because you are unlike anyone I have ever met. You’re everything I never knew I always wanted. And I knew it the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
Chapter 14
Last First Kiss
I gasp, unable to breathe. Did he really say that or has the whiskey already gone to my head causing me to hallucinate? In all the times I’ve fantasized about being with Rooter, not once in my wildest dreams did he ever say anything as amazing as those words. I think I just fell in love.
“I feel the same way,” I admit, breathless.
Rooter leans in and gazes into my eyes so deep I’m sure he can see my soul. Part of me wants to shrink away and hide while the other wants for him to never look away. The moment he opens his mouth to speak my stomach growls wildly, and we burst into hysterics.
“Hungry?”
“Starved.”
“Let’s order.”
I glance at the menu in front of me and I’m reminded how much he knows about me. This is my chance to learn some things about him. I waver between ordering and asking the question I’ve been longing to get the answer to. When my stomach growls again, I nod and Rooter waves at woman in the house.
After ordering—lasagna for me, steak for him—I ask the burning question. “It occurs to me I’m on a date with a guy whose name I don’t know.”
“You know my name.” He pulls his eyebrows together.
“Your real name.”
“You know my real name.”
My brow furrows. “You were born with that name?”
He chuckles. “What? You don’t like it?”
“Of course I do. I just… assumed it was a road name.”
“You’re right. It isn’t my birth name. But it is my real name.” Rooter must sense my confusion because he continues before I can ask him to clarify. “Birth names are chosen for us before we figure out who we are. Our road names are chosen when we become men. After we learn who we are.”
“So, your road name is based on who you really are?” This confuses me more. What the hell could “Rooter” stand for? It’s not even a word in the English dictionary.
He laughs. “My road name was chosen for me by Bear, my best friend. You’ve met him.”
“Does it have a meaning?”
He pauses, hesitant. “It does.”
“Which is?”
He wags his index finger at me. “Privileged information which you must earn.”
“Seriously?”
“Dead serious.”
His tone infers he’s not going to budge on the topic which only serves to make me even more curious. I go back to the original question. “Then at least tell me your birth name.”
“Jace Alexander Russo.”
Sexy. I smile. “I like it. You look like a Jace.”
Rooter shifts in his seat. He looks concerned. “You like Jace better than Rooter?”
“No.” It isn’t a lie. I bite my bottom lip and smile. “I think both suit you well.”
“Good, because no one calls me Jace.”
“Not even your parents?”
Rooter shakes his head. “It took a while for my mom to accept the change, but I’ve gone by Rooter for years now.”
I’d love to change my name. Sophia is such an old lady name. When I was younger, the kids at school used to tease me. In middle school, I tried to get my friends to call me by my middle name, Noelle, but they didn’t take to it.
By the time we’ve finished our meal, I’ve learned that Thirty Seconds To Mars is Rooter’s favorite band, and he prefers rock or rap music, though he likes some top forty stuff. His favorite color is gray, his mother’s name is Camilla, his parents are still happily married, and he has two uncles, both of whom are members of the club, and one aunt named Pam; the woman waiting on us tonight. In fact, this house belongs to her. Rooter spends a lot of his free time here at the beach to “get away from all the noise.”
Rooter stands from the table and extends his hand. “Take a walk with me?”
“I’d love to.” I smile.
We walk down a set of white wooden stairs to the beach. The wind has picked up and the air off of the lake is cool. I’ll be glad I have the jacket for the ride home.
Rooter looks at my hand in his. “You have the softest hands.”
I blush and shake my head. He has to be lying. They’re rather manly if you ask me; big with long fingers. I’ve always been self-conscious about them.
“You don’t take compliments very well.”
He’s right. My mother used to always say I was too masculine. She wanted a ballerina and a pianist. I was neither, and she made her displeasure very well known.
“Where’d you go just then?” Rooter asks.
We’ve stopped walking though I’m not sure when that happened. “Nowhere I want to be.”
We stroll again. “I’m a fantastic listener. You can talk to me about the things you think about. Your memories.”
“I don’t want to talk about them,” I admit. “I don’t want to think about them, although I do.”
“I respect that. I’m just throwing it out there so you know you can if you ever want to.”
“
Thanks.” I peer at him with a diminutive smile. “So, tell me more about yourself. When did you join the club?”
