found my personal social media and started harassing me there. It all became too much and . . .”
This was it. The moment of truth, and she didn’t want to tell him.
Anders stopped and turned around to face her. He pulled his glove off one hand and placed it on her cheek. It was warm to her cool skin and she let it soothe her for a moment.
“And what, Liv?”
“I had a breakdown. I’m supposed to be trained in this kind of crisis management, and I handled it terribly until I couldn’t handle it at all. Everything made me highly anxious. Leaving the house. Going to work. Doing my job. Then depression followed until, finally, I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t function. For months, Anders. For fucking months.”
She pressed her head against his chest. He was bound to be looking at her with the same worry and nervous edge that Emerson and Jake watched her with. Like she was going to fall apart on them again at any minute.
What most people didn’t understand about her depression was that she had been there, alert, for the whole fucking thing. Olivia had spent months watching herself do absolutely nothing all day while her brain had screamed to get off her ass. Ranting at herself about how hard could it be to take a goddamn shower? Being disgusted that she could go to bed with a plan for how tomorrow would be different, only to wake up at eleven and feel like the day was already gone.
If she couldn’t make sense of it herself, how could anyone else understand?
Anders wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulling her close against his body. His strength filled her, even if what she’d told him changed the way he thought about her.
After a few more breaths to savor the comfort he offered, she stepped back and looked up at him. There wasn’t time to process the look on his face before his lips were on hers. His hands cupped her face, holding her exactly where he wanted as he kissed her tenderly. The comfort he offered was reassuring as it flowed through her.
He pulled his lips from hers. “Did you need medication?”
“Yes.”
“The weight gain?”
“Increased appetite from the medication. Lack of willpower to exercise. Emotional eating.”
Anders simply nodded. No judgment. No look of sympathy. He looked curious.
“Are you still on meds?”
She shook her head. “I stopped taking them in December. It was time, and I felt like I could function without them. I weaned them down until New Year’s Eve. You can’t come off them too quickly because you get headaches. I had terrible spins as it was.”
“Why Christmas to sleep with someone? Why me?”
“You were the first person to look at me like I wouldn’t break in a long time. You didn’t know what had happened. You saw me as the woman standing in front of you . . . not the woman who’d been through shit. There wasn’t sympathy or concern in your eyes. You didn’t question my motives. You liked the way I looked.”
Anders kissed her softly. “That’s a lot about me. What about you?”
“I wanted to feel normal. I wanted feel like a woman again. Depression takes everything away. Everything that makes you who you are. It strips you right down to the basics. Sleeping. Sometimes eating. But the night of the wedding, I’d put on my dress and done my make-up. It was the closest I’d felt to being myself in months. And I enjoyed the way you looked as me as if I was desirable. When I said to you at the club that being with you that night changed me in a good way, I meant it. It was the first step to . . . my way out of the bleakness of it.”
“Kämpe,” he said. “A champion fighter. Right?”
Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. “Don’t be nice to me, Anders.”
“I intend to be a lot more than nice.”
Anders looked at Olivia dozing in the passenger seat of his car. She’d taken her coat off but was using her scarf as a blanket. Dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks, and her lips had never looked more delicious. Unable to resist her, he’d spent the day kissing her whenever the mood had taken him. Sex might have been off the table, but it had given him a new appreciation for the simple intimacy of a really good kiss.
Eight fucking days since he’d seen her in the