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“I told you everything.” Her voice shook with emotion she couldn’t contain. “I loved you enough to tell you my secrets. To trust you with them.” And with her heart. Which was why she had to try one more time to see if he would be honest with her about what was hurting him. “I know something’s wrong, something to do with today’s crash.” She clenched her hands at her sides to keep from reaching for him, because if he pushed her away she would shatter into a thousand pieces on his kitchen floor. “Won’t you trust me, too?”
He went completely still and for a moment as she stared into his bleak eyes, she thought he might be about to tell her why he was acting so weird.
Only, when he finally spoke, it was just to say, “Trust me, it’s better this way. It was only a matter of time before something happened to her at the shop.” He paused. “Or before something happened to me. Like today, out at the racetrack. If I hadn’t been able to get out of the car, they would have taken her back anyway. Better if it happens now, before she gets any more attached to me.”
She blinked at him, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “Wait a minute. Are you actually trying to convince me you got rid of the puppy for her own good?”
When he nodded, she shook her head in disbelief. “That’s crazy. Can’t you see how much she loves you? And that she doesn’t want to be with anyone else on the off chance that you’ll crash a race car one day?”
But with every word she spoke, she could see Zach shutting down more and more. To the point where it was like talking to the cement wall he’d driven into today.
Only this time, it was her heart going up in flames as he shut her out completely.
Heather had thought she’d found him; the one guy who could prove to her that they weren’t all the same. But she’d never know if she had or not, would she? Because he wouldn’t talk to her.
Just like her father, Zach made all the rules and she was expected to follow them.
This was why she’d been trying so hard to resist him, to argue away his love...and her own.
Atlas silently moved beside her as she found her bag and put her things into it. She walked into the bedroom to retrieve the extra clothes she’d started to leave at Zach’s house. The bed mocked her, told her what she hadn’t wanted to believe was true.
It had just been sex.
Friends with benefits...only, maybe they hadn’t even been friends when it came right down to it.
Zach’s eyes were dark as he watched her gather up her things, a muscle jumping in his jaw, right beneath one of the scratches she was so tempted to reach out and run a finger over. Just to be close to him one more time.
“You’re leaving?”
Before tonight, Zach would never have asked her if she was going. He simply wouldn’t have let her go, would have pulled whatever tricks out of his sleeve to convince her she was better off staying with him.
“I’ve got a big backlog of work at the office.”
Work had piled up due to all the time she’d been spending with Zach. It had seemed worth it at the time, the tradeoff between love and growing her business.
Worth it, that is, until the mirage of love disappeared like a puff of smoke.
“You’re that pissed off at me for giving the damn puppy back?” At last, she could see the veneer he’d tried to put around himself cracking. But it was too late. Especially when he said, “It wasn’t even my dog. I never asked for it. They just dumped it on me.”
It.
“No, I’m not pissed off.” And she was being perfectly honest. She was far more heartbroken than she was angry. “Just like you said, she’ll be fine.” Heather would make sure of it, would personally assign her best trainer to work with Megan, Summer, and Gabe so that Cuddles could forget that Zach Sullivan ever existed.
“Then why are you leaving?”
Because she needed to save herself while there was still a ghost of a chance that she could recover.
Because if he could give away a puppy she’d thought he absolutely adored without so much as flinching as it cried for him, then she wasn’t sure she knew who he was at all.
Because she didn’t think she rated a whole heck of lot more than the puppy had to the man standing in front of her.
Because, in the end, it turned out love wasn’t enough. Just like she’d always known.
But since she could no longer trust him enough to say any of that, all that came was an honest, “I’m glad you’re okay, Zach.”
So glad, in fact, that she’d felt like her own life had been saved out there on the race track when he’d scrambled free of the burning car.
She was about to start crying, knew any second she’d be falling apart.
Heather couldn’t do that here. Not in front of Zach. She couldn’t let her guard down around him ever again.
All those years ago, when she’d found out what her father had done, she’d vowed to never feel that way again, to never let anyone make her feel so terribly unloved, so unimportant. She’d renew that vow, make sure she stuck by it in the future.
She needed to get out of there looking like she was still in one piece and then, when she was far, far away from him, she’d deal with the shattered insides beneath her skin.
When Zach had nearly died she’d finally admitted to herself just how much she loved him. She’d finally confessed down deep in her soul that she loved him more deeply, more truly than she’d ever thought she could love a man.
