Batter of Wits (Green Valley Chronicles #22) - Smartypants Romance Page 0,96
hurt less. Didn’t erase the way that I felt sad and heavy, weighed down with the knowledge that this man chose to hide things from me, things that everyone around me knew.
“Grace,” he said again, from deep in his chest, the single word rife with frustration and longing. This time, I didn’t step back when his hands slid up my arms and framed my face. “You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” His mouth descended to the top of my head. I gripped the front of his shirt with fisted hands when he breathed in the scent of my hair.
I wanted to kiss him.
Slap him for lying about something so important.
Shove him away and run.
I wanted him to hold me even more tightly.
I wanted to get lost in all the amazing things that we were together.
I wanted to ignore everything I’d just learned, because he was the one I was meant to be with.
I pressed my forehead into his chest and breathed him in.
The curse—whatever it really was, even if it was something that could never be explained—didn’t suddenly make everything easy.
It didn’t make the path free of hurdles. And it certainly didn’t fix the problems that were already there.
I smoothed my hands out and slid them up his chest, stopping over his heart. My eyes closed, and for the first time, I felt the burn of tears.
“I feel like you felt safe not telling me this because you knew I’d stay hidden with you.” I sniffed when he ran his fingers through my hair. “I know I agreed in the beginning, but that was hard, you know?”
“I know,” he murmured, kissing the top of my head again.
I pulled back and looked him in the eye. “Do you? Do you know what it’s like to be on the fringes and not really feel like you belong?”
Tucker gave me the respect to really think about what I asked, he didn’t brush me off, didn’t give me a placating answer, didn’t try to kiss me to brush the subject under the rug.
“Not in the way you do here, I reckon.” His thumb brushed along my cheek.
“I wish you’d told me the truth,” I said in a fierce whisper. “I wish you’d trusted me to work through all of that with you.”
I wished a lot of things as I looked up at him.
That we weren’t having this conversation, even though we needed to.
That his mom hadn’t shown up.
That he’d said something different when she did.
I wished that when I told him I loved him, he’d said it right back, without a breath in between my admission and his.
I wished that my brother hadn’t been right, because almost everything he’d said had just exploded in a messy heap in front of us.
And most of all, I wished that I didn’t have the horrible sensation that this wasn’t even close to over. That we just unearthed a mountain of issues that had been hiding under the surface.
“Talk to me,” he begged. In the set of his face, I knew he saw something in my face. Something he didn’t like.
“This all feels so big,” I admitted. “Like if it came one at a time, spaced apart, each thing wouldn’t seem so bad. But I don’t know how to look at all of it together and see a way past it.”
“Grace, no.”
“It’s not about the sex, it’s not even about your mom.” My voice shook, and I pinched my eyes shut. “I feel a little alone in this right now. Because the truth is that you didn’t keep it from me to protect me. You were protecting you. You were worried about what everyone else thought, Tucker. Your worry about the people outside of this relationship was bigger than the reality about how it might hurt me. And I can’t see a way to be okay with that. To trust that you won’t sacrifice this,” I gestured between us, “for them.”
Because he didn’t love me. How could he possibly feel anything close to what I felt?
Panic crawled up my spine, maybe it was irrational, but I wondered if Levi ever felt like this when he was waiting for Joss. Waiting to see if she’d ever come close to catching up to what he felt.
Because that was the crux of it.
Tucker may not ever feel for me what I felt for him. Just because I slipped quickly into loving him didn’t mean he would do the same.