It seemed to me that, for the first time, her mind was fully open. Maybe the music dulled the racing thoughts, her worries and anxieties, but she was more available and vulnerable than ever before. That was what I liked about it. How honest it made her.
“But why phrase it like that?” I asked. “Anyone can listen to music. It’s not class dependent.”
“She always said because it was similar to coke. The rich man’s high.” Laughing, Gwen shook her head. “It’s strong, it comes on fast, and it’s gone in heartbeats.”
I laughed too. “I guess I can see that.”
“Does painting give you that same rush?”
“Not really. I get more of a rush when I successfully finish a surgery,” I said. “Knowing I saved a life, knowing I helped someone, that’s what I get a rush from. Art is just fun for me.”
The smile that spread across her lips made my heart skip a beat. “I think that’s my favorite thing about you.”
“What’s that?”
“How much you care.” Her eyes twinkled, perhaps with tears, but she didn’t let them escape. “That’s what I meant earlier. You act like you’re so apathetic, but you’re so gentle. The way you are with Honey. How great of a job you’re doing with Lizzie. The fact that you could have been a billionaire, but you chose to fund the ranch… I don’t know. Your heart’s just so big.”
I tried my best not to cringe, but inside, I did just that.
Gwen was an intelligent woman. Surely she wasn’t so naïve. After all the time she’d spent with Rhiannon, all she had learned at the ranch, why did she keep her rose-tinted glasses on?
I knew what a bad man was. My father had been. I was not that. Yes, I was a half decent man. But only half decent.
“I don’t think I’ve ever pretended to be apathetic,” I said, surprised at how timid my voice came out. “That’s just how I am sometimes.”
She laughed again. “Can you just take a damn compliment?”
It wasn’t the compliment that made me uncomfortable. It was what that compliment implied.
The dark exterior was not an act. It was a part of myself I wished I could lock away. I could be cold. I could shut myself off from everyone and everything when I had to.
I wasn’t my father. But I was my father’s son. I kept a noose around my temper, but it was there. It could break the rope I had around its neck if it tried hard enough, if it needed to escape.
It had before.
It wasn’t a ticking nuke, sure to explode again. More like an idle bomb lost in rubble after a war. Years could go by, decades even. Then someone would step on it.
And boom.
Off it’d go.
I was not a passive man. I could be, and had been, violent.
But not to Gwen. I would never hurt her. No matter how dark, how cruel I could be, I would never direct it at her.
There was no way to say that, to make her understand that complexity without scaring her away. Her paranoia and distrust would send her running if she knew it all.
I couldn’t risk that. I wanted this. I wantedher.
But I didn’t know how to explain it all.
So I said, “I don’t deserve a pedestal, Gwen. Don’t put me on one.”
“Please.” Waving me off with one hand, she squeezed mine with the other. “I don’t have anyone on a pedestal.”
“I’m just saying. I’ve seen what happens when women put barely decent men on pedestals. It’s not good for anyone.”
“You’re not ‘barely decent.’” Her eye contact was still soft, but intense. “I see you for who you are, and that’s what I like so much. Most people try to hide the bad. But you do the opposite. You hide the best parts of yourself. You pretend you’re not as soft as you are.”
“Maybe they’re not the best parts. Maybe softness gets you hurt.”
She huffed, eyes falling to our hands, still twined together. “And is that what you like about me? That I’m never soft?”
“That’s what I adore about you.”
Gwen rested her chin in her hands again. She flashed a grin. “Then we have a perfect understanding of one another.”
Me, more than her.
