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I could feel my body tremble as I turned my gaze to his, locking eyes.
“I am?”
He nodded slowly. “Everywhere.”
Oh god. My heart.
I couldn’t handle this.
I couldn’t cope with him…
Panicked by and uncertain about my feelings, I quickly hurried on. “We’re on a level playing field now. I know your secrets and now you know mine, so you can rest assured that I won’t be announcing your injury to the whole world,” I told him, feeling both vulnerable and exposed. “Not when you have your own dirt on me.”
“Yeah, I guess we are,” Johnny replied in a thoughtful tone, before quickly backpedaling. “Wait… You told me all that so I would have leverage over you?”
I shrugged.
Johnny frowned. “Why would you do that?”
“I was trying to make you feel safe,” I blurted out.
“You want to make me feel safe?” The expression on Johnny’s face was one I couldn’t decipher as he stared down at me with storm-filled blue eyes. “Why?”
“Because you’re freaked out about me knowing about your, uh, your—” I pointed to his crotch, cheeks flaming, and then blew out a breath. “It’s clearly upsetting you, and I wanted to make you feel better. I wanted to give you that so you don’t feel cornered.”
“I don’t get it.” Johnny shook his head in obvious confusion. “I mean, I’m glad that you told me—I’m fucking honored—but you telling me something extremely personal like that with the expectation that I would use it against you and feel good about it? The fact that you were okay with that—that you thought I’d be okay with that?” He blew out a breath. “That’s the part I don’t understand.”
“Maybe you were right about me trusting you despite myself,” I whispered, feeling a flood of heat and ice collide inside of my chest.
His brows shot up. “So, you do trust me.”
The shrug I gave him was a helpless one because that’s exactly how I felt in this moment: disarmed and utterly helpless.
“Words, Shannon,” he pushed, tone gruff. “I need the words.”
“What do you want me to say?” I croaked out.
“Tell me why you trust me.”
“Because when I’m with you, I feel…”
“You feel?”
“Safe, okay?” I strangled out. “When you’re around, I feel safe.”
“Because you are,” Johnny confirmed in a gruff tone. “I’ve already told you that I’m not going to hurt you, and I hope like fuck that I’ve shown you that, too.”
I exhaled a ragged breath and ducked my face, desperate to hide how deeply those words affected me.
“Shannon, look at me.”
I shook my head, refusing his request. I couldn’t. It was too much.
He was far too much.
“Look at me,” he repeated, tone soft and coaxing.
When I made no move to oblige, Johnny tipped my chin up with his hand, forcing our gazes to lock, blue eyes burning holes in mine.
