Don't Go Faking My Heart (Sweet as Sugar Maple, #4)

by Kate Watson

I want to sweep every last item from this table and pull her across it and kiss her until our souls merge.

I've thrown on a T-shirt that fits a little closer than I normally like, and I'm wearing jeans Ash once whistled at me for wearing.

"You can have anything you want on the house, Loverboy! We're packed." "That busy, huh?" "I haven't peed since we opened." "Not sure I needed to know that."

“What if they’re human?” “Worse.” She grabs my hand. The one with the scar. “Not worse. Human. I can handle rooting for humans who try and fail and try again if those humans can handle having a crazy superfan who paints her face and screams too loudly for them to win the whole time.”

My motives were iffy, but my instinct was spot on. He wasn't a safe person to share my secrets with.

You're the one who blocked me!" “You're right, I did," I tell him. "And I did it because I think I'm so special. You're toxic, bro. Blocking you is like blocking nerve gas. Good for one's health. Recommended by doctors everywhere."

"You just did." "What? No. That's not what I meant. You always read into things." "Philip, you mentioned psychiatrists." "What does that have to do with anything?" "You're gaslighting me right now."

We've already turned around and are going back up the stairs to the bar when a hand grabs my arm. Hard. "Hey!" I yell at Philip, who pulls me back. In a flash, Rusty wheels around and drives his fist into Philip's face. Philip releases me and drops like a rock.

He clutches his face, and blood drips through his fingers. "You broke my nose!" "Don't you ever touch her again." "I'll sue you for this. I'll take everything!" "Yet he’s the one who has a witness," Patty says. "And I saw a sniveling weasel try to assault a woman⁠—" "I didn't assault her!" "And her brave boyfriend defended her," Patty says.

"Brother, I'm an off duty cop, and you parked right in front of me." He sniffs a laugh. "Who tries to drive drunk parked next to a cop car?"

I smile. "I forgot Philip was even there. Isn't that bizarre? We started joking around, and the weight of his presence vanished. But not only his presence. It's like the weight of our past disappeared. Because I was with you."

"It's not weird or bizarre," he says. "I could forget my own name when I'm with you." "My word, Farm Boy," I whisper. "Could you get any smoother?"

There is only Rusty and me. Nothing else matters. Nothing else exists. Only us.

Protest all you want. That bathroom has your name written all over it. Geez Louise. A girl writes her name on the mirror in lipstick one time… You wrote it twelve times in the shape of a heart around my side of the mirror.

"How did you end up in an ice bath with him and not see his abs?" "I thought it was a hot tub and basically froze to death." "It's May in the South, sugar."

🤣

my dad has all the markers of actual narcissistic personality disorder, while Philip has more anti-social traits. I don't know what any of that means, but I know I'm tired of wanting crappy men to love me.

I would have given her my best for five seconds and broken apart so as not to show all my cards. She memorized the deck and then changed the game completely.

"Ashley Jane. What am I gonna do with you?" "Maybe you should take seven minutes and figure it out."

She's like Lasik for my soul. There was a universe of beauty at my fingertips that I couldn't access. For my whole life, I was sketching vistas in charcoal without knowing watercolors existed. I know they exist now.

"Because I was acting." "Acting like what, exactly?" I stroke her cheek gently with my thumb, wiping away the memory of her tears. "Like I wasn't completely in love with you."

"I love the way you tell me the things I do that you love." "Then I should tell you something else," I say. I lean across the table and crook my finger toward her until she's leaning across the table, too. I nudge my nose softly against hers. "I love the way you smell." I rub my nose against her neck. "I love the way you feel." Over her jaw. "I love the way you think." I kiss her temple. "And I love the way you taste." And with that, my lips find hers in a kiss both gentle and earnest.

"I love how you do that," I say. "What, hug your arm like a sloth hugging a tree?" "Yeah, that."

"Because Greg called me a few days ago and threatened to pull me apart like string cheese if I hurt his baby girl."

“If you’re not safe to fall with the people you’ve caught, who are you safe to fall with?”

"Sweet girl, you may not be the daughter of my flesh, but you are the daughter of my heart and soul. You're everything I ever wanted. Someone to talk Star Trek and comic books with? Someone to watch every season of Psych with? Someone who laughs at my dad jokes and listens to my stories like you actually care? How did I get so lucky to be your dad?"

😭

I might be two thousand miles from home, but there aren't many forces in the world more powerful than knowing your dad loves you.

"Farm Boy, we have the kind of love that could last the ages. We could be the couple everyone else holds up as their ideal. Girls would turn down men who don't look at them the way you look at me. Guys would hold out for a girl who's as obsessed with them as I am with you. We are it.

Her eyes widen and darken at the same time. "What are you doing?" "What I should have done a year ago," I say. I grab her around the waist, pull her tight, and kiss her. I kiss the ever-loving heck out of her.

"Give momma some waffles?" I ask. She giggles. "What? That was a great line!"

“I’m not sure what’s going on anymore. Are you talking me out of the paper bag or into it?”

She narrows her eyes. "Your sound argument is not wanted here. This is a logic-free zone, thank you very much."

He shakes his head. "I'm not kidding about how nice they are. You should want to see them a lot more than you do." "But I love all of you. I'm not fixated on your body." "I want you to fixate a little on my body."

"It's not your fault that your smoking hot body can't compete with your scorchingly hot soul."

Rusty kisses me into a coma of want and happiness and then revives me with more kisses.

He’s unkempt, but not so much as to stand out. In fact, it's the opposite. There's no other way to describe it. His look, his very body language is calculated to deter attention. His movements scream nothing to see here.

"Wait, you're Patty?" "You thought I was a woman, too?" "No, Ash already told me you're a guy. It's just … Patty's a bartender." "Sure am.” "You don't look like a bartender." He holds his hands out. "What do I look like?" Trouble.