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Also, I’ve got about ten thousand reasons for distrusting women.
I can’t afford to get emotionally invested now, especially not in the girl who’s already made my name mud through no fault of her own.
“Hey.” Destiny glances up at me, her hand splayed across my chest, eyes wide and searching. “You’re like a rock. So tense.”
“Am I? Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” Her breath is cool as she blows it out, long and slow. “I wasn’t saying it to make you feel bad. I just want to know what you’re thinking about.”
Damn good question.
WhatamI thinking?
Right now, mostly how foreign it is that anyone wants to know what’s inside my head outside of a professional setting. Having anyone scooping out my thoughts like the flesh from a coconut doesn’t feel appealing.
But the gentle way Destiny keeps looking at me, the distance gone again, like she can just push it aside when she’s worried about me, does strange things to a man’s mind.
You know what?
Fuck. It.
“Did you know I was married once?”
“What?” Her eyes turn into dinner plates. “You were?”
I nod.
Too late to back out now, dumbass.
“Serena Jameson. I proposed to her before my second tour of duty in Iraq. She said yes. I was gone longer than intended, though, when my unit’s time was extended. I’ll spare you the details. What matters is, when I came home unannounced, I found her in bed with another man.”
Destiny gasps. Her nails dig into my chest as her eyes darken with anger.
A warped part of me loves the way she looks at me.
“Oh my God. That’s awful and unbelievable and... and you deserved better, Shepherd.”
“That’s what I thought, too. That’s why we fought like wolverines when she leaped out of bed,” I say bitterly.
It’s like another life after so many years gone by.
At the time, it was like being eviscerated, but now it’s just a cruel distant memory.
A glaring reason to keep myself separated from anyone who can inflict pain.
“She told me I never loved her. I was too cold, after I had so much poison earlier in my life,” I say slowly. “Serena said I never made her feel loved, that I was just using her for sex. I wasn’t using her, but in her own way, she was right.”
“No way! Shepherd, she cheated on you.”
“And people do terrible things for a reason, don’t they? Every villain has a story and every crime has a reason.” I look at her sharply. “Anyway, she said she couldn’t spend the rest of her life waiting around for me to come home and shape up to be the man she wanted. She couldn’t live with the way I made her feel—more like one more asset in my account than a proper wife.”
“Jesus,” Destiny breathes. “Holy shit.”
My gut aches with phantom pain. I really wonder how deep I should go, but this is our last night, isn’t it?
Why shouldn’t she get to see all of me naked and exposed?
“It gets worse,” I grind out.