His face glistens from the sunlight. He wears a soft, thoughtful expression. “My pop started the club with his best friend, Wrench, when they were nineteen, so it’s been a part of my life forever. I started working for them at eighteen and became an official member when I turned twenty one.”
“Growing up, did you always want to be a member?”
“Off and on. There were times when I thought it was more trouble than it was worth, but those guys are my family, so I suppose it was inevitable.”
“Was there anything else you wanted to do?” I stop walking and pick up a neat, multicolored rock with my free hand and put it in my pocket. A memento of our first date. We move again.
“Not really. I always wanted to run the shop with my pop.” Rooter’s family owns a custom bike shop in Halsey. They’re fairly well known. They draw bikers from states as far away as Colorado. “Everything I know I learned from him and Wrench.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
Rooter stops walking and looks me in the eye. “Sophie, you don’t have to ask if you can ask me things,” he murmurs. “Just ask. I’ll tell you anything I can.”
“Your shop is successful. Makes a lot of money. Why get involved in other… bad things?”
“It’s not exactly what it seems. All we’ve really done is fight to keep drug dealers and prostitution out of Halsey. That was the reason for the club’s inception. To do what the cops can’t do. What they don’t have the balls to do. But they can’t possibly have the locals knowing we’re doing their job better than they are, so they have the media spin it a different way to make their tiny little dicks look bigger.”
“But you even said you do bad things. It was why you wanted me to stay away from you.”
“Sophie, to keep this town safe, we get involved in very risky shit with extremely dangerous people on a regular basis. Anyone who is involved with us is a target. Being with me means wearing a bulls-eye. That’s why I was reluctant to get involved with you.”
“But you changed your mind.”
“I still think this is dangerous, but I can’t not be with you.”
My breath catches in my throat. “I can’t not be with you either.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t get your interest in me at all. Explain it to me.”
I don’t have a clue how to explain it to him, so I use his words. “You make me feel something I’ve never felt.”
“What’s that?”
“Safe.”
He shakes his head and laughs.
“What’s funny?”
“I just told you that being with me could be potentially dangerous to your health and you feel safe?”
“Rooter, I’ve always felt safe around you.”
He rests his forehead against mine. “I will always do everything in my power to make sure no one ever hurts you.”
“I believe you,” I whisper.
Rooter places his hands gently on the sides of my face and spreads his legs to lower his stance. “You can always believe in me Sophie,” he declares. “You’ve been through so much. You’ve been hurt and mistreated so badly by those who were supposed to love you. I promise you I’ll never hurt you.”
“I hope not,” I murmur without meaning to.
Rooter’s face is mere inches away from mine. His tender hands radiate warmth. I search his eyes and they convey a silent vow. This man will never hurt me. I’ve believed it all along. He is my protector. The one I’ve been waiting my entire life for. Overwhelmed by such powerful emotions, a tear escapes my right eye. He catches it with his thumb.
“You are safe with me.”
He leans in so slowly that every molecule of my being begins to ache. My pulse races, my breathing has stopped, and I’m frozen. He’s well aware of what he’s doing to me. It’s as if he takes pleasure in torturing me this way.
He shifts his head a bit to the right and just as his lips are about to touch mine and put an end to my agony, he speaks. “Open your eyes.”
I obey and find him staring intently at me with smoldering brown eyes.
“Once I kiss you, you’re mine, Sophie. Do you want to be mine?”
“I’ve never wanted anything more.”
Rooter finally closes the tiny gap between us and places his lips on mine. They’re warm and soft, precisely as I remembered, only this time they move against mine with purpose and intensity. He kisses my top lip and then my bottom, running his tongue along it, coaxing me to open for him.
All of a sudden I’m nervous. He’s surely kissed a lot of girls. He intends to be my best—and I’m sure he will be—but what if I don’t live up to his expectations? I haven’t kissed very many guys. When he gently nips my lower lip, I part my lips and silently pray he won’t be disappointed in me.
