“Where have you been all day?”
He clears his throat, this gaze flicking up to meet mine again. “Around.”
“That’s not much of an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re going to get.”
I release a heavy sigh, trying to rein in some of my frustration with this man. Even after everything we said to each other last night, everything we did, he still won’t open up to me. He still has those walls up and wants to hide behind them.
There are two very important questions on my mind, I just don’t know which one to ask first. The one that is directly tied to the most important thing I’ve ever done in my career, or the one that will so greatly affect my future outside my job as a journalist.
Journalistic instincts win out.
“What do you think of the story so far?”
Connor reaches out and almost reverently brushes his hands across the keyboard. “I think you’re far more talented than I gave you credit for.”
My heart squeezes tightly. “Was that a compliment from Connor McBride?”
The corner of his mouth curls up slightly, and I’m not even sure what to say to that or how to react to the almost grin from the stoic man. With anyone else, the response would be obvious, but with him, nothing is that easy. It’s hard to take anything at face value after years of reading into everything the worst possible way.
“Um… Thank you…”
He nods slowly, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “I think that it’s incredibly well written, and that you’ve somehow managed to convey just how dangerous and volatile those assholes really are before you’ve even gotten to what they did to us.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Still, the unease and tension in his voice makes me hesitate to even ask the obvious—and the thing I truly need from him. “Do you…want to talk about that night?”
Connor leans back in the chair and squeezes his eyes closed, spreading his legs wide, and he looks so exhausted. Mentally and physically. “Not now. Not tonight.”
That effectively closes the door on that conversation, and I know better than to push at this moment.
“Okay…”
But the other question rattles around in the back of my mind.
I’ve spent the entire day wondering about it, agonizing over it when I should have been one hundred percent concentrating on my story.
“Why have you been avoiding me all day?”
He lifts his head and his dark eyes somehow burn with a heat far more intense than the one coming from the old stove, one that sears across my skin and makes my pussy clench with the memory of how he took me last night. “I wasn’t avoiding you because I didn’t want to see you, Raven.”
“Then why were you?”
The corner of his lips twitches again. “Because I knew if I was within five fucking feet of you again, you wouldn’t be getting any work done.”
CONNOR
With the soft glow from the fire in the stove and the screen in front of me lighting up the cabin, it’s impossible to miss the way that Raven’s eyes flare wider, the heat in them sparking to life with my admission.
It was one I wasn’t sure I would make, or that I should.
But I’m too tired—physically and emotionally—to keep lying to her. To keep pretending like everything’s okay. To keep trying to act like everything isn’t fucked up in a way that I might not ever recover from.
Last night, with her, was the first time I truly let go of anything in months. But there’s still so much that remains trapped, deep down inside of me, that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully face myself, let alone reveal to anyone. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to talk about those dark things that haunt me, and those are precisely the things she needs me to do for this story.
Not just face my demons but fight them.
I see it now, what she’s doing, and why it’s so goddamn important.
