The words, “Don’t touch me,” lashed out as instinctively as the defensive move and as cold as the glare I cast his way.
But when I reached the office, I heard his quick steps closing in on me. The door to the office slammed shut a few seconds after it should’ve, and I turned to find Reed in the room with me.
Hands fisted at his sides, body vibrating with barely concealed energy, looking like he was about to explode.
“Why won’t you leave?”
“Because I love you,” he said boldly and without reservation.
Taking another chunk of my heart.
As if I could afford to lose another part of it to him.
As if I weren’t currently standing on a cliff, being dragged to the edge by demons, fighting not to fall.
“I love you, and we’re never going to get anywhere if you keep pushing me back. If you don’t let me in. If you keep hiding every goddamn piece of yourself from me.” With each sentence, he took a step closer until he was in my space.
“I told you,” I cried. “I told you, there is no getting past you. And you will not want me when you know where I come from. I cannot give you what you want.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“How can I be wrong when all I see when I look at you is a lifetime of pain and fear and so much hate that burns so deep, I nearly choke on it?”
He rocked back a step.
Shock and pain and denial radiated from him and crept toward me.
“That’s all you see?” he murmured so low I almost couldn’t make out the words.
A sob broke free at the lie he so easily accepted.
My knees threatened to give.
But I forced myself to stand strong.
“Everything about you represents man after man that played a part in ruining my childhood. My life. You are everything I swore to get away from and never go near again.” My words twisted with remorse when I offered them in the only version of truth I had left. “I look at you, and I want to hate you.”
But I don’t know how . . .
The words sat heavy on the tip of my tongue, begging to be freed, but I swallowed them back.
The corners of his mouth tipped up in a strained, wounded smile. “Still?”
My heart wrenched with shame and regret as I held his stare and kept my head high.
With a sharp nod, he started for the door.
Stop him.
Stop him.
Stop him.
A hard knock sounded on the door just as Reed gripped the handle. He opened it with so much force, I was sure the door would’ve smacked into the wall if he hadn’t caught it with his shaking hand.
“Hey.” A guy I had yet to see looked from Reed to me, then awkwardly glanced away when he realized he’d just walked in on something he shouldn’t have. Slanting his head in my direction, he said, “There are some guys here with doors for you.”
I replayed his words in my head a couple times before they finally registered. “Oh.”
With all the pain and lies and the storm of emotions and need begging me to take back everything I’d said, I’d managed to forget what was going on outside the office. The rest of Donna’s surprises—new doors to seamlessly continue the flow between her beautiful bay windows was one of them.
“Right. Right . . . okay.”
As soon as the guy walked away, I looked at Reed, but he was standing back, holding the door open wide and staring at the floor.
There were so many things I wanted to say. Things I wanted to confess and things I wanted to declare. But they all jumbled in my throat, choking me with the damage I’d already caused.
It’s for the best.
If I thought it enough, maybe soon I would believe it.
With a defeated sigh, I walked from the office, stopping in the doorway when Reed spoke.
“That night you heard Hannah . . .” he began, voice like gravel, “that was the first and only time I’ve ever done anything with her.”
A shuddering breath tore from me at the mention of her.
I hated that I wanted to believe him. That I wanted to believe the sincerity in his pained words when I’d heard the girls talking about it . . . when his best friend had confirmed it.
“She and a friend were talking about the two of you at Lala’s—about the details of your ‘relationship.’” I informed him before glancing over my shoulder to look at him. “Nick even said he saw her at your house the other day.”
Reed just stared at me with a mixture of confusion and devastation that tore at my chest. After a while, a sad huff left him, one of his brows ticking up knowingly. “Rowe,” he muttered as if everything finally made sense to him. “If you’d just told me that night, I could’ve explained everything then. I could’ve fixed—” His jaw ticked as his stare dragged away. “But I guess it doesn’t matter, right?”
His name left me on a pained breath as the pieces of my heart I’d given him splintered.
His steel-gray eyes met mine. “You have people waiting for you.”
I looked away before he could see the newly building tears and hurried away. My mind and heart so twisted up that I didn’t even register the four men standing around the pictures and talking over the sketch I’d done as I passed them to head outside. So clouded with my pain and confusion that the men installing the doors had to repeat questions and simple statements multiple times.
But just before the doors were finished being installed, the fourth and final surprise was delivered and hung over the doorway. The sign, giving the bookstore its first, real name: Morrison’s Books. And seeing it there helped ease some of my heartache and brought back my earlier joy for the store.
When I finally walked back in, half of the pictures were already hung, and they were even more perfect on the walls.
Reed glanced over his shoulder from where he stood with Nick beneath a ladder with a frame in hand, the smile falling from his face when he saw me there.
I’d done that. And nearly every part of me hated myself for it. The other parts had me walking away.
Without apologizing.
