Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
“I think you deserve easy.” I stop an arm’s length away. “And I’m not easy.”
“Finally,” she says. “Truth. We did promise each other honesty, after all.”
She looks at me, really looks, and I feel it like her hands are on my ribs, like the way she touched me last night when I moved inside her.
“I didn’t come here for Lance,” she says. “I didn’t come here for you, either. I came because Angie invited me, and I finally agreed that I needed to get away. That’s why I came.” She grabs my shoulders. “But I stayed for you, Henry. For you. And I’m tired of running from the thing I want.”
“And what is that?” My voice is a rasp I don’t recognize.
“You,” she says.
Her word lands low and bright in my chest.
I drag a hand down my face. “Okay. Fine. I’m mad. I’m jealous. I’m every stupid thing a man is when he realizes too late that he set his own house on fire.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not fair.”
“I know.” I hold her gaze. “Neither was telling you we had no future when what I meant was I didn’t know how to be a man with a past that ugly and still deserve you.”
She goes still.
The words spill out of me now. “I killed him. And every time I close my eyes I see his face and I hear the shot and I know I’d do it again. Every damned time. To save Angie. To save Jason. To save you, Tabitha. It was the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did it. How do I live with that? Being glad I ended a life?”
“Henry—”
“How do I tell you to bet on me when I don’t recognize myself in the mirror yet?”
Her eyes shine. With anger? Something else? Hell if I know. “By not making my choices for me.”
I close the last space between us. It feels like stepping off a cliff and discovering I like the fall. “I lied,” I say, steady now. “At the ranch. I lied because I was a coward and because I thought keeping you from me would keep you safe.”
“From what?” she asks, a whisper. “From your feelings?”
“From me,” I say. “From the parts of me that break things.” I breathe once, twice. “I’m not fixed. I don’t know if I ever will be.” Another breath. “But I want you. In every way that counts. And if there’s a future left that has my name in it, I want yours written next to it.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. The only sign she’s breathing is the flutter at the hollow of her throat.
“Say the word,” I tell her. “Tell me to walk away, and I’ll try. I’ll fail and try again and fail prettier the second time, but I’ll try. Or tell me to stay, and I will. I’ll stand here and say out loud that I was wrong.”
She steps into me. “If you didn’t mean it,” she says, voice shaking and sure at once, “then prove it.”
Thirty-Three
Tabitha
If you didn’t mean it, then prove it.
I hear my own words like I’m outside my body, listening to a woman who is braver than I feel. The room doesn’t move. Zach sighs in his sleep.
Prove it. God. What am I doing? What am I asking of him?
I want to be the person who chooses cleanly. I want my career. I want the plan I’ve clung to like a life preserver. I also want to be the person who walks straight into the thing she wants without apologizing for it.
Angie would say I can be both. Angie brought us both to the cabin to prove it. I should be madder at her than I am.
“Tabitha,” Henry says. “You need to answer me. Say yes or say no, damn it. You either want me to walk away or you don’t. Yes or no.”
A tremor starts in my knees. My brain tries to list reasons to leave right now—the seminar, my budding career, my own trauma that I haven’t dealt with—but everything goes quiet under the weight of how much I want him.
“Don’t be careful,” I tell him. “Stop worrying that I can’t deal with who you truly are. You like it rough, so own it. Don’t try to be slow and reverent because you think it’s what I need or want.”
His eyes darken. A muscle ticks along his jaw. “You sure?”
“Yes. Haven’t I made that clear? Didn’t I tell you I don’t want safe?”
“Tabitha—”
“Prove it,” I tell him again. “Prove to me that I’m not the only one who’s fallen.”
He’s on me then. His mouth finds mine like he’s been walking toward this kiss for days. Maybe we both have. It slams through me with heat, relief, fury turned inside out, and I’m moving before I can think about it, shoving the chair back, fisting his shirt, dragging him closer.