Page 61 of Love Me Gently

“Yeah?” I turned and found her at the top of the stairs, chewing the inside of her cheek.

“I don’t...I don’t want to go back to Jonathan.”

ThankGod.“Then you won’t.”

“I don’t know if I can do the rest, though.”

She sure as hell could.

“Then we’ll get you to a place where you think you can.”

“I don’t know if I can do that, either, anymore.” More tears swam in her eyes anddamn. Her pain was my new hell, and I couldn’t do anything about it. Couldn’t take it from her. Couldn’t slay the darkness she had living in her.

“Then we’ll start there. We’ll start by getting youthinking, and that’s all you have to do.”

She worked her lips back and forth, blinking back tears. “You’re being too nice to me, and I don’t deserve it. Not from you, most of all.”

Yeah, well, she was wrong about that.

“You remember what I told you that day you broke up with me?”

One shoulder lifted and fell. “Mostly.”

“Then you’ll remember I said I’d hate you for a day, but I’d always love you.”

“But—”

“No buts. I don’t think you’re ready to hear why, but it’s still true to this day. You don’t feel the same, but that doesn’t change the way I do.”

Her lips parted, full and pink and tears were running down her cheeks, and if I didn’t leavethenI’d do something dangerous. Something stupid and reckless and I could ruin everything.

So, I flung open the garage door, climbed into my truck, and left with that look on her face in my memory.

Which was a lot better than how I left her last night.

Twenty-Three

Trina

But what if you did?

The question haunted me through the night. It came to me in dreams, where I ran through heavy thickets of brush and trees, lost in a forest. Every time I spun in a circle, a tiny glimmer of light sparked and faded and whenever I shifted, the light moved and disappeared making it difficult to find.

But it was there. Sparking. I woke drenched in sweat and filled with regret, but whatever that ridiculous thought was lingered.

It was that driving force that moved me straight to the shower, that urged me to get dressed and not crawl back into bed and rethink every miserable thought I constantly lived with. And it was that ridiculously naive question that guided my feet up the stairs straight to Cole’s kitchen.

His back had been to me, giving me a moment to drink him in. Something I definitely shouldn’t have been doing, but I couldn’t help myself.

He’d always been the best-looking guy in school, and that wasn’t my sole opinion because I’d once loved him. It was a fact, and every girl in the school and town knew it… and sure, two thousand people wasn’t much as far as the world went, but it was still fact. Even if the town had grown, I doubted that had changed.

He’d barely shown his surprise at my appearance and carried on like it was normal, and somehow, that had settled me quicker than if he had asked why I was there. Or if he started questioning me about last night. Why was I in his daughters’ bedroom? Did Iwantto go back to Jonathan?

The answer to the question was no. Absolutely not. I’d long since given up hope of leaving him though. With his money and connections he’d come get me. I was certain of it.

But what if….

There it was again. It kept jumping into my head, making me think, urgent almost in its need for an answer.

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