he was more deeply protected than she had ever been. He was willing to come in and call himself all kinds of terrible things. Willing to take the brunt of everything.
But he wouldn’t open up. He wouldn’t let anyone in. Least of all her. Suddenly, she felt desperate. Desperate to break him open. Desperate to reach him.
“Don’t ask me what I need,” he said, obviously angry that she was.
“Why not? Why shouldn’t I ask you what you need? You’ve spent all this time taking care of me, coddling me like I was a baby bird.”
“Right. I treated you so gently all the times I forced my lust on you.”
“Right. All of that horrible oral sex and endless orgasms. You really are a monster.”
“Don’t wilfully misunderstand. You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do know what you mean. Better than you do.”
“Stop it, Rebecca. I didn’t want to have a fight with you. Especially not after what you went through today...”
“Don’t make it about me.” She was filled with anger now, fury, because she was starting to realize just what an illusion their time together had been. She felt like they had been opening themselves up to each other. She had felt like, because she knew so many of his secrets, she knew him too. But she had never reached him. Had never seen him. He was hiding behind his mission—this supposed mission to care for her—to atone for his sins.
He had walked into her life and changed everything. And he was determined to walk back out again exactly the same as he had appeared.
She didn’t want that. She wanted him just as destroyed and altered as she was. She wanted him to be irrevocably and completely changed by this. To be healed.
But she could see, even now, in the flat darkness of his eyes that he wasn’t going to accept it.
“You wanted to give me the store. You wanted to give me pleasure. You made me dinner. You went with me to see my mother. And still, you act like you have more to atone for. But I can’t continually offer you that without you giving me anything in return. It doesn’t work. One person can’t change while the other one stands there. One person can’t give endlessly.”
“Maybe in a relationship, but this isn’t really a relationship.”
His words hurt. They cut deep, even though they were true. Even though it was nothing more than what they had talked about.
“Well, you want to fix things. You want to make me happy. What if I told you I wanted more?”
“That won’t fix anything for you.”
“Right. Because you’re only going to do exactly what fits within your idea of how fixing me works. Only you can do it, and only for a limited time, because then you have to walk away. Because you’re so terrible.”
She was digging at him now, pressing against the wound, because it was the only way she was going to get a reaction out of him. She knew it.
“Rebecca...”
“Show me. You keep telling me what a terrible man you are, all while fixing me dinner and giving me amazing sex. Maybe it’s time you show me. Stop talking about how awful you are and give me some of it.”
“You don’t want that.”
“No,” she said, “you don’t want that. Because that would mean showing me something of yourself and you’re too afraid to do that. I’m not afraid of how terrible you are. You’re the one that’s afraid of it. I can handle it. I’m not weak. I never have been. And I’m tired of people treating me like I am. You were the one person that I thought understood. But now, I think you’re going out of your way to not understand. If I’m not the victim, where does that leave you?”
She found herself being hauled up against him, his hold hard, punishing. Borderline bruising. “This is what you want? You want to see me being terrible?”
“If it’s honest.”
“I don’t think you want my honesty, Rebecca.”
“Stop telling me what I want, Gage. I have never been the tragic waif sitting around waiting for you to come back and redeem her. Never. I had a life, and I had to live it the best way that I could. I’ve admitted that it wasn’t actually all that functional. But that had nothing to do with you either. That was all me. So I don’t need you to come in here and clean up all of my messes so you can ride out