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She scoffed, her heart rate exploding at his certainty when she was everything but. “And you figured I’d be your fresh start?”
“Why shouldn’t you be my fresh start?” His direct stare held hers, awaiting a reply, which only came in the form of her taking her final stitch and him squeezing his eyes shut against the pain.
“That’s a lot of pressure to put on a relative stranger.” Again, she focused on her stitching, her movements quick but tight.
“We’re more similar than you’d like to see.”
She lifted her attention to his weak smile. She schooled her face in what she hoped would be a flat stare. “That sounds truly ridiculous. You know that, right?”
“Not ridiculous. Simple.” He gave a small shrug, eyeing her work. “In that, I like you, you like me.”
“Not so simple.” She snipped the final stitch and wiped down his wound with a final dab of alcohol. “You’ll only break your own heart.”
An aching silence stretched between them while she washed her hands and everything from the kit that she’d used, her face hot the entire time. She wanted to steer clear of him and his plans—overly idyllic plans she’d heard a thousand times from various other people. She’d learned to guard her heart, and she was right about him also needing to.
“Sarah.”
She kept herself busy returning to the bath’s edge to jam tools back into the first aid kit.
“Sarah.”
She swiped up the kit and ferried it back to its drawer, eager to hightail out of there as quickly as possible.
“Sarah.” He grabbed her wrist before she could get too far, spinning her back around to face him, that cobalt stare not leaving her face. “Like you, I haven’t been all that in control of what happened to me. All I meant is I want that to change.”
His tone had turned softer, and he gave his head a slow but certain shake. The quiet expanded between them in an unexplainable and never-before-felt pull—one that seemed to halt time and draw her in—despite her resistance. “What were you thinking that night at the soiree, the moment just before you bumped into me?”
What had she been thinking about? About how alone she was and how she always seemed to get the rough end of any relationship she dared to engage in. And why would any of that change now? Especially with a man as enigmatic as Dean?
I have zero reason to trust him.
She blinked, the moment bursting like an overfull balloon. “I’ve said enough about me and still know nothing about you.”
He stood and she backed away, the action increasing the unspoken distance between them. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m not sure. Why did the sheriff call you a person of interest in the shooting?”
“He went digging around in my past and figured he found something.” He stared at her a moment, his expression unreadable, before he turned to the door.
Despite getting what she wanted—a reason to leave—she slammed the first aid kit to the sink’s counter and picked up her pace, following him down the hall and stopping just shy of the room he’d entered. His bedroom.
“And what did the sheriff find?” She peered inside. Though his house didn’t have much furniture, her attention caught on two small shelves either side of his bed. Not just shelves, but bookshelves. Filled to busting with books.
He reads? This man reads?
Her thoughts slipped to the soiree and his suggestion that “ninth-grade English” was about as far as his exposure to literature went—that memory alighting an inkling that he maybe tended to downplay his more refined points by a whole lot.
He let out an exasperated sigh, which made her attention shift back to him as he turned to her with a clean shirt in his hand and shadows taking up space under his eyes. “He found out about my old job, and that it didn’t end well.”
He tugged his shirt over his head and down his body. His sharp movements were a strong hint she should let the subject go for now, even while the information provided new details about this man, only to awaken more questions.
He has a story. One he isn’t so eager to tell.
Seems he’s not all that wrong about our similarities…
He drew near, and his gaze connected with hers in what could only be described as a molten stare. Her pulse quickened, his grin suddenly easy and bracketed with deep dimples. “You and I both know I wasn’t there when Blaine Callaghan got shot.”
There was Blaine’s name coming from Dean’s lips. An unwanted dose of reality. This sultry man’s reminder of what they’d been doing when all hell broke loose.
A weak ache gripped her chest, but his close proximity held her in place. “In our own ways, we could be good for each other.”
“Except in this small town, people will see us together and get to gossiping. With all that’s happened, I don’t need whispers following me everywhere I go.”
And still, a light fluttery feeling worked through her tummy and out into her limbs, as though she actually considered his proposition, if for no other reason than she wanted to know his story.
Oh no, don’t lie. It’s so much more than that.
Right. Like remembering just how alive, and wanted, and seen she felt in his presence, especially when he made love to her—fanciful emotions ill-fitted to her or her reputation. But she was a living, breathing woman, wasn’t she? And maybe. Just maybe. There were things she did want.
He saw her waning resolve—like he knew that all he had to do was push just a little harder and all her protests would fold to his feet—and he lifted his hand to her cheek again and said, “Sarah, no one else needs to know.”
