Page 23 of Only for You
“Could you love me again?”Damn. It.The need to cringe, to yell, “never mind!” pummeled her, but she locked her teeth, trapping the words inside. She needed to know. One answer would devastate her, and the other would fill her with joy. But both would free her.
“Yes.” Again that stark, blunt response, andoh God, her knees liquefied. Jesus. He’d said yes— “But I can’t let myself love you again.”
The bottom plummeted from her stomach, and with a will she didn’t know she possessed, she beat back the darkness that crowded her vision.No. Don’t you faint, damn it. Stay strong.
She locked her knees, tilted her shoulders back, and forced herself to meet his eyes—those fathomless, shuttered eyes that studied her even as he eviscerated her. She closed her own, uncaring if she took the coward’s way out. Was this payback? A last infliction of punishment? Shit, the grief. The pain. It pressed down on her like tons of dirt being shoveled on top of her, burying her, stealing her air…
“I understand.” Even those two words scraped her throat raw. She had to get out of here. Before she broke down and did something she could never erase. Like beg him to change his mind. Or worse. Try to change it by offering him her body…her heart. “I should go.”
“Gabby.”
Oh damn.Did he have to use the nickname he’d refused to call her all nightnow?
“Do you need to walk me out or can someone else take me?” She caught the trace of panic in her hoarse voice. “Please,” she whispered. Screw pride.
He crossed the short space separating them and gripped her arms in his firm, but gentle hold. It was the gentle that pushed her closer to the edge. As if he had to be careful because he knew she was so fragile. And the pitiful part? She was fragile. Seconds from shattering in so many pieces, she wouldn’t be able to scrape them together again before leaving this place.
Hadn’t that been her fear when she’d first seen him? That he would alter her, break her? Only emotional duct tape held her together, and the ripping off of it would be hell.
“Gabby, look at me,” he rasped.
She shifted her gaze to his face. Had she thought his eyes had been expressionless? No, they burned. With anger? Frustration? An emotion he’d just denied feeling for her? She shook her head as if she could dislodge the desperate, pathetic thought.
“I don’t want to hurt you—” he said in that ruined voice.
“Then don’t,” she interrupted, jerking free of his hold. “And let me go.”
For a moment, he stared at her, nostrils flaring and muscles coiled as if he were about to spring on her. She shivered, and maybe he caught the telltale reaction, because he drew back, his aloof mask falling in place.
Not bothering with a shirt or shoes, he strode to the bedroom door, opened it, and waited silently. Ducking her head, she crossed the room and exited it. Not looking back on the place where she’d found the man she’d loved…and lost him all over again.
