“He is not who you hate. The men you encountered in your life are who you hate—and you encountered them because your mother made sure you were surrounded by them.” She raised a hand as though she was already expecting an argument. “You’ve been hurt more than I’ll ever understand. You do not trust men, that is more than clear to everyone—including Reed.”
My chest heaved with a sad, muted laugh.
“But love comes when you aren’t looking for it. Life has a way of giving us exactly what we need when we need it.”
“This coming from the woman who said she only wanted Reed and me to be friends,” I said skeptically. “Who said I would . . . what was it . . . take the sun from him with my pent-up wrath?”
She clicked her tongue and gave me a knowing look. “I was sure if I’d said the truth, it would’ve given you more of a reason to push that boy away. But you seem to be doing that all on your own, even though I see the way the two of you look at each other. I’ve seen it from that first moment.”
“Lala, it’s just not what I want,” I murmured.
“You can’t tell your heart that it’s wrong in wanting someone. You can’t silence it just because you’re afraid of what could happen.”
My lips slowly parted only to close again because she was right.
She pointed at me as she stepped into the doorway to leave. “Of anyone I have ever known, you have every right to be afraid. But you have always been brave, Emma Wade. Don’t let your fear stop you from being brave now.”
* * *
I uncurled my legs and pressed my bare foot to the wooden porch late that night, lightly rocking the swing back and forth a few times before pushing off and curling my legs under me again.
I leaned my head back against one of the ropes holding the swing up, letting my eyes unfocus and the night’s symphony fade to nothing as I replayed my conversation with Reed that afternoon for the umpteenth time.
Analyzed every expression. Every piercing stare.
Remembered the tornado of fluttering wings that erupted in my belly the moment he opened the door and the disgust and denial that unfurled in my stomach when I noticed what he was wearing.
I had meant every word I said to him. If asked again, I would still mean them.
Lala could call it prejudice all she wanted.
I didn’t care.
She hadn’t been subjected to it dozens of times, and I’d never encountered anything different to show me otherwise.
My world had been men littered with tattoos who tried to ruin me.
My world had been cops who left me in the care of those vile men. Cops who feigned honesty and devotion between pocketing my mom’s drugs and taking her bribes.
Before today, I’d found myself wanting to believe Reed wouldn’t be like those men, and I knew I would continue to. I’d known it as soon as the shock of seeing his badge had faded enough for a thought to emerge.
Not him . . .
Only to be quickly taken over by the persistent, disturbing echo.
He’s a cop, he’s a cop, he’s a cop . . . Reed’s a cop.
As horrified as I’d been today, every time I replayed our conversation, I still saw Reed—not the badge. And I was beginning to hate myself for that.
I was falling too hard, too fast.
Despite Lala’s insistence to be brave, the harder I fell for Reed, the more it terrified me and made me want to push him far away.
Even if I could take away the tattoos and the badge—and God knew my traitorous heart was battling with my mind, screaming they didn’t matter—other factors made me want to keep Reed at a far, far distance.
The greatest of which was a tower of tattered baggage that had followed me around my entire life.
New York had been a place I’d found I could be free of that girl.
Funny how here, in this safe haven, my demons ran rampant. Ready to torment and torture me at every turn. Reminding me I was nothing more than a damaged girl who’d managed to escape Hell.
Maybe because running from them wasn’t the answer.
I lowered my foot to the porch again, a sigh falling from my lips as I rocked the swing a few times and prepared to push off.
Blinking away the daze, I flattened my foot to stop the swing’s movement when I heard the sound of a car door shutting far too close to be anywhere else other than—
I sucked in a shallow breath.
Oh God.
My heart stuttered and then took off at a rapid pace, matching the thrum of wings in my stomach as I watched Reed walk up to the porch. But my muscles tensed instinctively at the sight of the police SUV in front of the house. A lifetime of reacting to seeing those kinds of cars and those uniforms. The deep-rooted instinct to dispose of anything illegal my mom might’ve left lying around—the need to protect her—still hit hard, all these years later.
By the time he climbed the steps of the porch and stopped a few feet away from me, I was a mess of conflicting emotions.
The disgust poisoning my veins? I understood it.
The anger making my blood race? Went without saying.
But I couldn’t figure out why the sight of Reed dressed that way had my lungs seizing, stealing every last breath. I couldn’t wrap my mind around this betrayal and this ache when I hardly knew him. When he meant nothing—he had to mean nothing to me.
“You should go,” I whispered and looked to the door, gauging the distance and Reed’s position.
“Shit, Emma, I’m sorry.” It all came out rough and aggravated and on edge. “I’m fucking sorry. I’m sorry about how everything happened today and how I responded to you.”
I stilled. My stare slowly shifted in his direction again as I tried to figure out what he had to be sorry for.
I’d gone through our conversation enough times to know that I was the one who’d been harsh and cruel—only I didn’t know how to apologize for my life and the kind of person it had turned me into.
