Endeared (The Accidental Billionaires #5) - J. S. Scott Page 0,55
me anymore. I wish I had reached out for help, but I don’t think I even knew what was happening. I got better once I got on medication and started going to intensive counseling. I was able to get off the antidepressive medication when I was in nursing school, and I haven’t ever gone into another major depressive episode like that again, but it took a lot of work to get my shit together. I try to take care of myself and my mental health now. But even after years of counseling, I still have some insecurities that pop up sometimes, Owen. I don’t talk much about that part of my life, because you and I both know there’s still a mental-health stigma in medicine, even if medical people swear that there isn’t. Some people still judge, so I’ve tried to just close the door on that period of my life and move on. I’ve worked through all my issues in therapy, but sometimes I’m just not comfortable talking about it.”
I took a deep breath, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t.
So I waited a little longer.
But the living room stayed dead silent.
I swallowed hard. Maybe I had my answer about whether or not Owen would see me differently if he knew everything about me.
The quiet lasted so long that it got uncomfortable.
I hopped to my feet. “Okay, well, so that’s everything. I guess I better get home.”
I couldn’t look at him as I scooped up my purse and walked to the door, tears flowing even faster as I realized that he wasn’t going to say . . . anything.
Maybe he couldn’t deal with the fact that the woman he’d been lusting after had once lost her mind, and could possibly do it again someday.
I saw myself out, not releasing a painful sob of sorrow until I’d closed the front door.
I’d gambled on Owen, and I’d lost, but I refused to believe that things would have been better if I hadn’t tried.
I was tired of only letting Owen see what I wanted him to see because I was afraid of his reaction if he knew the truth.
None of the bad things in my past had really been my fault.
I made it to my car, put my head against the metal, and cried like my entire world had just ended.
Maybe I’d thought I was ready in case Owen decided that he couldn’t deal with my crazy past, but I hadn’t been. At all.
I fumbled for my keys, digging into the bottom of the purse, my hands shaking so badly that I couldn’t find them.
Before my fingers connected with my keys, a solid, bulky form wedged up behind me, and I saw a pair of hands slap onto the ugly paint of my vehicle.
“Where in the fuck do you think you’re going?” Owen growled against my ear.
“Home,” I squeaked, startled by the intense fierceness in his voice.
“Not. Happening. You nearly gave me a damn heart attack, and I have questions. About a million of them,” he warned.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Look, I’ll be okay if this freaked you out. I get it. To be honest, sometimes it seems surreal, even to me, that it happened.”
So much of that summer and fall was still a blur. I couldn’t connect with how I was feeling then, because I hadn’t really been feeling . . . anything. I’d been completely empty.
“Stop running away, goddammit!” he said angrily, slamming his fist against the metal of my car. “There’s nothing I can’t handle as long as it doesn’t involve seeing your backside in the distance. I need time to take everything in, but never at any damn time is it going to change the way I feel about you. When in the fuck are you going to understand that the way I feel about you isn’t going to change? What else do I have to do to make you understand that? You’re beautiful to me, no matter what happened to you a damn decade ago, after you’d been through hell and back. Jesus, Layla, just give me a damn chance, would you? Just for once, trust that from now on, I’m always going to have your back.”
I lifted my hands and rubbed them down my wet face, my heart pounding so hard that I could feel the deep contractions.
I had no reason not to believe him, but I turned so I could see his face.