I might cry, but I couldn’t waver. “You didn’t trust me.”
“Baby, you’re the only person I’ve ever trusted.”
“No,” I threw back. “I’m not. Because if you had trusted me you’d have known that I would never look at you and see a monster. Not even after that. If you trusted me, you would have believed I was telling you the truth every time I told you I knew what kind of man you were. You wouldn’t have felt the need to run, because you would have known that there was nothing you could do, nothing, that would make me stop loving you.
“You were my whole world, Jensen. Not because you showed me the man you thought I wanted, but because I saw through all your arrogance and bravado from the very beginning. I saw through your bullshit to who you were on the inside. That man was good and loyal and loving. He made mistakes. He fucked up, and he did it huge, but none of that changed the core of him.”
My heart was breaking all over again, the pain so acute it was a wonder I was able to stay on my feet. “If you had just talked to me, we could have found a way through it. I knew you had anger issues and I knew why, Jensen. You never hid that from me. When I told you I loved you, that meant I accepted every single part of you, including the scars. We could have found our way through it together, but you didn’t give me that chance. That’s not trust. You didn’t trust me then, and I don’t trust you now. And a relationship without trust is doomed to fail every single time.”
“Don’t say that,” he hissed, the storm raging in those deep gray eyes growing darker and more turbulent with his pain. “Please don’t say that, sunshine. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. There hasn’t been a single day since I walked into my bedroom in that goddamn house and saw you standing there that I haven’t loved you. I told myself I’d win you back, I swore it. The only fucking thing that got me through the past several years was that promise. I’ll make it right, Shane. I’ll earn back your trust. Just let me fix this.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to think there was a possibility of a future with this man, because the truth was, I didn’t think there was a day that had passed in all these years that I hadn’t loved him too. But I just didn’t know. I was feeling too much. My head was pounding, and it felt like a storm was raging inside of me. I needed time and space. I needed to think, and I couldn’t do that with him so close. When he was near, when he touched me, when I smelled his strong, masculine scent, I couldn’t concentrate on anything but him.
“I-I have to go,” I whispered, slipping from between him and the wall. “I can’t be here right now.”
“Shane, please.” He reached for my hand, but I stepped out of his reach. “We can make this work, baby. Can we go somewhere and talk? We can get through this.”
“I need some space. I just . . . I have to go.”
The desolation was carved deep into his features, and seeing it killed me. Unable to face it for another second, I spun around and crossed the office, pulling the door open as his voice called my name. I didn’t look back as I hurried down the hall and out of the building.
But as I climbed into my car and started it up, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I’d made a huge mistake by running away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Shane
Twenty years old
I stared up at that monstrosity of a house with my heart in my throat. I’d told myself I would never set foot on this property ever again, but I had no other choice. It had been a week since I walked out of my apartment after my and Jensen’s big fight, and I hadn’t seen him since. He wasn’t answering my calls or texts. He wasn’t staying with friends. I’d checked all the hospitals in the area. There was nothing. No one had heard from him since that night.
I’d gone from angry to concerned to downright panicked. I hadn’t been able to keep down anything I ate or drank in days, and the stress of not knowing where he