Without begging him to understand.
Without telling him somewhere beneath the fear, I’d fallen in love with him too.
The five of us finished hanging the pictures not long after Emma had come back in. When the guys started heading for the door, I lingered, my stare drifting toward the hall Emma still hadn’t reappeared from like a man drawn.
Fucking siren.
I needed to leave.
For both of us, I needed to head to my truck and do everything to avoid seeing her again. Especially after all the shit we’d already been through that day.
By far the worst encounter we’d had when I’d already thought nothing could top last week at Lala’s. But I still felt myself being pulled toward her. Felt myself being called in that direction because I had lost my damn mind. Clearly.
“You coming?” Butler called out. “We’re gonna grab some food.”
I looked at the guys, then glanced at the painters still working out front.
I rocked back a step and nodded toward the hallway that led to the office. “I’m going to let her know we’re headed out.”
Butler hesitated, looking like he either wanted to drag me out or stay behind with me. But a few seconds after the others left, he followed.
I waited until he was out the door before heading to the office, my steps slowing the closer I got. As if my brain and my heart and my body were all at war with wanting to go to her and wanting to avoid another fight.
Avoid hearing those words leave her lips again.
“Everything about you represents man after man that played a part in ruining my childhood. My life. I look at you, and I want to hate you.”
I knocked on the office door as I opened it, my eyebrows drawing close when I found it empty. “Emma?” I called out as I shut the door and started back down the hall, stopping when I noticed a hidden set of stairs for the first time.
My heart faltered under the love and pain that flooded me just from looking at her.
She stilled from reaching into the box, her back tensing just before she glanced over her shoulder. A ragged yet relieved breath escaping her when she saw me.
“Jesus, how are you so quiet?” she demanded breathlessly. “And what are you doing up here?”
“Sorry.” I held my hands up in a calming gesture and rushed to continue before she could follow up with something similar to any of the things she’d said earlier. “We’re done. Everyone’s gone. I don’t think you should be in here alone without locking the door since the painters are still outside.”
She blinked quickly. “Right. Yeah . . . yeah, okay.”
I nodded and stepped back. “Goodbye, Emma.”
As soon as I began turning, she said, “About earlier—”
“We don’t have to do this,” I said with a laugh that revealed every ounce of my pain. “You explained yourself well enough. Seeing me is clearly something that bothers you. And I knew from night one—I did—but I just . . . fuck. There was something there that made me think that changed for you.”
Her soft face crumpled. “Reed . . .”
“But it didn’t. Now, this is a small town, so I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do what I can to make sure we don’t cross paths again.”
A shocked breath ripped from her and her chin trembled.
“Maybe that will make it easier for you.” Pressing a hand to my chest, I forced out a huff. “It sure as hell will make it easier for me.”
“Wait,” she cried out when I turned. The sounds of her scrambling to follow filled the loft, but I needed to go.
I had to get out of there before I did something like pull her into my arms and try to remind her what we were like together. Show her I wasn’t like every man she’d come across in her life.
Beg her to realize that I was different.
“Reed, wait,” she pleaded, grabbing hold of one of my hands just a few steps from the top of the stairs.
I stopped as if I’d run into a wall the second her skin had touched mine, the contact like a shock straight to my system.
When she continued, her voice trembled. “Please . . .”
I glanced over my shoulder when she didn’t go on, but her brows were drawn tight, her face pleading with me in a way that said it all.
Please don’t go.
Please understand.
The same push and pull we’d been trapped in from that very first night, perfectly displayed in her eyes.
Turning, I gently pulled away from her, my own pain reflected on her face as she looked at her empty hand. “Tell me I’m the only one haunted by thoughts of you and me together, Emma. Tell me you don’t want me.”
Hesitation and need warred in her eyes.
That push and pull. Hurt and craving.
It was maddening.
But even before her lips parted, she looked as if just the thought of admitting the truth had her stripped. Exposed in a way she’d never been.
And that terrified her.
“Lie to me, Emma.”
“I was wrong,” she choked out as her hand pressed to her stomach. “I’ve been wrong. I was—God.” A broken laugh that lacked all amusement fell from her lips. “I’ve been doing exactly what my grandma claimed I was: Projecting my life and my experiences onto you, and that wasn’t fair to you. I know that, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for hurting you, for what I said . . . for everything. I truly hate that sorry doesn’t feel like nearly enough, but I am sorry.”
“You’ve been doing that,” I said, voice a soft murmur as I took in her pleading expression . . . the sorrow there. “I could handle that, Emma. I was there, trying to help you through that. But I can’t help you wanting to hate me. And you seeing every man that ruined your childhood and life when you look at me? I can’t stop that. I can’t fight that.”
Her jaw trembled, her beautiful face creasing as a lone tear slipped down her cheek. The sight of it tore through my chest, rough and jagged.