“I’ve been thinking about it ever since you left, and I just keep seeing that look in your eyes when you saw me,” he said softly, dejectedly. “I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. I’m sorry.”
“Please stop,” I softly begged. “Stop apologizing.”
“I don’t know what else to do. I feel like I’ve fucked everything up just by breathing, and I don’t know how to make it right by you.”
You can’t . . .
You don’t understand . . .
And why did that bother me so much?
My head shook as I stood and hurried for the door. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”
“Emma.”
The instant Reed’s hand touched mine, I reacted.
Wrenching my hand from his grasp and shoving him away. “Don’t touch me,” lashed from my tongue like the cracking of a whip as I lurched from him.
Reed’s hands were in the air and he was standing at the lip of the top step by the time I pressed myself to the siding of the house. “I’m sorry,” he said carefully, eyes wide and worried as they searched me.
Oh God, oh God . . . “Oh God.”
“I’m going to stay over here,” Reed said after a few seconds, voice rough and tense. “I won’t come closer.”
“I’m sorry,” I wheezed, struggling to see him past the flashes bursting through my mind. “It’s—”
Instinctive.
Survival.
None of your business . . .
“It’s okay,” he said when he realized I wasn’t going to finish speaking.
“Why are you even here, Reed?”
“I was going through the neighborhood for a call,” he answered softly. “Saw you when I was driving back out and thought we could talk.” When all I gave him was a nod, he continued, his voice pure hesitation with underlying hints of sorrow and fury. “Emma, what happened to you?”
My gaze flickered in his direction as the wraiths continued tormenting me with my past. Clearing my throat, I took a step toward the door. “You should go.”
“Wait.”
I hated that he had the power to make me stop. To make me go against every instinct. To have me abandoning my morals. To crumble my resolve.
“You don’t have to tell me—that’s okay. But will you do something for me?”
At that, I rested back against the wall. All those monstrous thoughts still there, clawing at my mind and trying to overpower me, but the wonder of what Reed Ryan could want from me quieted them.
“Will you close your eyes?”
My head was shaking before the last word could leave his lips. “No.”
“Emma—”
“No.”
“I will stay in this spot. I won’t move unless you tell me I can,” he said, honesty dripping from every word. His throat worked, the movement slow and wholly captivating. “You said something this afternoon, and I want to talk to you about it now that you’ve had time to process what I do. But I can’t if you’re already looking at me like I’ve somehow ruined your life.”
I didn’t move.
I didn’t close my eyes.
I simply stood there, staring directly into his pleading eyes, silently begging him not to make me do this. Not to ask me to blindly trust a man.
“Emma, please.”
With a defeated, broken exhale, I forced my eyelids shut and tried to contain the shaking that took over my body.
“You said I was the kind of guy who used my position and power to push people into giving me what I want,” Reed said after a moment, his voice a mixture of confusion, anguish, and defeat, and just as far from me as it had been before. “Do you truly think that?”
“Why are my eyes closed for this?” I asked instead of answering, praying the softness of my voice hid the slight tremble there.
“I saw your reaction to me at my house,” he responded gently. “I saw the way you looked when I walked up this porch. You’re not gonna be able to give me a real answer if you’re focused on my uniform—on the way it makes you feel.”
“Part of me believes that,” I finally answered, then relented, “A lot of me does. But if you would’ve asked me yesterday, my answer would’ve been no.”
“Because you didn’t know I was a cop,” he assumed, his voice low.
I didn’t respond. I kept my jaw firmly locked, already kicking myself for the answer I’d given him. I was positive if I hadn’t spent the day worrying over our fight and my conversation with Lala, I would’ve already walked into the house and up to my room, leaving Reed out there alone.
After a minute of excruciating silence, he asked, “Can I take a step toward you?”
I sucked in a sharp breath and slanted my head in preparation to shake it . . . and halted.
My lungs began aching the longer I stood there, turning over a harmless question and a simple answer.
“I’ll stay here,” he said resolutely.
“One,” I whispered.
“You’re sure?” he asked after a beat.
I nodded unsteadily and wondered if he saw the way my entire body jerked when his heavy boot sounded on the porch. Wondered if he noticed the way my chest pitched and my lips parted with my shaky inhale. If he noticed my racing heart and deepening breaths were from equal parts old horrors and in response to the energy thrumming between us.
“But it’s more than my job,” he assumed softly. “So, if you hadn’t heard someone at my house that first night, would you still think all this about me? Think I’m some asshole who uses women up and leaves them?”
My eyelids popped open to see him studying me, brow set in frustration.
Responses gathered on the tip of my tongue, jumbling and choking me. Because to give Reed a simple yes would mean one thing to him, and I wasn’t sure I could hurt him that way—not again. To say no and explain my life would be a confession I wasn’t willing to give.
“That’s difficult to answer,” I said, voice wavering in uncertainty.
“Why?”
Because my mind tries to connect my past to you at every chance, conjuring images of a man I vowed to run far away from—a man who is trouble.
