He still wanted her.He still wanted her.
New tears spangled her vision, but she blinked them back and kept listening.
“Mom says I’ve always been all or nothing, and she’s right.” His chin tipped upward, and his tone was entirely unapologetic now. “I’m greedy. I want it all. The jobandyou by my side every day. But no matter what you decide, we’ll make it work. To echo an annoyingly wise woman: If that’s the only way I can have you, it’s what I want too.”
On the car ride to his house, unsure whether she might find him deathly ill or bleeding from some horrible accident, she’d found herself envisioning what their future could have held, if she hadn’t left. What it could still hold, if he was okay.
Panic, as it turned out, had made her priorities crystalline. It also spurred her willingness to think through all her options, not just the ones that came easily to mind. And when she considered her own happiness, not only the needs of others, what she should do had suddenly snapped into focus.
Maybe it wasn’t exactly what he’d wanted, but he’d get past that. Quickly, unless she missed her guess.
“I’ll come with you.” When he actually gasped, his mouth dropping open in shock before splitting into the biggest grin she’d ever seen, she smiled back at him. “Not just because you want me there, but because I want to be there. I want to be with you, and I want to explore the country and the world.”
“Wren!”he crowed, half rising to his feet and thrusting their joined hands into the air. “We’re going to make the most awesome team anyone has ever—”
“I’m not coming as your cohost or PA,” she interrupted, and he flopped back onto the bench and pouted at her. “I’ll do teletherapy while you work.”
Some patients couldn’t come to an office or didn’t want to, and she’d serve them. She’d help them, and be able to trace their progress, and hopefully emerge each day with her heart intact. She’d still do good in the world, but she wouldn’t sacrifice her own happiness anymore.
“I have one more demand.” When she poked his sulky lower lip with her fingertip, he kissed it. “You’re not going to like it, but you’re going to listen, and you’re going to agree to it.”
This time, his snort was loud and lusty. “Shrew.”
He was grinning again, though, and his hand on her hip was exploring now. Gliding over her belly, along her thigh.
“When you look like I do, cruelty is unavoidable.” His hand stilled on her leg, and she covered it with her own. “People will say terrible things. And when that happens, I want you to let me deal with it. You won’t need to defend me, because I’ll defend myself.”
Because she was important. Too important to let herself be abused without consequence.
It was killing him not to interject. She could feel it in the twitch of his fingers, see it in the agitated rock of his body. But he let her speak without interruption, and she loved him for that too.
“I still won’t give the unkindness of others unnecessary space in my life. If I got angry every time someone insulted me, I’d spend my life that way, and I don’t want that for myself.” The pain and rage in his eyes were for her, she knew. All for her, and she stroked his cheek in thanks. “But I also don’t want to act as if cruelty toward me is acceptable and doesn’t merit pushback. So I’ll set boundaries and consequences, and we can talk those through ahead of time. Maybe if a fan is rude, we walk away immediately. If someone in the press says something offensive, we refuse to cooperate with their outlet in the future.”
Some of the vibrating tension in his frame eased, and his shoulders dropped.
But his lips were still pursed tight as he looked up at her, his disapproval more than evident. “Wren—”
“Alex.” She cupped his bristly cheek in her palm, the searing heat against her fingers mute evidence of his outrage. “Honey, please trust that I’ll advocate for myself. Please trustme,even though I know I’ve given you good reason not to.”
He closed his eyes and let out a shuddering breath. “You are the absoluteworst.”
Suddenly he was tugging her closer, until she stood between his knees, their faces almost level. And she would have kissed him—she desperatelywantedto kiss him—but he was still grumbling, in typical Alex Woodroe fashion.
“You complete, ragingharpy.” His caressing fingers somewhat undercut the impact of his aggrieved glare, but only partially. “When you put it that way, there’s nothing I can do but agree, right? Because if I don’t, I’m saying I don’t trust you. And we both know I do, and always have. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I trust you so much, I tattooed your first words to me on my fuckingforearm—”
She gasped, jerking in his grasp.“What?”
“—even though you dumped my ass in a goddamnhotel room. Which, to be fair, I maybe kinda deserved, but—”
She clapped a hand over his mouth. “Go back to the tattoo part, Woodroe.”
This time, she knew to expect it. His tongue swirled over her palm, and although the wet heat and sinuous motion arrowed straight between her legs, she only raised a brow.
“So demanding,” he complained when she removed her hand, but his mouth had curved into a smug, self-satisfied grin. “I stole that note you wrote to the B and B housekeeper and kept all the sticky notes you left for me at the house, so I had all the necessary words in your handwriting. And this morning, before I left for the airport, I had them tattooed on my forearm as a reminder.”
Try as she might to follow him, she was lost. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“I know who you are. The first thing you said to me.” His smile faded into solemnity, and his eyes were bright and earnest in the moonlight. “And you do. You know who I am, and you told me I was a good man. Since I trust you, that means it must be true. And now, if I doubt myself, I only have to look at my arm. For the rest of my life.”
