Page 37 of Safe With Me
“I don’t know exactly what we could be.” Remorse dragged at his words. “Broke us before we got a chance to find out. And I’m sorry.”
My eyes burned, and I blinked, hard. “So am I.”
“You have every reason in the world not to let me back in. I was an asshole, and I don’t deserve a chance with you.” His throat flexed with a swallow. “But I’m begging you, Hannah.”
I licked suddenly dry lips, and his gaze followed the movement of my tongue. “You want me to trust you.”
His huff of a laugh held no humor. “Yeah.”
“I don’t know how to do that.” I shook my head. I’d turned into a wounded animal anticipating the next blow. I didn’t trust life, and he’d made it hard to sink into the easiness we’d once had.
Even if I wanted to.
“That makes two of us. I want to not be an asshole for you, but I’ve got no clue how to do that.”
I smiled despite myself.
He stilled, every muscle in him seemingly set in stone. “There it is.”
Awe tinged his words, and I blinked. “What?”
“That smile of yours when you think I’m funny.” His lashes fell, and his shoulders moved with a deep breath. “I love it.”
The wordloveon his lips did funny things to my own breathing. “Because it’s rare.”
“Oh, hell, yeah.” One corner of his mouth twitched in a self-deprecating grin. “You think I’m the lamest asshole alive.”
I touched a fingertip to the edge of a lacy cedar frond. “This hurts.”
“Yeah.” Any trace of humor or his grin disappeared, wiped out as quickly as it had appeared. “I hurt you.”
“Not being friends with you is painful.”
“Yep.” He nodded, a sharp jerk of his chin. “Hurt myself, too. Knowing I did wrong by you, caused you pain, is the worst part.”
I rubbed my finger over the cedar, releasing the sharp scent into the air. “What does another chance look like?”
A charged silence stretched between us. “You’d have to tell me what you want. On my side? Being there for you. Having your corner. Never letting my mouth get ahead of my brain again.”
“We’re talking about you.” His mouth was always getting ahead of his thinking.
“I learn fast.” He shrugged. “Only had to touch an electric fence once to know I didn’t want to do that again.”
“Most people don’t have to touch the fence to know that, Tate.”
“Mama always told Daddy I was like him – wired to do things the hard way.” Despite his soft chuckle, old grief lurked in his eyes. I recognized that grief – I’d seen if often enough – and like always, my heart ached for him. He was myfriend, even if he’d been awful to me, even if I’d been nothing more to him. That didn’t simply go away because he’d hurt me.
“I can see that.” My voice verged on a whisper, as quiet as his in a moment wrapped in unbearable intimacy. Another of those heavy silences hung in the air.
“Hannah.” The way he rasped my name squeezed my heart and spread heat through my belly. How many times had I imagined my name on his lips like that, the different ways I might make him murmur with desperation? “I want to be more than your friend.”
Yeah, he wanted that with my sister, too.
I kept the words in my mouth. Continually throwing them in his face hurt both of us. The whole thought-I-wanted-that made sense. I, after all, had harbored a wildly hot crush on Jay Mackey for almost a year when I was nineteen, so I could see how youthful emotions might linger as a ghost if you didn’t confront them. At least, my vulnerable heart wanted it to make sense.
Oh, this was big. This wasn’t offering Tick a beer and offering to share a king-sized bed. This was Tate and agreeing to offer him my trust, my heart.
He’d had both and shattered the first. What if I trusted him again and he shattered my heart?