Because even with the badge and tattoos and the girl that night, I still find myself wanting you.
But I hate that you evoke these thoughts and reactions and emotions in me at all—I’d rather feel nothing toward you. And yet . . .
“Unless you tell me no, I’m about to take another step toward you,” he said when I didn’t respond, his tone filled with an agonizing mixture of warning and longing.
I didn’t say no. I didn’t say anything at all.
My belly tightened nervously watching him take that step. My breaths came quicker . . . heavier. The space between us was so alive with energy, it felt suffocating. As if I wouldn’t be able to take a full breath until it was erased.
Damn him for it.
When he spoke again, his voice was softer, gruff. “All I need is a yes or no—would your thoughts of me be the same?”
“I can’t give you either.”
His frustratingly handsome face twisted in defeat and sadness. “Why?”
“Why can’t you let this go?”
The corner of his mouth twitched into some semblance of a forced smirk as those emotions came off him in waves and crashed into me. “You and I both know it would be a mistake to.”
I wanted to tell him I didn’t know that. I wanted to tell him he was wrong. I wanted to send him away—force him from my life.
Instead, I stood there, silently begging him to understand something I refused to tell him.
To understand that I was haunted by a horrific childhood. That I’d learned to never trust men who represented what he was. And I’d survived by running from all of them.
To fall for Reed . . . it would shatter everything I’d known and who I was.
But those demons still had their claws deep within me, and it was impossible to shake them off.
“It isn’t as simple as a yes or no,” I finally said. “And I can’t explain why.”
“Because I’m everything you hate and fear, right?”
My body sagged against the wall. “Reed . . .”
“Right?”
“It isn’t that simple,” I whispered because I knew Lala was right. I knew just looking into Reed’s eyes that he was good.
He studied me for a while before faintly begging, “Close your eyes.”
I didn’t hesitate that time.
That earlier fear and suspicion were noticeably absent, leaving only the current that seemed to grow stronger and stronger with each minute that passed.
As if even the energy between us was mocking me for fighting the inevitable.
“Is this how we’re always going to talk from here on out?” I asked. “With my eyes closed?”
The slightest hint of a laugh filled his voice when he answered, “No.” A few moments of silence passed—tense and heavy with unknowns and wants before he said, “Hold your hand out in front of you.”
Unease wound through me.
Because my heart was already going insane, and now my mind was going wild with possibilities of what would happen if I did as he asked.
I slowly rubbed my fingers together before reaching out in front of me.
Hesitantly.
Blindly.
Trusting a man littered with tattoos and wearing a badge.
A shock of that electricity and excitement and Reed bolted up my arm when his fingers circled around my wrist and slowly slid up my forearm.
His hold was both gentle and firm, enough to assure me that I was safe while silently conveying his own cravings.
Halfway up my arm, he reversed his path until his fingers were intertwined with mine.
“I’m taking a step,” he said brusquely.
My lips parted.
A shuddered breath escaped.
It was all I could offer in way of consent.
He lifted our joined hands, his fingers teasing mine in a slow dance before he trailed his hand up my arm again.
&n
bsp; “If this puts fear in you, I’ll never touch you again,” he said softly, unwavering in his honesty. “Open your eyes.”
I did. Immediately. Already knowing his face would be directly in front of mine.
Close enough that if he leaned in . . .
His stare dipped to my mouth as if we were both standing on the edge, forcing ourselves not to fall. “Do you see me or someone you hate?”
I saw a mistake I was about to make.
My mind was screaming, reminding me of every reason this was a bad idea. But my body had taken control the moment he touched me.
I see you.
I see you.
I see you.
What are you doing to me?
Before my lips could touch his, a muffled, distorted voice had me jolting away and snapping back to my clashing reality. My stomach twisting with disgust and dipping with regret as the energy that bound us lashed between us, stronger than ever.
I wanted to break through it. Shatter it. Destroy it.
I pulled from Reed’s hold and pressed closer to the siding of the house, trying to ignore the way my chest ached when the hunger and longing in his expression were replaced with understanding and disappointment.
He murmured something into his mic as he stepped back, then cleared his throat. “That one was for me.”
I nodded. Jaw firm. Stare darting all around, never resting on him.
I felt restless.
I wanted to run.
To get away from Reed and what I’d been about to say—about to do.
“I have to go,” he said, the disappointment I’d seen on his face leaking through his words.
“You should,” I said quickly, already taking a step toward the front door.
“Emma,” he called out before I could reach the handle.
I glanced over my shoulder to stare at the porch, at the railing, at anything.
“It would be a mistake to let this go,” he said, repeating his earlier words, and then he was gone.
Leaving me confused . . .
Aching.
More determined than ever to push him away . . .
To let myself want him and be wanted in return.
I pushed Rowe into the booth opposite Nick Butler and then slid in beside him, releasing a weighted breath.
Lie to Me Page 9
