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But it was a photo near the bottom of the pile that made her forget not to gasp out loud.
Sean's mother was sleeping in the picture. She was in a hospital bed, with wires and tubes all over and around her. She was painfully thin and pale. So horribly pale that it was obvious there was nothing more to be done for her. Serena stared at the picture, her heart breaking for him all over again.
"What the hell are you doing?"
She was still holding the picture of his mother in the hospital as she slowly turned to face him. The utter despair on his face almost made her lose her voice. But though she'd totally screwed up and needed to apologize, she first needed him to know how much she cared for him. And that she wanted so badly to help heal his pain.
"I'm so sorry, Sean. Your mother--" She looked down at the heart-wrenching photo in her hand. "--she's beautiful."
In a flash, he ripped the photo from her fingers. Roughly, quickly, he gathered them all up and threw them back into the box.
"Careful!" she pleaded as she came to her feet. "Those pictures you took, they're precious. You shouldn't ruin them because you're angry with me." Despair had turned to fury in his dark eyes as he swung around to face her. Her chest, her stomach, all of her hurt, as she said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to look. I swear I didn't. I accidentally kicked the box and when the cover came off--"
"It sure doesn't look like a goddamned accident to me, you sitting there with my pictures on the floor all around you."
He was right. Even though finding the pictures had been an accident, poring through them hadn't been. "I shouldn't have looked at them. I know I shouldn't have, not when you weren't ready to show them to me." She wanted to reach out to him, wanted to touch him again, wanted to try to close the huge distance that was growing between them. Especially when she'd never seen him look so anguished. "But I..."
He shifted just out of range of her fingertips. "But what? You thought you'd do it anyway just because you felt like it? Because you've always gotten everything you wanted so you figured this was one more thing that should be yours?"
She sucked in a shaky breath even though all the oxygen in the room had been sucked out by her stupid decision to pry into his past, his emotions, the most painful part of his life.
"I care about you, Sean, you know that I do," she told him in a voice barely above a whisper. "And when I saw the picture on top, when I realized it was your mother, I--" Her voice broke on the single syllable. "I'm sorry."
"How could you?" But he didn't give her a chance to try to answer. "I thought I knew you."
"You do know me."
"Do I? Or was I just being an idiot, blinded by your face like everyone else?"
It stung, God, how it stung, to hear him talk about her looks right now, and to blame his feelings on them. Especially after the way she'd told him last night that he was the only person in her life who didn't look at her face as a commodity.
"I'm so sorry for looking at the pictures without your consent, sorrier than you'll ever know," she said again as she tried to push away his heated words, words she didn't want to believe he could possibly mean. He was grieving and in terrible pain over the loss of his mother, and her actions had obviously brought all of those feelings back up before he was ready to deal with them. "But I've seen the way you look every time your mother comes up and I want so badly to be there for you."
"So this is how you thought you'd do it? By snooping through my things?"
Why couldn't he see that she hadn't meant to hurt him? That she'd only done what she had because she cared so much about him? And that it also hurt her the way he was shutting down, shutting her out so completely?
"You asked me from the start to trust you. You said it was okay to be scared, because you'd make sure that I didn't get hurt, and that we wouldn't move too fast. I've tried to keep trusting you, tried so hard that sometimes I actually think I've succeeded at conquering some of my own demons. But now, with these photos which obviously mean everything to you, why can't you trust me, too?" When he didn't say anything, even though something way down deep inside of her it felt like everything was starting to shatter, she still couldn't let herself give up on him. On them. "I know I can't understand what it must be like to lose your mother. But if you can just try to let me in a little--"
"How many times have you spoken to your mother since you've been on campus?"
"I..." Her throat felt as raw as if she'd been crying all night rather than sleeping in Sean's arms. "I haven't."
"Do you know how many times I would have given anything to talk to my mom again? You haven't even talked to yours at all, but now you want me to open up to you about mine being dead?"
She knew he was hurting terribly, but for everything he thought she didn't understand about him, there was just as much he didn't understand about her. And what he didn't know about her mattered. Mattered a lot, even if it wasn't life and death.
