had stood there and witnessed all of that. It hadn’t occurred to her to be embarrassed to expose that moment to him.
He was the keeper of all her secrets, after all. She just wished that he would give her more of his. Pointless maybe, but something that was starting to make her ache.
“Thank you,” she said, “for coming with me.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I figured it was time I started giving more than I took.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
SOMETHING ABOUT THE words that Gage had spoken in the truck dug at her all through dinner, and all through the ride back to Copper Ridge.
She wondered if she was just feeling unsettled because of what had happened with her mother. There really was no guidebook for how to deal with that. A strange, unsettling reunion that had put so many fragmented pieces back into place, but had solidified the fact that there would probably never be a magical reconciliation.
But it was more than that.
I figured it was time I started giving more than I took.
She turned those words over until they pulled into Gage’s driveway. It was unspoken that they would have sex again. The only question had been which house he would choose to go to. She imagined the fact he had chosen his made it less ambiguous. Made it clear that she was supposed to come in and stay a while.
She wondered if he would want her to stay the night. In which case, she should probably get some things from her house. But, she didn’t want to broach that subject. She didn’t want to seem needy.
Her thoughts kept on spinning like that as she walked up the steps and into the house. As soon as they closed the front door behind them, he turned, drawing her into his arms, up against his chest.
“Let me fix it,” he said, kissing her on the neck.
And suddenly, everything clicked into place. Exactly why those words he had spoken in the truck hit her wrong. Exactly what was wrong with all of this.
“That’s all you’ve done. From the moment you came back to town. Fix things. Whether I wanted you to or not.”
He released his hold on her slowly, taking a step back. “I came with you today because you asked me. Are you really going to start pretending like you didn’t want any of that?”
“Of course I did. I asked for it. But, then you go into this self-loathing space where you start talking about breaking things. About how you’ve broken me. I don’t know why you do it.”
“It’s called owning up to my mistakes.”
“No,” she said, slow realization dawning over her. “I don’t think that’s it.”
“You think you know me? You think you know what I’m doing and why better than I do?”
“I can’t answer that. You might know what you’re doing. You might even know why you’re doing it. But you’re not being honest with me. I would bet you aren’t being honest with yourself either.”
“Is that what we’re going to do now? We’re going to have a therapy session? Because I was hoping that we could just fuck.”
The words hit her like a stark slap. And as much as she wished that she could be angry about them, as much as she expected to be, she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She realized then that this was what had to happen. He had walked back into her life playing the part of benevolent benefactor.
The contrite and tragic figure that had ruined her life, come to set things to rights. He had cast her in the role of angel, put up on a pedestal, beautiful and tragic. And he had cast himself in the role of villain seeking absolution. But there was no nuance to that. No reality. And it helped no one.
He was comfortable this way. Giving, and giving while taking nothing in return. Calling himself terrible at every turn while never once proving it to her.
“Is that what you need?” she asked.
She cared. She found that she cared desperately. She was on a mission. A mission to exorcise every demon inside of her. And he was keeping his locked up tight inside of him. It hadn’t gotten better since she’d told him that she’d forgiven him. It hadn’t changed anything for him. It had changed everything for her.
But she couldn’t reach him. He made it impossible. She could see that now. That he was somewhere deep inside of himself, behind the walls that he had built up around his soul. That