Reed grunted, his head moving in a slow nod as if what I’d said made everything make sense to him.
“What?”
His eyes darted to me. “You don’t share anything, Emma. You hold everything close so no one can touch you. Why wouldn’t you keep something that means this much to you even closer?”
The truth of what he said had a self-deprecating laugh tumbling free. “The thing is, I’m not. I mean . . . it’s complicated.” I blew out a sigh as I tried to gather my thoughts. “The whole purpose of what I’m doing is for people to know about it. To see it.”
“But not see you do it,” he said in understanding, stunning me into silence as I stared at him.
Those wings fluttering in my belly as I wondered how he could see me so clearly.
Moments passed in our tension-filled silence before he lifted a shoulder. “Guess I’ll be waking you up.”
The corners of my lips lifted, a breath of a laugh dancing free even as I shook my head. “Nora might have a problem with that.” At his obvious confusion, I explained, “She thinks I’m taking you from her. She’s pretty upset.”
Understanding lit Reed’s features as a sigh eased from him. “Yeah, she mentioned something like that when I stopped by yesterday. But she’ll get used to it.”
I thought over his words for a moment before saying, “There shouldn’t be anything for her to get used to because nothing good can come of this.” The words straining with my warring thoughts and desires.
“You know you don’t believe that.”
“I do,” I argued weakly because I needed to believe it.
One day, something would happen that was too much for either one of us. I was sure of it. But I was falling too fast for my heart to care.
I looked away from his amused and knowing stare and caught on the house across the street. “Don’t say it,” I warned as I started for the front door.
“Emma—” Reed was already on his feet, hand outstretched and mouth still parted when I glanced at him from over my shoulder. But my expression was enough to satisfy his pleas and curiosity because he forced back whatever he’d been saying and stayed in place as I opened the door.
I strained my ear as I turned off the porch light, listening for any signs that Lala or Nora had woken, then quietly slipped back outside. Stare darting over Reed’s silhouette in the dark as I started toward him again, trying desperately to catch my breath and calm my heart as I stopped directly beside him.
“The ladies across the street wake very early,” I said in way of explanation. “They’ve told me many times.”
His smile flashed in the dark. “They’ll still see my truck.”
A noncommittal hum sounded in my throat as I sank to the swing. “Then they can stare at a truck.”
“A lot of stories can be made from that,” he said as he sat beside me, movements slow and cautious as if he were waiting for me to stop him.
“Well, they’ve already come up with plenty about me,” I muttered. “‘You must’ve been a mistress,’” I recalled, pointing the way they had at me as if they’d finally figured it out. “‘She caught y’all, didn’t she? Mmhm. About time, filthy homewrecker.’”
Reed barked out a laugh and hurried to quiet it when I hushed him. “That didn’t happen.”
“It did,” I said earnestly. “One of my first days here.” I leaned my head back against the ropes, taking in his entertained expression now that my eyes had adjusted. “It wasn’t their first theory, and it hasn’t been the last.” I shrugged, a smile crossing my face. “I think they like me.”
“I think I like it when you smile.”
My poor heart. It wasn’t going to survive this morning or Reed Ryan.
I could feel it in the way it faltered every time he said something like that. I could feel it in the way the fierce beats warned that I was falling for him in all the other moments.
I cleared my throat, but my voice was still a strained breath when I said, “I don’t want you to.”
“I know I like it when you lie,” he added, the words drifting over me like a caress in the dark and wrapping us in a bubble of wants and needs that intrigued me almost as much as it terrified me. “Tell me something . . .”
I tilted my head in response, my stare following his every movement as he shifted in the bench swing to face me, his hand slowly extending to me in invitation.
“When I came back yesterday morning,” he began, words sure, “were you trying to avoid me?”
Hesitation unfurled inside me and bled free as I looked from his open palm to his expectant expression.
“Lie to me, Emma,” he said when I’d held on to the answer too long. “Either way, I’ll know the truth.”
I reached forward, setting my hand in his and loosing a stuttered breath when he curled his fingers around me. “Yes,” I admitted.
“Because of what happened,” he said knowingly.
“Yes.”
He turned our hands and eased his fingers through mine, a question on his tongue when he said, “But you came out here.”
“Against my better judgment,” I conceded, earning a hushed laugh from him.
But the way he was looking at me was as if he could hear every single one of my thoughts. As if they echoed his own.
Because I can’t seem to stay away from you. I can’t stop thinking about you—wanting you.
“Tell me something about you,” I begged when the connection between us pulled harder and harder, making my nerves jump in anticipation, and tried to ignore the way we’d both leaned closer. “Something you think I should know.”
Reed sat back, blinking quickly as he pulled himself from the moment we’d nearly gotten trapped in again. “Something you should know?” He cleared his throat, searching around the porch before meeting my stare again. “Uh . . . I was engaged.”
Reed didn’t try to stop me when I pulled my hand back, but I felt his disappointment like a stake to my chest, amplifying my confusion and uneasiness at the revelation.
