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The shirt he was about to put on went in the duffel, along with few others. He swung the bag up onto the bed and she gasped. She was standing too close.
“Move away.”
“Mace, you’re scaring me.”
He barked a laugh. Seeing her with that knife had terrified him. Thinking she might hurt herself when she ran out of other things to rip into sliced into him. Waste of emotion. He was her second best and he’d been an idiot to forget that.
“Move the fuck away from me.”
She reached for him and he shifted, dodging her contact. She put her hand on his arm and he brushed it aside. He needed to get past her to get to his gear from the bathroom. He’d go to Dillon’s tonight. Come back for more of his stuff later. She could deal with the lease.
She got in his way, he tried to step around her and she blocked him again. He shoved her too hard, knew it the minute his hands made contact with her arms. Her eyes went wide and she stumbled backwards. He made a grab for her but she tripped and went down hard on her side with a shocked cry.
“Fuck.” He reached for her and she flinched, scrambling backwards on the floor to get away from him, making whimpering noises. “Fuck, Cinta.”
She braced her arms over her face, curled up, frozen, cowering on the floor at his feet. She thought he was going to hit her.
He thought his head might explode.
He’d never hit a woman. He’d never threatened one. But he’d made the woman he loved afraid of him and he’d done it without thinking.
He staggered to the other end of the room, away from her, away from the horror he’d caused. He leant against the wall, but his legs weren’t holding and he sank to the floor, his head in his hands, his heart utterly shredded.
28: Different
Jacinta said his name but he didn’t respond. She crawled across the floor and when he realised she was near, he startled and lifted his head. If he wasn’t hunkered down he’d have run. Their eyes locked. She couldn’t catch her breath. He was gutted, appalled. He thought he’d hurt her.
“I...you.” The tears came again and she couldn’t speak. She crawled the rest of the distance between them and stopped in front of him. He didn’t move, just looked at her with the death of everything she loved and admired about him in his eyes. “Mace.”
He angled his head away. His hands were shaking.
“You didn’t hurt me. I tripped. You’d cut out your own heart before you’d hurt me.”
He groaned, the sound of his shock its own wound. He opened his arms and she crawled into them and they were both breathing short, holding each other too tight, her face in his shoulder, his lips in her hair. He dropped his knees and she sat between them, her legs around his back, her palms on his face.
“You didn’t do anything. That’s an old fear. It’s nothing to do with you. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
He took her hands and held them to his chest, where his heart galloped. His throat was working but his jaw was clenched so hard, words would have to smash his teeth to come out. Thoughts she couldn’t read shifted like storm warnings across his face until he closed his eyes and shuddered.
“Mace, please don’t leave me.”
“Only to find the fuckwit who did that to you and make him history.” His voice was low with menace; his features settled into a fearsome expression.
She stroked her thumb over his brow, trying to sooth the tension out of him. Most of hers had dissolved the moment he held her. “He is long gone. He was a mistake and I thought I was well past it.”
“I need to know what happened.”
“No. No, you don’t. It’s not part of us.”
“You thought I was going to hit you. I thought my fucking head was going to cave in. I have to understand it.”
She took him by the hand to the studio, seeing for the first time with clarity what havoc her tantrum had produced. That’s what it was, pure and simple, a tantrum of epic proportions. Mace called her princess that first weekend and that’s exactly how she’d behaved, like she was privileged, entitled to have things go her way.
She should be happy for Tom. Happy her thinking had influenced the board. Thankful the ideas she had would change for the better the way Wentworth treated its customers.
She thought she’d known shame, but it was nothing but scorched ego. She bit the inside of her lip. Her real shame was the shambles she’d made of this room and how she’d changed the way Mace felt about her. The broken canvases, the paint on the floor, what she’d said to him and the way he was tentative with her—that was humiliation, that was disgrace.
He pushed the table back against the wall. She wrapped both arms around him, but he stiffened. He was putting distance between them, scared of himself, of her. There was so much to say to set things right.
