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“So? Your dislike of me had nothing to do with what you thought of me professionally. But the thing I’m trying to say, far too many years too late, is that... You were actually good for me back then, Christian.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” he bit out, her words falling on him like the first drops of rain on a parched earth. Like a benediction he hadn’t known he needed for his soul.
She went on unfazed, refusing to let him fracture this. “Jai always encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone, but he’d also known me my entire life. It wasn’t possible for him to see me differently—as a normal, healthy young woman with her own messiness and insecurities but also her strengths and dreams. But you could and you did, and you made sure I knew how I was limiting myself. And you made me see myself in a completely new way. I started doing things I’d have never imagined just to prove you wrong about me. Just to prove to myself that I could. Jai always used to say you have this knack of bringing out the best in people and he was spot-on. You changed me for the better, Christian, more than anyone else in my life did.”
Christian buried his face in his hands, a roar of something rising fast in his chest. She was unraveling him, bit by bit, tugging at threads he didn’t want to let go of. Undoing him, perversely, by baring her deepest secrets and vulnerabilities. And if he told her now, if he admitted the truth of why he’d treated her the way he had back then, the scales would fall from her eyes.
She’d see the truth of him.
He scoffed and the sound resonated in the silence. “You’ve got it all upside down.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say we remember two different realities.”
Her brows tied together, she looked at him out of that steady gaze, drilling through him, searching his words for answers. His breath bated, Christian waited for her to ask. To demand an explanation.
“The point of that walk down memory lane,” she said, backing down and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or angry or both right then, “is that I understand, more than you can imagine, how it feels to be unable to trust yourself.”
He looked up and exhaled a rough breath. How had he forgotten that her life had constituted so many surgeries and hospital stays? That there was a reason for that sheltered naiveté—the absence of a normal childhood or even adolescence? She’d spent so much of it in hospitals and clinics and under the care of nurses before she’d finally been pronounced fit and healthy. “Pree...”
“I need you to listen, Christian. But I can say this only once. I know exactly what it’s like to constantly worry about when your own body might betray you, wonder which step might be your last one, what might bring the darkness flooding back... That’s not even the worst thing.”
“What is?” he asked, desperate to be done with this conversation. Desperate for the shadows in her eyes to be gone.
“You start stretching out your moments and your days, as if that will make a difference, linger on the sidelines because you’re so afraid you’ll break... I lived like that for a long time. I was surrounded by people who loved me, but who also made me so afraid, who couldn’t see me as anything but a patient. But in the end, my heart condition wasn’t the thing that made me hide from life. It was fear. Jai and you... You helped me see that. You helped me shed that fear. Don’t let that happen to you, Christian. Don’t hide from Jayden and...me. And even worse, don’t hide from life because you think you’re not ready. Or because you’re not enough.”
He took her hand in his, his heart lodged so tightly in his throat that he couldn’t say a word. She’d not only understood the root of his fear but she’d shared her own vulnerabilities, bared her own deepest fears. He was humbled by her strength. By her understanding. By her refusal to let him be anything less than he could be.
God, he didn’t deserve her. He hadn’t deserved her then and he didn’t deserve her now.
He blinked, fighting the wet heat behind his eyes. “I want to protect you from this. From me. I want...”
“You’re protecting only yourself. Not me.” There was no hesitation in her voice. “You treated me better than this when I was fragile. Why would you treat me as anything less now? If you try that, then I’ll—”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll lecture you until your brains are leaking out of your ears.” She buried her face in the fold of her arms on her knees, looking suddenly small. “When I walked in here and I saw you in the grip of a nightmare, I told myself I’d be here for as long as it took you to wake up. That I’d let you know that I’m here for you. I promised myself you’d never wake up alone again. Your nightmares and your grumpy moods and your noncommittal grunts and your brooding silences and your reluctance to touch me until I crawl into your bed and demand that you give yourself to me... I can handle all of those, Christian. What I can’t take is you hiding the truth from me.”
He flinched, but she hadn’t finished.
“For a second there, when you woke up, you didn’t see me. Maybe it was just a remnant of your nightmare. Maybe you were just half-asleep. But if that can happen again, if there’s a possibility you might forget me again...”
She waited and Christian looked up and whatever she saw in his face, she squared her shoulders. She was a lioness, this woman.
“Then I need to know. I need to be ready. And not for just your sake but for Jayden’s and my own, too. I need to know what you’re going through, Christian, if only for the fact that you shouldn’t be alone with that knowledge. Not when you have me to talk to.”
You have me...
The words lingered in the air, taking on their own life, morphing and amplifying until they splintered through the walls he’d built around himself. She was unraveling him, bringing him to his knees, and Christian wasn’t sure he could fight this anymore.
He wanted to take everything she was offering and yet the hungry cavern inside him wanted even more.
“I just—” he thrust a hand through his hair “—don’t want to be a burden to you.”
She got off the bed, came to him and plunged her fingers into his hair. She tugged through the strands, her voice close to breaking but not breaking yet. “The Christian I knew, the Christian I admired and respected... He’d never have babied me like this. He’d have made me face the truth just so I knew what I was up against. He’d have respected me enough to share all the truths with me, even the painful ones. Why would you push me away now when we’ve been through so much together?”
And just like that, his decision was made. He had nothing left to fight her with.
