“My hangups?” I repeated, voice shaking with outrage. “Hangups?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Your hangups. Something wrong with your hearing?”
“Screw you!” I snarled at him, so furious I could barely breathe. “You have no right to talk about me like that! You have no idea — nofreakingidea — what I’ve been through or where I’m coming from, and you certainly have no right to judge me for it!”
“No right?No right?” He took two steps toward me, his face a dark storm of rage. “You forget —I know you, Gwen. I’m not some guy you met at a bar who took you home for a quick fuck. I know all about your mind — how it works, how it tells you no one is safe, no one can be trusted. How it tells you to keep the world far, far outside those walls you’ve built up.”
I flinched, but he kept going.
“You live in a house you’re afraid to decorate, you date men you’re unwilling to give your heart, and you push away anyone who tries to change that. But you know what, babe? The only person you punish in the end for all that effort? That’d beyou.”
My heart squeezed, the pain of it crippling. I fought tears, wishing he’d stop. Wishing I was weak enough tobeghim to stop. But I wasn’t raised in a trailer park with an abusive mother for nothing. If I knew one thing, it was how to stand there and take a verbal lashing.
Graham leaned in, hands planting on his hips as he leveled me with a lethal look that cut me to the bone. “You want to go home to that big empty house to cloister yourself away in your perfectly designed bedroom sanctuary, where you can shut out all the chaos? You want to seal yourself off from the world and act like there’s nothing out there that can hurt you? Too bad, baby. You’re in the real world now. This, here with me today —thiswas the real world.” He pointed from his chest to mine, from his heart to mine. “You felt it, I know you did. And I’m not letting you slip back behind your defenses just because you’re running scared.”
I stared at him for a long time. We were both breathing hard, like we’d run a marathon. I wanted to close the gap between us, I truly did. I wanted to hurl myself across the distance into his arms, to feel the heat of his body all around me, moving inside me, turning me inside out one touch at a time. But his words shifted around inside my head, a haunting refrain I couldn’t shut out, no matter how I tried.
You live in a house you’re afraid to decorate, you date men you’re unwilling to give your heart, and you push away anyone who tries to change that.
It hurt like hell, knowing that’s what he saw when he looked at me. Damage. Hangups. Issues. Trauma. Even if it was the truth, I hated the reminder. It cut me, cut me deeply.
Actually…
It pretty much crushed me.
My expression iced over. My eyes went dead, all the joy and light and happiness I’d been brimming with for the past few hours draining out in a great slide, leaving nothing but the hollow ache of agony behind.
Stiff as a board, I turned my back on Graham and began the humiliating task of retrieving my clothes from the various corners of the loft where they were strewn. As I was jerking up my yoga pants, I felt his heat close behind me. His hands settled at my hips as I zipped my sports bra closed, but I jerked out of his grip with so much rage, I stumbled off balance and had to catch myself against the kitchen island.
“You say you know me, huh?” I whirled around to face him. A tear snaked down my cheek and I brushed it away, furious at myself for revealing how shattered I was by his words. “Then you should know — anyone who talks to me like that is dead to me.Dead.To. Me.You want references? Call my exes. Call my mother. Ask them the last time I spoke to them. Ask them if I went back for a second helping after they’d hurt me like you just did.”
“Gwen—”
“No, Graham. This? Today? It wasn’t the real world, it was anescapefrom the world. I saw something awful and I fell apart in the aftermath, torn up with guilt for my part in it, heartsick for failing to prevent that horror from coming to pass. You were there to hold me together. That’s it. I needed someone, and you were there.”
He looked beyond pissed, his jaw clenched tight. “Gwendolyn—”
“But,” I sallied forth. “As you were so happy to remind me, I can’tcloister myself awayandpretend the real world doesn’t exist—”
He had the good grace to flinch, at that.
“—so, I’ll be going home, now. I have doors that lock and the phone number of an extremely attractive local detective on speed dial. You yourself told me I have a net of surveillance watching my every move. I’ll be just fine. I don’t need to stay in your bed to be safe. In fact, knowing how you chew up and spit out the women you sleep with, I’m pretty sure that’s the last place on earth I’deverbe safe.”
He stared at me, eyes moving over my face, hands curled into fists at his sides, looking for all the world like he wanted to reach out and yank me into his arms. Despite all my claims to the contrary, there was a part of me that wished he would — wished for it so badly, it was difficult to hold on to my anger.
Thankfully, for both our sakes, he didn’t.
“I’ll take you home,” he said finally, his voice stripped bare.
He turned away, searching for his own clothes, and the hollow ache inside my chest grew into a chasm that threatened to swallow me whole.
* * *
“Areyou sure you don’t want me to stay over?” Flo asked, scrunching her nose at me. “I know you aren’t a slumber party sort of gal, but I’m happy to crash on the floor. No spooning required.”
“I’m sure,” I told her for the tenth time.
“But you shouldn’t be alone after a day like—”