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“No, you were way right, and it was hard to hear. You sat out there in the den and put a name to the face of this thing, a name to whatever that’s happening between us, and I felt...cold creep in and try to freeze me over. I had to get out of there.” Melinda tucked her knees against her chest, balled her fists into her eyes.
“It’s what happens when I’m faced with my own BS,” she said. A laugh rattled free of her throat. “It’s a self-defense thing, I guess. My mom would be so proud.” Melinda peeked at Grant’s face again but didn’t see boredom, so she pressed on.
“I didn’t want to have abandoned my brother.” She felt the threat of tears. “But I did. I did what I felt was done to me. It was immature and really sad. Heartbreaking. It was the best I knew how to do. And I was afraid that I would do that to you. There’s something happening with you, with me—with us, and if I’m not careful I’m going to fake my way through it.”
Did he understand? Was he asleep? No, he was still here, still listening.
“I’m afraid to leave this room,” she said, her voice weaker than she would have liked, but it was too late to stop now. “I’m afraid to leave this cabin. What if what we are only exists here? I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want this to turn out to be nothing.”
There. She’d said it. She’d said a lot, but was it too much? Too crazy?
~
Grant’s heartbeat pulsed in his ears.
This was not what he had expected.
There she sat, a ball of tension on Paul’s bed, uncertainty painted across her face. Her fingers twirled and untwirled her hair.
He blew out a deep breath. Time to come clean, just as she had.
“After knowing you a really short amount of time, I can’t imagine you faking your way through anything, Melinda,” Grant said finally. He cringed. Way to sound like every other sex-crazed male. “What I mean is, you put your heart into everything you do. And it means a lot to me that I could mean something to you.”
Melinda’s eyes flickered but stayed trained on the floor.
“I’m freaked out too,” he admitted. More than anything, he wanted her to feel less alone. “I don’t want to be, but I am. I’ve been telling myself women are crazy and vindictive, they don’t want to be with me, they all cheat—every lie in the book to steer away from sticking around.” He sucked in a breath. “The truth is that I’m choosing women who are too young, too wild, too wrong, because choosing the right woman means death. If I chose the right woman and it ended, I would die. I would be broken, the same way I was broken when my mom died. I’m still recovering from that...robbery. It feels like theft. She should have had more time left, and in under the span of an hour, the rest of her years were taken from her. And me. And my dad, and brother. She never got to meet my brother’s wife. Never got to meet her grandbabies. So many nevers.” His jaw hurt.
Did she hear him? Did she believe him? He had to get closer to her, to touch her. To see if she understood.
Grant sat beside her on the bed, aware of the force field of tension surrounding her. He didn’t get too close.
“I’m not trying to force you,” he said, “or get serious too fast. I wanted to honor your revelations and tell you some of my own. See, meeting you has brought some things to light for me. And not just that I should never do a favor like this again.”
His joke won a half-smile.
She was so beautiful, even in the cold winter light, even swaddled in layers of clothing. What was that look on her face? Contemplation, he guessed. Hopefully the good kind.
Grant watched and worried as she mulled over what he’d said. Would it be enough? Would she make a break for the car? He’d never made a declaration of affection like this before. It was terrifying.
Melinda turned slightly and reached a hand to fidget with his shirt.
“So what are you saying?” she asked.
Grant’s stomach clenched. “What do you mean?”
Her dark hair veiled half of her face as she drew designs on his shoulder blade with her fingertip.
“I mean...what kind of woman are you calling me?”
Melinda slid from the bed to her knees on the floor and faced him where he sat. She wiggled forward and wedged herself between his thighs, working her fingers down the buttons of his shirt one by one.
Grant’s breath hitched as they met the resistance of his belt and idly traced the shape of the buckle. Christ.
“Mel?” he squeaked.
“‘Too young?’ ‘Wild?’ ‘Crazy?’” She opened his belt.
“Melinda,” he rasped again. This wasn’t where he had been going. A simple “I like you too” would have sufficed, but no words followed. He checked his hands and found them gripping the comforter of Paul’s bed—Paul’s bed! What the hell was she thinking? Not that he could bear it if she stopped now.
