“It never leaves.” The admission was so quiet, she wasn’t sure he even heard it. But then…
“It might, if you can find a way to let it go.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Give some to me.” The blues in his eyes darkened with the offer. “Just try to let a little bit of it go.”
His image blurred as tears she could no longer stop rose to the surface. “I want to.” Another whispered confession.
A set of matching tears fell from her overflowing eyes. They were caught and swiped away by the gentle caress of his thumb on her cheek.
Ivan grew quiet, and for a stretch of time they stood just like that. Him inches away, his warm, comforting hand offering a gentleness she hadn’t felt in…she couldn’t remember, it had been so long.
Forever, maybe? It was quite possible, given her history. But the way this man was staring down at her made Cera think…
He wants to kiss me.
Her heart gave a massive, almost painful kick against the inside of her ribs. She could feel his hot breath on her chin, and the longer they stood there, the more tempting a taste of the real Ivan—as opposed to Dream Ivan—became.
One kiss. That was all she needed. One kiss to remind her this was real life, not fantasy. And in real life, no one kissed well enough to truly make her drenched with lust, like in her dream.
That was all she needed. A single, solitary kiss was all it would take to put her useless thoughts to rest. To show her this man was nothing more than her protector.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
More than ready to put herself out of her hormone-induced misery, she rested a palm against Ivan’s sculped chest. Her breath caught at the base of her throat when she discovered the strong pulse of his beating heart matched the frantic rhythm of her own.
Cera rose to her tiptoes and started to lean in. Her heavy lids fell shut, her lips parting in anticipation of what was about to come. But then—
“I can’t,” she blurted as the ghosts from her past ripped her out of his comforting embrace. “I-I’m sorry.”
Putting as much space between them as possible, she left him standing in the room behind her and walked out. Minutes later, she was in front of the living room windows—looking out across the million-dollar view without really seeing it—when Ivan spoke from somewhere behind her.
“You don’t have to bear the weight of it alone, Cera.”
“Actually, I do.” She turned to face him. With her arms hugging her center tight, she reminded the man standing across the room of why that fact was true. “I’m the only one left, remember? Or didn’t you get that far in your quest to dig up every sordid detail of my pathetic life?”
The man’s shadowed gaze said he had.
“You see? That!” She pointed her finger at him. “That right there is why I don’t tell anyone that story. Because the second I do, the second they seethis”—she shoved that same sleeve back up to her elbow and held out her arm—“it’s no longer about my mom or Callie. They forget all about poor Richard, whose only crime was fall in love with the most loving, most gracious woman I’ve ever known, and the fact that I was shot and left for dead. And then they proceed to tell me how luckyI was.” A huff of a breath. “That’s what the doctors and cops and the neighbors all said, you know? I was lucky because I survived.”
What they didn’t know—what theycouldn’tknow—was that some things were worse than death.
“Cera…”
Ivan started to move closer, but she raised a palm to stop him.
“No! Don’t.” She drew in a stuttered breath. “Please, I just…I want you to take me back to town. You can drop me off at the bus station, and from there, I can—”
“You’ll what?” He finished taking that step closer. “You said yourself you have no family. Nowhere else to go.”
“I’ll go as far as fifty bucks will get me.”
“And after that?”
“I’ll figure it out.” She offered a stubborn shrug of a shoulder. “I mean, I always do, right? I’ve made it this far on my own. Surely I can do it again.”
Her gut tightened, but Cera didn’t dare let this man see the crippling fear she felt from just thinking about packing up and starting all over. Again.