Gemma lifted her head, her cheeks flushed, eyes warm and satisfied as they met mine. She smiled, soft and trusting, and something in my chest cracked wide open. Not pain, but a flood of feeling—affection, protectiveness.
Love?
Fuck. It was too soon for that, but there it was, blooming unchecked.
I pulled her closer, burying my face in her hair, holding her like she’d vanish if I let go. Terror gripped me—not of what we’d done, but of how much I felt. How deep I’d fallen already.
I was in too deep to walk away, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to.
5
GEMMA
The trailer felt different now.
We’d cleaned up as best we could, righting the scattered papers, straightening our clothes. My hair was a lost cause—I’d finger-combed it into something resembling order, but there was no hiding what we’d been doing.
Not that anyone was here to see. Just me and Kade, standing on opposite sides of the small space like strangers who’d accidentally wandered into the same room.
He’d gone quiet. Not the comfortable silence from earlier, when we’d worked side by side and gradually let our guards down. This was something else. Something cold.
I watched him shuffle papers that didn’t need shuffling, his jaw set in a hard line, his eyes fixed on anything but me. The man who’d held me like I was precious, who’d whispered my name like a prayer, had vanished. In his place was the same closed-off stranger I’d met this morning.
The walls were going back up. I could almost see them rising, brick by brick, sealing him away.
“So that’s it?” I asked, breaking the silence. “We’re just going to pretend that didn’t happen?”
His hands stilled on the papers. “Gemma…”
“Because I’m not really a pretend-it-didn’t-happen kind of person.” I crossed my arms, trying to ignore the ache building in my chest. “If you regret it, just say so.”
He finally looked at me, and the expression on his face made my stomach drop. Guarded. Resolved. Like he’d already made a decision I wasn’t going to like.
“This was a mistake,” he said flatly. “I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
The words hit harder than I expected. I’d known, on some level, that this was coming. He’d warned me himself—told me he didn’t do this, didn’t believe in this, couldn’t give me what I deserved. I just hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.
“A mistake,” I repeated, tasting the word. Bitter. Wrong.
“I meant what I said before.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, shoulders rigid. “I don’t do love. I don’t do relationships. And you…” He shook his head. “You deserve someone who can give you the fairy tale. The happy ending. That’s not me. It’s never going to be me.”
I stared at him, waiting for the tears to come. The pleading. The desperate need to make him change his mind.
Instead, I felt something else rising in my chest. Something hot and sharp.
Anger.
“That’s bullshit,” I said.
His eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” I stepped closer, my voice steady despite the fury coursing through me. “That’s complete and total bullshit, and you know it.”
“Gemma—”
“No, you don’t get to do this.” I jabbed a finger at his chest. “You don’t get to hold me like that, touch me like that, look at me like I’m the most important thing in your world, and then turnaround and tell me it was a mistake. That’s cowardice, Kade. Pure and simple.”
His jaw tightened. “I’m trying to protect you.”