Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 69524 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69524 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“When I saw you covered in blood…” My breath shudders. “I wasn’t rational. I was consumed by the fear of losing you. If James hadn’t snapped me the fuck out of it, I wouldn’t have been able to help you. I’m sorry.”
“You did help me,” she says with the weight of a promise. “You healed me and took care of me. You are taking care of me. I’m right here, Dane.”
She places her other hand on my cheek, and I forget how to breathe.
“What you went through is terrible. No one should endure that.”
“I couldn’t save her,” I confess. “I didn’t know how to fix her.”
“You were a child.” Her thumb caresses my cheekbone, keeping me grounded to her. “Is that why you became a doctor? So you can fix people?”
I try to scoff. “I’ve told you before that there’s nothing altruistic about my career.”
“But you could, if you wanted to,” she counters quietly. “You have the knowledge to save someone if they’re seriously injured. You saved me.”
I wish that were true. I want to be the man she’s describing, but it’s just not who I am.
“You were never in danger of dying. I just patched you up.”
“But you didn’t know that when you first found me in the Jeep. You said there was a lot of blood. I was unconscious. I know that must’ve been traumatic for you.” She increases the pressure of her hand over my heart. “I’m safe now, Dane. You can breathe.”
Bright, hot hope sparks in my chest.
She said she’s safe with me.
Before, she’d said that she needed protecting from me.
Has something changed her mind?
I scour my recent memories to understand this change in her. Maybe my unnervingly intense apology hadn’t frightened her like I thought. Yesterday afternoon—after she showed me her nightmarish self-portrait—I’d thought she’d been distressed. I overwhelmed her and made her break down sobbing.
No. That can’t be what’s changed her mind, no matter how sincere my apology was.
It must be this: the fact that I’ve told her my worst trauma.
I’ve made myself vulnerable with her.
The power she holds over me should be terrifying, but I want her too badly to care. She’s looking at me with that clear, open gaze for the first time since I brought her to England. She sees me in a way no one else ever has. No one has ever bothered to try.
I obey her gentle urging and draw in a deep breath. Calm settles over me, and my eyes droop closed with a sudden wash of exhaustion.
Her hand turns in mine, pulling away from my chest. My fingers tighten around hers, but she’s not trying to escape me; she’s urging me to follow.
“You should sleep in the bed,” she says. “That chaise can’t be comfortable.”
I look at her with wonder. Is she offering me absolution? Or at least acceptance?
I scarcely dare to hope.
“I don’t want you to pity me.”
“This isn’t pity,” she assures me and climbs into bed, making room for me beside her.
I join her before she can change her mind. She scoots back slightly, and I get the message: I can sleep beside her, but she still wants space.
I can give her that.
For now.
I’ll win her back, no matter how vulnerable I have to make myself. Nothing matters but having her.
“My father likes to drink, too,” she says after we settle down, inches apart. “And he doesn’t care who he hurts when he’s drunk. Usually, it’s verbal cruelty. But it still hurts.” She places her delicate hand over mine again, the lightest contact. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry about Katie.”
Just the sound of someone else saying her name in this house, acknowledging her existence, is enough to make my eyes burn strangely.
“Thank you. I am too.”
Another beat of silence passes before I growl, “You said usually. Has your father ever laid a hand on you?”
“I don’t think we should talk about this.”
“Why not?”
She’s looking at me with that clear-eyed gaze again, and it takes everything in me not to glance away from the power of her guileless stare.
“Because I don’t know what you might do to him if I tell you.”
That answer is enough to seal his fate, but she won’t want to hear that.
“I’m serious, Dane.” She reads me so easily. “You can’t hurt my father.”
I decide to bargain with her. “I won’t, if you tell me what he did.”
She considers me for a long moment, assessing my honesty. Whatever she sees in my expression, she must decide that she believes me.
“It hasn’t happened since I was about ten,” she begins. “But he used to belt me if I disappointed him. Or angered him. He got angry a lot when he was drinking. At some point, I guess he decided I was too old to discipline me like that anymore. The cruelty was verbal after that. He would yell, and then my mother would dictate the terms of my punishments.”