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“Start with your thoughts.”
She laughs, but it's bitter and humorless. “Nick.”
My name is a protest on her mouth I do not like as I return, “Sadie.” Her name on my tongue is rough this time, and there's a warning in my tone that she heeds, because she says, “I feel used.”
Her mouth trembles around the words, and her chin quakes in my hold. She's trying to swallow her emotion, and she's failing. My little open book, I can read her so well.
“I know,” I tell her. “I do too.”
She laughs, and again, it's bitter. “I'm sure.”
“What does that mean?” I demand.
“Nick,” she says my name tiredly. “You were engaged. How do I not know that?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” I hate to say it because it's the truth, even though I don't want it to be the truth.
“Yeah, I'm getting that Nick.” She tears out of my arms and makes her way to the front door, calling, “I'm done. I don't want to do this. I can't do this. I'm getting Claus and I'll get a hotel.”
“The fuck you will.” I crowd her with my body against the front door, slamming my key into the hole. She gasps at the feel of me behind her, against her as I push open the door and push her inside. She hasn't seen this side of me. I won't hurt her. I'll never hurt her. But I can sense that she's afraid.
She can sense that I'm enraged.
I slam the door shut behind us, slamming the bolt home. She's already kicked out of her boots and even though her jacket is still on, she's halfway down the hall to the spare bedroom. If she thinks she's sleeping in there, she's crazy. Crazier than I thought.
“Sadie,” I call again. I'm already I'm hot on her tail. My feet are eating up the space between us fast, but still, she races forward, slamming the door in my face. It doesn't stop me from opening the door and entering her space. I should know better. I should be a gentleman and give her the space she demands. But I'm no gentleman. Not right now. Right now, I'm a man terrified that the woman who breathes life into his existence is going to disappear. Right now, I'm a man obsessed. Right now, I'm a man so fucking in love with a woman who's threatening to leave that I'll go to lengths I would never normally go to keep her.
“Get out!” she screams.
Oh yeah. She's done. She's past done. She’s rip roaring mad.
“Just get out!” she yells when I don’t move.
“Not going to happen, baby,” I tell her calmly.
“I don't want you here, Nick.” She stomps her foot, and I nearly crack a grin. If I wasn’t so afraid of her leaving, I might have. She’s cute when she’s pissed. But then she cuts me as she adds, “I don't even want to be here.”
“Fuck that,” I spit, and her eyes widen.
“Are you serious right now? I was just humiliated in a restaurant with you. You have a fiancée who is trying to get you back, and a crazy ass mother who put you up on some screwed up blind Christmas date so that you wouldn't get back with that crazy ass ex.” Her pitch is rising, getting more and more out of control. “Do you see how messed up this is right now? Do you see how I might not want to be in the middle of this?”
“You don't even know what this is.”
“Oh, really?” Her tiny hands find her hipsand fuck, she's hot when she's mad. I much prefer to see the anger in her eyes than the sadness. “Why don't you tell me what this is then, Nick?”
“That bitch gave me my scars.” Her breath hitches as her eyes widen, and she gasps.
“What?”
“Patricia, my ex-fiancée—the biggest mistake of my life—shegave me my scars, Sadie.”
She’s confused. It’s painted on her face as she breathes, “How?”
I curl my bottom lip into my mouth, thinking about how I'm going to get into this story with her. I haven't talked about this since the night it happened. Everyone in Cottonwood Hollow knows what happened. Well, they know most of it. They know there was an accident. And they know I was left inside to burn. But what they don't know was that Patricia chose to leave me inside. She knew I was alive, and she left me to save her own ass. And then when all was said and done, and I was burned, but alive, she broke off our engagement because she couldn't stand looking at the monster I’d become.
How am I supposed to tell this beautiful woman that I want to make mine all that?
“Sit down,” I command darkly, and anger flashes in her eyes.
