Page 62 of No Reason to Trust

He leaned back against the couch, studying her. Finally he took a sip of beer and set his bottle on the table. “You re-writing history, Williams? Doing some editing after the fact?”

“No,” she said, curling her fingers into her palms so hard she could feel the dents in her skin. “Making love is exactly what I intended to say. But if it came out… hesitant? Or uncertain? It’s because I’ve never said those words before.”

Jake tilted his head, studying her, and she squirmed beneath his gaze. “Is that so?”

She swallowed the lump that had lodged in her throat. “Yeah, it is.”

He kept his gaze on her. “Never in your life, huh?”

“No. Never.”

“And why is that, Williams?” He set his bottle on the table and leaned toward her, his eyes burning a hole in her chest. “Even people who aren’t in love say ‘making love’. It’s the polite way of saying fucking.”

Jake’s expression was unconvinced. Suspicious.

Livvy looked down at the half-moons pressed into her palms so she wouldn’t have to look Jake in the eyes. See the hardness there. Was that cowardly? Of course it was. But she needed a little bit of a defense right now. She felt torn and ragged inside, as if someone had ripped out the contents of her chest and stomped them into the ground.

She wanted to jump up and run out the door. Drive back to the airport and take the first plane back to Helena. If this painful, fractured feeling was love, then she wanted no part of it.

But she didn’t move. If she left now, she knew she’d never see Jake again. She could call him. Email him. Show up at his door. But he’d ignore her and move on. Exactly what she’d deserve for being such a coward. And she wouldn’t,couldn’tblame him.

Okay, time to bare her soul. She didn’t want to do that with Jake so dismissive and angry, but she had no choice. If she wanted Jake to listen to her, she had to be completely honest with him -- completely open.

She tucked her hands into her armpits so he wouldn’t see them shake. Then she took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ve never told you much about my life,” she said.

His gaze drilled a hole in her. “You never told meanythingpersonal, Williams. Not one damn little hint about how you’d grown up. What you wanted out of life. Where you saw yourself in ten years. I figured you were just cautious, but after our… stay in Brooklyn, I realized you had barriers so high and so thick that no one and nothing was going to breach them.” He shrugged. “So I knew there was zero chance that you’d be open to a relationship with me.”

“That’s the thing, Jake,” she said, sliding her hands beneath her thighs so he couldn’t see them shaking. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since I got back to Montana, and it didn’t take much time to realize what an idiot I’d been. How wrong I’d been. If I could go back and redo the past two weeks, I’d do things completely differently. I would have been a lot more open with you. Told you how I grew up, so you’d know that I had issues.”

When she took a breath, Jake scoffed. “Issues, huh? I think we all haveissues.” He slashed vicious air quotes in front of him. “But the vast majority of people figure out why and how they’re messed up and do something to fix it. They don’t spend their lives ignoring those issues or taking them out on their partners.”

“Then I guess I’m in the slow class,” she shot back. “It took losing my heart to you and not knowing how to fix it before I realized that.”

His eyes darkened. “So you lost your heart to me and your first thought was how to fix that.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, appalled at how that had come out.

“Then what did you mean, Williams?”

His face looked as if it had been carved from stone. She began to reach out to touch it, then snatched her hand back.

“I meant that I fell in love with you, Jake. And since I’ve never been in love before, neverwantedto be in love before, I panicked. Did what I do best -- I ran away.”

He stared at her, expressionless, for a long time. Her heart ached and her soul slowly shriveled, until it was nothing more than a tiny kernel inside her. Finally she set the Guinness she’d been holding so tightly back on the coffee table and stood up. “There were two more things I needed to say to you,” she said, clearing her throat to keep the despair hidden. “I’m so sorry about the way I treated you that night and the next morning. I was an idiot. Completely clueless about what to do when the man you love tells you that he loves you, too.” She stared at her hands for a long moment. Sucked in a deep breath as she stared at the floor instead of looking at him. “I love you, Jake. I was falling in love with you before I ran away to Montana.” She shook her head. “ProbablywhyI ran away to Montana.”

She wrapped her arms around her chest, as if that could keep her heart in the right place. But it was too late. Her heart was destroyed.

She forced herself to stand tall. “I’ve said what I came here to say, and since you don’t seem to believe me, I’ll leave you alone.” She began walking toward the door, focused only on getting out of Jake’s apartment so she wouldn’t have to look at the expression on his face. She wanted to have her breakdown when she was far away from him.

His hand descended on her shoulder. “Where’re you going, Olivia?”

At least it wasn’t Williams. “I’m going to get in my car and go back to the airport. Get on the first plane back to Helena,” she said without turning to look at him.

“You like to make a dramatic exit, huh?” he said.

“No.” She swallowed hard and shook her head. “I want to get back to my car so I can fall apart in private.”

Slowly, Jake stepped in front of her, blocking her way to the door. “Why don’t you fall apartwithme?” he said. “Tell me why you’re so twisted up. Tell me what happened to make you that way.”

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