"Do you know why I haven't talked to my mom? Because she won't call me back. She won't write me back, won't have anything at all to do with me, because she's so mad at me for finally making my own decisions about everything. But even though she doesn't understand why I need to make my own decisions for once in my life, I've been trying so hard to make sure they're the right ones." God, she could hardly think it, let alone say it aloud, but she had to. "Now you're making me think I haven't. Now you're making me wonder if the dumbest thing I ever did was trust you with myself. With my heart." Her breath was coming fast and her ears were ringing as if she was in the front row of a hard-rock concert. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, so impossibly sorry that you're hurting. I'm so sorry you lost your mom. I'm so sorry I pried into your private things. I shouldn't have done it. I shouldn't have kept looking at your pictures. One day I hope you'll be able to forgive me. But most of all, one day--" She could barely get the words out around the tears that clogged her throat as she reached blindly for the doorknob, needing to run so he wouldn't see just how broken she felt about opening up her heart to him just in time for him to break it in two. "One day I hope you'll find a way to be happy again. Because there's nothing I want more for you than that."
CHAPTER TWENTY
It had been a huge shock to see Serena going through his pictures. But it had been an even worse shock to see the photos of his mom again.
Sean hadn't just stayed away from his camera since the day his mom died. He'd completely avoided his box of pictures, too, not even letting Olivia dig into them for the funeral when she'd needed some extra photos to display for the hundreds of people who had come to pay their final respects.
Just hours earlier, he'd fallen asleep holding Serena in his arms, and it was her absence that had woken him up. He'd been so glad to see that she was still there. But then, when he'd realized what she was looking at, it had felt like all his skin had been ripped off and there was nothing left of him but blood and bones and guts in front of her. That was why he'd reacted so harshly. Too harshly. Like a complete idiot who couldn't stop things he didn't even believe about her from spewing out of his mouth.
Not until she'd turned to walk away from him and it finally got through his thick skull that she was leaving.
Leaving him.
Because he'd hurt her.
"Please." He caught her halfway down the back stairs. "Please don't go. I'm sorry for everything I just said. I'm sorry for everything I just did." He didn't care who heard them, who saw them together. All that mattered was that Serena knew he was sorrier about what he'd said to her than he'd ever been for anything his entire life. "If I could talk about my mom with anyone, it would be with you. I didn't mean what I said. I swear I didn't."
For several long, painful moments, she didn't move. Didn't speak. And he thought for sure that he'd lost her.
But then, when she finally turned back to face him, he was brought nearly to his knees. Because instead of looking at him with hate...all he could see was the pure truth of how much she cared about him. Just like she'd said over and over when
he'd been blinded by grief.
"I know you didn't," she said softly. And then, though he didn't deserve it after what he'd said, after the way he'd behaved--when anyone else would already have been gone by now--she slid her arms around him and laid her face against his chest. "And I know you would."
"Don't leave. Please don't leave me, Serena."
She didn't answer him with words, simply slid her hand through his and led them back to his room.
Desperate to make right everything that he'd nearly destroyed, he begged, "Forgive me." His words were muffled against the top of her head where he was pressing one kiss after another to her hair. Hell, she should leave him for this alone, if only to get away from a guy who wanted too much from her, who needed more from her than anyone else ever had. "I shouldn't ask you to forgive me again, not when I promised never to screw up like I did that first night, but I can't stop myself from asking. And I can't stop hoping that you will."
She turned her face up to his so that his next kiss landed on her mouth instead of her hair. "I already have. Especially since I should have waited until you were ready to show the pictures to me and talk about them, too." She slid one hand up between their chests and laid it over his racing heart. "I..." He could see that she was nervous about what she was about to say. "I care so much about you. So, so much, Sean."
He badly wanted to tell her what he'd realized last night--that he was in love with her. So in love that he could hardly think straight anymore. But he'd already done enough to screw things up for one morning. If she didn't feel the same way, if she wasn't yet ready to move from caring about him to loving him...hell, the last thing he needed to do at this point was risk pushing her even further away by coming on too strong.
