Riding The Edge - Elise Faber Page 0,28

next little while, so why don’t you tell me why you have those shadows in your eyes?”

Irritation prickled through me. “My eyes are none of your fucking business.”

“No,” he said. “They’re not. But I want to make it my business. Won’t you let me in?”

No.

I couldn’t let him in. Otherwise he’d see. Otherwise he’d know, and he wouldn’t look at me the same way. The soft would be edged out of his eyes and disgust would take its place.

I couldn’t have him look at me with disgust.

I just . . . couldn’t.

“Ava,” he warned.

“I’m not a woman you can push,” I muttered.

“I don’t want to push you,” he said. “I want to know you. I want to see what’s in your heart, to understand the things that make you happy, make you sad. I—Ava, what I feel for you . . . it’s unlike what I’ve ever felt for anyone else.” He inhaled and exhaled slowly. “I care about you.”

Those words shouldn’t warm me.

They should send me running.

Except, this time I couldn’t lock myself in my room. It wasn’t as simple as skipping a movie date or even as heart-wrenching as threatening to switch teams.

I was trapped in a cell with a man I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about for years, one who every time I came in close contact with, made me want to forget all about why I had the barriers in the first place.

Not so much as to protect me.

But to protect him.

“You shouldn’t, Dan,” I whispered. “You should forget me and move on to someone nice, someone innocent and sweet and lovely, whose worst flaw is that she bites her nails or leaves her socks on the floor.”

“I abhor when people bite their nails.”

I groaned. “That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

A sigh, my words sharp. “My point is that you need someone who can open her heart.”

“And where am I supposed to find this lovely, sweet, innocent woman who opens up her heart to me and shows me all of that nail-biting and sock-leaving?” he asked.

“Not with me.”

The noise of scraping stopped and a few seconds later his voice was very close to my ear. “Don’t you see?”

I shivered. “What?”

“Don’t you see if I don’t find that with you, I won’t find it with anyone?”

“Except . . . I can’t be the person you want.”

“I don’t need you to be anyone other than yourself.”

It was impossible.

But he didn’t know that. Because . . . he didn’t know what I’d done.

Thirteen

Southern Italy

Unknown hrs local time

Dan

I touched her cheek.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t touch me.”

I pulled back. “Because you don’t want me to? Or because you do?”

“We need to deal with the tracker,” she said in a tone bordering on desperate. “Not worry about what I want or don’t want.”

Shuffling back to the wall because I knew she was right but not letting the thread of conversation drop because we were stuck in this place. We were trapped and probably fucked, tracker or not. And I wanted to know . . .

If she wanted me to touch her.

“What are you afraid to tell me?” I asked.

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

Silence.

I went back to work on the rock as I waited her out.

“I’m not.”

Continuing to scrape at the loosening edge of the rock, I waited. Probably, it was stupid to try and outwait a sniper, one who could be so still and patient, but this wasn’t the normal Ava. She was more open than I had seen her in years, freer, rawer—

Which doubled down on my asshole gene.

Because I was demanding information when she was hurt and dealing with that raw and—

“I haven’t talked to my parents for more than five minutes in the past two years,” I told her, finally understanding that I needed to give, too. That I was asking her to be vulnerable and to share painful truths, and she needed me to be just as open as her. “I talk to Brit regularly, and I talk to my best friend, Blane.” Then I admitted something that made me feel guilty, “And . . . I talk to Blane’s mom more often than my own. I tell Allison about my life—as much as I’m able. I know I can go to her for advice, that I can just relax and be myself and know she’s just happy to hear from me and shoot the shit.”

Her voice was soft. “I’m glad you have that.”

I was, too, and I felt really lucky, considering how detached