She stroked his face, his back, his arms, touching him everywhere she could reach. As if, even after that she wasn’t satisfied.
He felt the same thing. The dark, devastating sense of dissatisfaction even as he lay there replete, barely able to move. It was terrifying. Overwhelming. Enough to make a grown man want to turn tail and run.
“Gage,” she said, the word splintered. “Gage, I love you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
REBECCA COULDN’T QUITE believe that she had spoken the words out loud. She couldn’t quite believe that they were true. And yet she had, and they were.
She was still digesting that when Gage moved away from her, like she was a snake who had just struck at him.
“I’m going to ignore that,” he said, his voice rough. He started hunting around, for his clothes presumably. As though he were desperate to put some layers between them.
And after all that, she wasn’t particularly surprised. That was the most open he’d been. The most honest. It was there, not just in his words, but in the way his hands shook when he had touched her.
When she had stripped away all of his excuses. That layer that he put up between himself and the world, the one that provided every excuse for why he did what he did, and why it was for other people and never for him, had begun to unravel.
And it was continuing now.
“You’re going to ignore it, and then you’re going to run away?”
He froze. “It would be better for you if I did.”
“Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. It would be better for you if you did. That’s what this has all been about. From the beginning.” Anger poured through her, a different kind than she could remember feeling before where he was concerned. This wasn’t for herself. It was for him. For everything that he denied himself underneath the guise of being undeserving.
For every lie that he told himself as he let himself walk down a darker, lonelier road. For what? She couldn’t figure it out.
She wanted to grab hold of him, wrench him open, force him to show her exactly what was hidden inside of him. She knew he was hiding. She knew it. She just didn’t know what.
She looked up at him, at the beautiful, blank wall that was Gage, and she wanted to fold in on herself with pain, anger and frustration. But she was done with that. Done with hiding.
She would be damned if she would let him carry on.
“Why? You still didn’t show me why I should hate you. Why I should be afraid of you. Why you’re selfish. You think that I’m going to be impressed by you making me get on my knees and do something I wanted to do anyway?”
“Rebecca,” he growled.
“Gage,” she said, planting her hands on her hips, staring him down. She was naked, and she was not ashamed. She didn’t feel damaged, she didn’t feel disadvantaged. She felt strong.
It was a different kind of strength than the one she’d been convinced that she had when this man had first walked back into town, back into her life. It wasn’t brittle. The foundation wasn’t bitterness, a root that ran deep but was poison for all concerned.
No, this was different.
She had spent the past seventeen years being broken. Believing she was broken beyond repair and reveling in that pain. Using it to keep people at a distance, using it to give herself excuse after excuse not to risk herself. Not to try.
And here she was, risking herself in the deepest, most profound way she ever had. With this man. The man she had spent so many years blaming for all of her pain.
But that wasn’t who he was, any more than the scars were who she was.
She didn’t think he believed that was all he was either. But he was going to stick to that story. Was going to continue to use it, just as she had done.
“You’re just as much of a liar as I am,” she said, the words void of anger. “You took this thing that happened, this terrible thing, and you let it define you. You used it as your protection. As your excuse to leave. But I want to know what really happened. I want to know what’s happening inside of you now. I want to know why you don’t think you deserve to be happy. And please don’t tell me it’s because you left me with a few scars.”