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I gasp and sit up, blinking into sunlight, a new day already upon us, and Nick is no longer in bed with me. “Faith,” Nick calls out, rushing from the bathroom, now dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt. “Sweetheart. Are you okay?”
“Nightmare,” I say, throwing away the covers and scooting to the side of the bed. “Why are you dressed like that? Don’t you have work?”
“I have a gym in the basement of the house. I was going to ask you to join me, but you were dead to the world. You want to talk about the nightmare?”
I inhale and let it out. “Yes and no.”
He settles on his knee in front of me, his hands under his shirt and on my knees this time. “You have a few hours before you leave for the gallery, in which you could paint. Maybe you need to paint to clear your mind?”
“How can you know me this well?”
“Because I care enough to pay attention, Faith.”
“Would you ever take me to your club?” I blurt before I can stop myself.
Something flickers in his eyes, there and gone, in an instant. “Do you want me to?”
“Would you?”
“Never. Not even if you asked.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re mine, Faith, and I don’t share. And for the record, in case you forgot already: I’m yours, too, in all my arrogant glory.”
I’m his, and he’s mine. “It was about Macom,” I say. “The nightmare was about Macom. And, oddly, my mother.”
“I’m listening,” he says, his expression unreadable.
“I relived the first night Macom tried to share me at the club.”
“Tried?”
“Yes. There was a man who’d always flirted with me, and Macom wanted to watch me with him. I was furious. I left him there to do what he would. I walked home, and at first I said that I’d never go back. But then I decided that everyone at that club was smarter than me. They knew that pleasure was pleasure and expecting fairytale endings was pain. That’s how I went back. That’s how I became truly involved. And that’s how I survived Macom. That’s how I convinced myself we were the best I would ever have.”
“Where does your mother come into play?”
“The images shifted, and I was in my mother’s garden. I watched my father kiss my mother, and then my uncle showed up, and he backed away. He gave her to him. I was screaming at my father, but he couldn’t hear me. It’s like I wasn’t there. He settled for my mother. He convinced himself they were the best he would ever have. I decided before I ever met you that I was done settling. I just didn’t know where that would lead me or how to get there. Just that I needed to go.”
“And you needed to tell me this why?”
“It led me to you, and while I do not want you to be controlling, I needed you to be the man you were tonight with Macom.”
“Explain, Faith. I need to understand.”
“We have the clubs in our backgrounds. I think I needed… When you took that phone, you made it clear we are just us. I needed to know that we are just us. That you will protect us, not give us away.”
He cups my face, his voice low, raspy. “I will always protect not just us but you, Faith. And everything I do, I do for you. I need you to remember that. Promise me you will remember that. Tell me you know that.”
“I do now. I know.”
He pulls away and looks at me. “Don’t forget,” he orders, and on the surface his warning is all alpha male, but beneath it, in his deep blue eyes, there is something more. He lets me see that he is not unbreakable—that perhaps I alone could break him. The way he could break me. Something shifts and expands between us in those moments that I have never felt before. A bond forming that creates a need between us. We need each other. It is wonderful. It is divine. But long minutes after he’s departed for the gym and I stand at the easel with a brush in my hand, I cannot help but wonder—when two people become this vulnerable to each other, when we need each other to keep from shattering, does this mean together we are weaker or stronger?
Chapter Seventeen
Nick
“Would you ever take me toyour club?”