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat and tried not to let it show how this was breaking my heart. “So, goodbye, Emma.”
Turning, I took the last steps to the stairs, feeling all her pain and longing explode behind me, amplifying my own.
“It’s almost impossible for me to trust men,” she said just as I’d taken the first step down. Voice soft and strained and shaky with a fear that had absolutely nothing to do with her hatred of men.
This fear? I felt it . . . it was different. It was the kind of fear that swirled in my chest like a poison each time she pushed me away.
And it stopped me in place.
“Even more, I don’t trust any man with a badge or tattoos.”
My head dropped, hanging low for a few moments before I turned to lean up against the wall. “I know that, Emma.”
I watched as her entire spirit seemed to shudder as the walls she’d built around herself fell with a weighted breath. “Then why do I trust you? How can I be falling in love with you?”
Reed’s head snapped to the side, eyes piercing mine from where he waited at the top of the narrow staircase. Searching. Begging.
Guarded.
I’d done that too.
“I do want to hate you,” I admitted. “I do, and I hate it even more that I can’t. Your job—yes, Reed, I hate your job. But it . . . it goes so much deeper than hating what you are. Everything goes so much deeper than what you think. And even with it all, I can’t help but hate when you aren’t there. I ache when I push you away, and I feel alive when you’re near me.”
“But?” he asked after a moment, the word soft and filled with worry.
“But it’s engrained in me,” I admitted, my breaths turning shallow as I revealed things I’d sworn would never leave my lips again. “My mom was—I told you she wasn’t much of a mom, but she wasn’t a good person. She was a junkie, always looking for her next fix and the person who could supply it. I was only there for the ride because people felt bad for the child. People wanted to help the child. Some of the men she dated and married were into drugs, some weren’t, but she somehow always found a man who was covered in tattoos.” Ice crept through my body, making me jerk with the sudden cold.
As if Reed could sense the change coming, he stepped back into the loft.
Slowly.
Hesitantly.
When I continued, my shamed revelation was soft and uneven. “She somehow always, always found a man who had a thing for little girls.”
Reed’s eyelids slowly slipped shut. His jaw flexed.
“If she was with a man at the time of being arrested, she told the officer that man was my guardian or father. The arresting officers never listened when I said they weren’t—when I said what my mom’s boyfriends and husbands were doing to me. And why would they?”
His eyes flashed open and narrowed in confusion. “They should have listened,” Reed said adamantly. “They should’ve taken you away. Any cop knows better. Every claim is supposed to be looked into.”
“Supposed to be.” I nodded faintly. “But no one listened when it was my word over their friend’s . . . their supervisor’s.”
Reed dragged a hand over his face as it paled with realization. “They were officers?”
“She went through a phase of dirty cops when I was young,” I said through clenched teeth. “And I was always left with them—with all of her boyfriends and husbands. Left with assholes who wanted to ‘play games’ with me.” A shudder ripped through my body as th
e haunting memories tore at my mind. “Like I didn’t scream at them and fight until I was finally strong enough to protect myself when I was a teenager.”
“Emma,” Reed whispered as he staggered back a step until he bumped into the wall. His head shook slowly, and I could see it dripping from his expression. That look as if, of everything he’d imagined, he hadn’t imagined that.
“But throughout my life with her, I had to protect my mom whenever cops showed because she either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, protect herself. I watched countless cops trade sex with her instead of arresting her. And as I got older, they started looking at me as if they expected it of me because I was her daughter.”
At that, Reed went utterly still.
Unfocused stare on the floor near my feet.
Jaw clenched so tightly I thought it might shatter.
“Wherever we went, wherever we lived at the time, my mom gained a reputation with the worst kinds of people and law enforcement. There were always shady people coming to and from our RV, always illegal things happening inside. It wasn’t difficult for a cop to come in and find something worthy of arrest, and I was an easy target because I was the one left to clean up while my mom went out or was passed out.”
Pain and fury seeped between us in the tense quiet. “What happened?” Reed demanded after a while, eyes meeting mine.
“If my mom was there, she stepped in—mad that their focus was on me instead of her. If not . . .” My stare drifted as flashes burst through my mind, tormenting me. “My mom’s boyfriends and husbands were no longer a problem, but when a cop comes onto you the way they did me, it’s harder to turn them down . . . harder to fight them off. They threaten you with charges, like assault on an officer. Assault with a deadly weapon that you don’t even have.”
A huff burst from Reed—his lips twisted in a sneer.
“So, I figured out how to turn on their mics,” I whispered, shame coating the confession even though I wasn’t at all ashamed of what I’d done to protect myself. Maybe it was just that Reed now knew where I’d come from, what I’d grown up in, and I hated that he could see my demons.
For a long while, Reed just stood there, letting my past sink in and haunt his mind the way it still did mine.
Lie to Me Page 27