Not that I’d expected Reed to have been a monk, I clearly knew he hadn’t been—given what I’d heard the first night I met him. But I’d never let anyone close enough to even push against one of my defenses, let alone slip past it, and Reed had been planning a wedding to someone.
“I knew her from Tampa—that’s where I grew up. But we didn’t get together until after I was a SEAL.” Something like a smile crossed his face, but it was all irritation. “You know, because people hear SEAL and everything changes. I just hadn’t realized that then.”
His bitterness had me going still.
The reminder of how he’d reacted when I’d asked about him being a SEAL suddenly had a different meaning, and it made me want to protect my heart against him even more.
Because I saw the way Courtney reacted to him at the coffee shop, and it was ridiculous, he was right. But it went so much deeper for Reed than that—he was hurt by it. Still.
I nodded, my stare on the porch below the motionless swing. “I see.”
“Yeah, I don’t think you do,” he said, voice rough and capturing my attention again. “Not if you’re pulling away from me and already shutting me out. Emma, we broke up years ago.”
“Why did you?”
“She was cheating on me.” He shrugged. “She gave me the ring back almost as soon as I got stateside from one of my missions.”
“All right, then I do understand,” I argued. “Because I can hear your pain and bitterness when you talk about her. And if it had been up to you, you would be married right now.”
“But I’m not,” he said firmly. “Yeah, I’ll admit, there’s bitterness when it comes to her, but it’s for more reasons than what happened between us. A lot is that I was completely blinded to her, and that pisses me off because I wasted years with her. Most of it goes back to my family.” He leaned forward but was careful not to get in my space. “If you think I miss her or that I still love her? I can assure you, you’re wrong.”
“So easily,” I m
urmured as my stare fell away again. “This is such a bad idea.”
“You’re about to stand up, please don’t,” he said quickly just as my muscles tensed to do exactly that.
Seconds passed in strained silence, but I never relaxed my body.
When he was sure I wasn’t leaving, he asked, “What did you mean by that? ‘So easily,’” he clarified when I didn’t respond, “what did you mean?”
“You,” I finally said, voice soft. “You love someone enough to ask her to marry you, and then you no longer love her. You kissed me just weeks after I heard you having sex with someone else.” My head shook quickly. “The way you move on and think and feel, it shifts so easily.”
“Emma—” His head slanted, my name tripping up and coming out on a stilted breath when my stare shot to his. Almost as if he could physically see the way I’d already shut down, thinking of anything to say to make him leave.
Maybe my reaction was naïve, but I’d witnessed fleeting emotions through my mom. Husbands and boyfriends coming and going almost as fast as the seasons. The only emotions I’d ever experienced were fear and loathing.
Until Reed.
I was afraid enough of them. I wanted to run as it was.
I didn’t want to let myself get caught up in the first real thing in my life only to find out it had just been another week . . . month . . . season for him.
“Before you go,” Reed began, voice strained like he was trying so hard to keep his voice soft and even, “you should know that only two other people in this town know I used to be engaged—and that’s because they were there for it.” A huff of a laugh left him as he leaned forward, hands hanging between his legs. “Lala doesn’t even know, and she knows too much about my life.”
His head shifted my way, eyes searching me. “People don’t know because it’s in the past—there isn’t a reason for them to. But you? I feel like you need to know the worst and most important parts of me.”
“Why?”
“Why are you down here? Why did you tell me about the night with your mom and the stairs?” he challenged without hesitation. “Because I need to. Because you’re different.”
I wet my lips and tried to push deeper against the rope as he gave voice to my thoughts. Making them real.
“Having my heart broken and moving on from it wasn’t easy,” he continued. “The fact that I did means nothing because otherwise, I’d be the idiot still waiting around for someone who never actually loved me. As for the other night . . .” He forced out a heavy sigh and dropped his head to run his hands through his hair before sitting back and facing me. “It was a one-time thing, and it was a mistake because I’d already seen you.” His deep voice dropped even lower and echoed with his regret. “I’d seen your disgust-fueled sneers and your scorn-filled glares, and I swear to God I started falling for you right then.”
My stare dropped to my lap at his confession, my breaths short and uneven.
“I’m not faulting you for sleeping with someone the night you met me—or any night,” I whispered, words trembling slightly. “You can sleep with whoever you want.”
“I don’t want to sleep with anyone else.”
At his implication, fear unfurled in my belly and mixed with an exhilarating heat I was becoming alarmingly familiar with when it came to Reed Ryan. My lips parted to speak, but my mouth was suddenly too dry.
“If you think you’d ever be a night—someone I’d ‘easily’ move on from—Emma, you have to know how wrong you are.” He held his hand out between us again but clenched it into a fist as if already knowing I wouldn’t place mine there. “I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be practically begging you to help me understand you.”
I stared at his clenched hand as minutes came and went in tense silence. In all that time, I could’ve sworn Reed never took a breath as he waited to see what I would do.
After what felt like an eternity trapped in indecision where my heart was rooted in place and my mind was screaming at me to leave, I softly pleaded, “Tell me something you think I should know about you.”