The instant our tongues meet, he moans. It’s the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard. Rooter’s in total control of the kiss. He kisses me expertly and passionately, doing just what he said he’d do; kisses me like no other ever has or likely ever will. I let out a desperate moan of my own. His tongue is smooth as it explores my mouth. Our kiss vacillates between fervent and tender, but his lips never part from mine. My knees become weak and I wrap my arms around his waist for stability. The kiss becomes slower and softer before he gradually pulls away. For the first time in my life, I know what it’s like to be thoroughly kissed by a man.
His hands stay on my face as we stare into each other’s eyes. “Oh my,” is all I can say.
“Even better than I imagined.” He smiles and strokes my cheeks with his thumbs.
“Best first kiss ever.”
“Your last first kiss.” His voice is cloaked with determination.
I pull my phone out of my back pocket, turn on the camera and hand it to Rooter. “I want to record this moment.”
Rooter holds the phone out and takes two pictures; one of us smiling and another of us kissing. After he’s done, he texts them to his phone.
“Good first date?” He asks as we sit in the sand staring out at the sparkling water, my back against his chest.
“My last first date.”
He chuckles and kisses the side of my head. “Good answer.”
Chapter 15
The Tease
I’m still on a high from last night’s date with Rooter. Ryan and I are both on break sharing a plate of sirloin tips and rice topped with an oriental sesame vinaigrette. I’ve just finished telling him all about the date. “It was perfect, Ry.”
“Damn, for someone who’s never dated, he sure does it well.”
“Right?” I chuckle and take a bite of the steak, savoring the flavor. If it wasn’t for Randy feeding me gourmet meals for free on work nights, I’d probably be on a ramen noodle diet.
“Sounds like he knows quite a bit more about you than you thought.”
“Yeah. Part of me would be glad if he already knows all my shit, but the other part—not knowing exactly what he knows—is somewhat embarrassed by it.”
Ryan is hogging the rice like he always does so I scrape some to my side of the plate.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of, babe.” He squeezes the top of my knee. “A lot of really fucked up stuff happened to you and none of it was your fault.”
“I don’t want him to think I’m damaged or broken because of it.”
Nearly everyone who knows my story—and few do—thinks of me that way. Including Miranda and her parents when they were alive. It’s part of the reason she treats me the way she does. Miranda wants to control what I do and who I do it with so no one can hurt me again. She thinks being mentally and physically abused by my mom—the only family I’ve ever known—has left me emotionally inept. She thinks I tend to let the wrong people in push the right people out; that I’m not a good judge of character. Perhaps she’s right, but I’ll never admit it.
“I doubt he thinks of you that way.”
; “It worries me because I want him to see me when he looks at me, not my past.”
“That might be tough, Soph. Our pasts are a part of who we are, good and bad.”
That’s what I know and I don’t like it.
“Take me for instance,” he continues. “My father stopped talking to me for three years after I came out. It’s why I have a hard time living out in the open as a gay man.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that.”
The sadness in Ryan eyes is overwhelming and my heart breaks for him. My issues with my mother and a lack of a father help me to understand what that derision must have felt like for him.
“It’s why Seth did what he did,” he continues. “I wasn’t comfortable living life together out in the open. He couldn’t take it anymore.”
It’s my turn to comfort him. I lean my head against his shoulder and hold his hand. “I’m so sorry, babe.”
He shrugs and wipes a stray tear from his cheek with his sleeve. “Nothing I can do to change it now. It’s a lesson learned. That’s all we can do. Learn and grow through the pain.”
I believe in soulmates. I always have. But I believe there are many kinds of them; not just romantic. Ryan is one of mine. He and I are kindred spirits. We understand and have empathy for each other’s pain. In the short time I’ve come to know Ryan, he’s become a positive, solid force in my life. When I’m down, he raises me up. When I’m happy, he shares in my joy. I’m eternally grateful he has come into my life.
“I love you,” I admit for the first time, knowing he’ll understand my meaning.
“I love you, too, babe.”
When I pull up, Rooter is standing in my driveway. My stomach does a little flip at the sight of him. He opens my door and helps me out of the car.
“Hi,” he murmurs and kisses me. His lips are light as a feather against mine giving me goosebumps.
“Hi.” I beam at him.
“How was work?” His thumb massages the top of my hand in gentle strokes.
“Good. Made a ton in tips.” Hand in hand, we walk to my front door, my eyes on him the entire way. “Want to come in?” I ask once we reach my door.
Rooter (Double H Romance) Page 12