Reed’s hand opened with a ragged exhale, and when I met his stare, his expression was pure relief. “Uh . . .” His head moved in faint shakes as he thought. “My family. We don’t speak—haven’t in years. But it’s a story that spans my entire life, so I’ll have to tell you on one of my days off.”
I nodded, understanding that better than anyone probably could.
“My mom called herself a lover,” I began, slipping my hand into his again. “I don’t think she actually knew the meaning of the word. She got married and divorced at least once a year and had twice as many boyfriends. She’d leave them after robbing them blind, or they’d leave her for another woman.” I swallowed back the shame that gathered in my throat and forced myself to hold Reed’s stare. “The longest and most normal relationship I’ve ever witnessed lasted maybe five months. It was only because she’d landed a dealer, so he fed her addiction. He got tired of her eventually.”
The way Reed was staring at me made me feel bare. As if he were looking into my soul and seeing the little glimpses of my life that I’d just told him. As if he’d realized what I’d carelessly revealed: that I’d never had a relationship. Letting it all help him piece and shape together what he already knew of me to get a more concrete idea of the girl sitting next to him.
“That wasn’t love, that was people trying to fill voids,” he said finally. “And that—” He’d been turning closer to me but stopped almost as soon as he began moving. “Can I touch you?”
I put a little pressure on his hand as if to remind him that he was.
His head slanted, his eyes searching mine earnestly. “Stop me,” he offered softly as he reached forward with his free hand.
I watched, unable to move or speak as he rested his hand just above my knee. His tattooed fingers gently curling around me in a claim and a plea that had my chest shaking with a jagged exhale and my stomach dipping with want.
I felt like a traitor in my own body.
“This okay?”
My head bobbed quickly before I breathed out, “Yeah.”
He waited another few seconds, studying my face and the way I was holding myself, before relaxing against the swing and continuing with what he’d been saying. “What you explained about your mom, that’s the easy shift you’re expecting, I’m getting it now. But that isn’t what I want, and that isn’t what this is. Give me a chance to show you that.”
“It’s dangerous to give chances,” I said under my breath, memories and horrors ripping through my mind and sending a chill down my spine.
His head dipped, accepting the next piece I’d carelessly given him. When he responded, his tone was solemn. “I’m okay with fighting for it.”
“I might just fight back.”
A smile crept across his face at the warning, all amusement and unwavering interest. “I’m well aware of that, Emma Wade.”
My lungs expanded so quickly they ached when he trailed the tips of his fingers across my palm before taking my hand in his. I wet my lips and struggled to clear my head when a simple touch had my thoughts and judgment clouded.
But there was just that moment. That touch.
There was just Reed and his presence that I was beginning to crave, steady and uncertain and good and terrifying. There were just his words and smirks that sent my heart into a frenzy.
A small smile of my own tugged at my mouth when Reed pushed against the porch, setting the swing into motion in a gentle sway.
Twisting to better face him, I studied his handsome face in the gray light of pre-dawn and said, “Tell me something you think I should know about you.”
“Oh good, I was just about to call you.”
I stilled with my hand on the door early that evening, so used to Lala’s typical greeting being called out from the kitchen that I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Do you need to change?” she tossed out over her shoulder as she hurried to the kitchen from the
entryway, fixing her hair as she did.
“For what?” I asked, finally managing to shut the door. “Is everything okay?”
“Didn’t you hear?” She faced me when I followed her into the kitchen, hand on her chest and eyes closing as if trying to hold back some unfathomable emotion.
“Hear what? Are you okay?” I looked around as I listened for sounds of Nora. “Where’s Nora?”
“At the neighbors’.” Lala forced out a harsh breath, head shaking as she went back to packing up two large bags with food. “If you have to change, do it quickly. We have to go.”
“I don’t need to change,” I said, not that I knew what I needed to be dressed for because I didn’t know what all that food meant.
“Then grab a bag, and let’s go,” Lala said, voice slightly frantic as she grabbed one, holding its weight carefully against her body.
I didn’t say anything as I grabbed the second bag and followed her back outside to her old truck, noticing that the two ladies across the street were uncharacteristically quiet and somber as they watched from their chairs.
Taking the keys from me once I had the truck unlocked, Lala went around to the driver’s side and got in without a word.
It wasn’t until we had the food carefully placed in the truck and were driving away that I asked, “Lala, is everything okay?”
She tsked, her head shaking sadly. “The Allens,” she finally said after another minute of silence. “They live just next door to Reed and Peter. Their—” She made a pained sort of sound and covered her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I just can’t imagine.”
I sat back in my seat and didn’t try to ask anything else during the rest of the short drive. I let Lala be alone in her pain and thoughts, ones I knew I wouldn’t have been able to share even if I’d known what was going on because I didn’t know those people.
When she pulled up in front of the house beside Reed’s, I looked at her, waiting for what she needed.
After wiping at her face, she blew out a steadying breath and carefully grabbed up one of the bags, carefully checking it over as she spoke. “I’m going to take this in and get it all ready for them so they won’t have to worry about food,” she said as if speaking the words to herself. “Take the other bag into Peter and Reed’s. Get everything started, would you?”
Lie to Me Page 17
