No one else had known.
And I’d been too stupid to understand just how important it was to him.
My frustration smoked into something with sharper claws. Anger I hadn’t dealt with returned. Anger that’d settled deep inside, churning, hurting, demanding answers I could never earn.
He’d only stolen my heart when I was younger, but this time, he’d stolen my body too. He’d shown me just how good we were together. Just how deep that lust and longing went, only for him to slam a door in my face.
Literally!
“You’re a master at hurting me these days, Gil,” I whispered with stilted, snowy words. “But I’m not young anymore, and I’m not going to let my mind run riot with wonder—not like when you rejected me at school. I refuse to lie to myself like I did back then...constantly believing you’d come back. Do you know how empty I felt as the months went by and you never returned? How hard it was to be honest and admit that you’d just had enough of me? I constantly came up with excuses for you: maybe your dad needed help with the family business. Maybe you suddenly didn’t have time for virgin girls anymore when you had whores living in the next room. It broke me, Gil, and I refuse to let you break—”
“Don’t.” His eyes snapped to mine. “Don’t you fucking dare. Is that what you’ve thought of me?”
I shrugged helplessly. “What? That you were sleeping with whores? It was one scenario.”
“There were others?” His nostrils flared.
“There were many. Some better, some worse.” I let truth be my weapon. “No answers leads to awful conclusions. You gave me nothing, so I thought the worst. And now, you’re doing the same and all I can think about is terrible, gruesome things. My mind is once again making up painful hypotheticals.”
His shoulders tightened, face etching with despair. “Your conclusions will be better than any truth I can give you. I’d rather you think the worst of me than learn what I’m truly capable of.”
I stilled. “It can’t be that bad.”
He laughed, his tone empty. “It’s worse.”
“Well...” I moved toward him slowly, keeping my own pain hidden. “Let me be the judge. Tell me and I’ll help in any way I can.”
He held up his hand, trying to prevent me from encroaching on him. “You can’t help with this, Olin. No one can.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
“It is. And I have.” He ran a hand over his mouth, his eyes narrowing in vexation. “You shouldn’t even be here. I don’t know what I was thinking bringing you back.”
“Then let me go home.” I crossed my arms. “I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself—”
“You’re not leaving.”
“You can’t keep me here against my will.”
He stepped into me, his powerful presence crushing air from my lungs. “I can if it means you stay safe.”
“Safe?” I blinked, staring into menacing green eyes. “How will you keep me safe when that arsehole has been in here? He’s probably beaten you up in this very room. You can’t keep me safe if you won’t raise a hand against him.”
A flicker of something painful appeared and disappeared in his gaze. “You don’t know what you’re saying.” His brow scrunched and shadowed his face. “You don’t know what you’ve stumbled into.” His own anger soared past his control, raising his cold voice to a blizzard. “Why did you have to see my advertisement, huh? Why couldn’t you have stayed away? Stayed far away from me—a forgotten piece of my past? He wouldn’t care then. I wouldn’t be walking this goddamn tightrope.”
“You can’t blame me for finding you. Life happens in mysterious—”
“Life is the hardest fucking thing to endure. And you—” His chest rose and fell as if he suffocated for a proper breath. “You made it so much better when we were younger. But now...you’re making it a thousand times worse.”
My heart broke, bleeding through the cracks. “That isn’t my intention, Gil. I’m trying to help—”
“And I’m trying to keep you safe! Can’t you permit me to do that, seeing as I’m fucking useless at everything else?”
His shout echoed around the warehouse, licking with rage.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, his head bowed. “Look, I’m sorry. I—”
“It’s fine.” I sighed. “I don’t know why I expected you to finally trust me.”
His eyes whipped up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you never told me stuff in the past, so why would you start now?” I ignored the drip, drip, dripping of my bleeding heart.
We were going around in circles.
Gil looked at the ground, effectively shutting me out.
He might be talented with a brush, but he was also talented at keeping people at arm’s length. A glacier that refused to melt or yield.
Moving around him, I plucked a bottle of paint from the metal shelf. His attention followed me, locking onto my hands as I rolled the deep blue from left to right.
“Can you at least tell me about the phone calls?” I looked up, catching his stare as I slowly unscrewed the cap.
“Phone calls?” He frowned, distracted enough by my seemingly unconnected topic.
“The one you answered when you refused to give me the job. The night Justin argued on my behalf.”
Anger flushed his neck; he growled. “Just a phone call.”
“I don’t think it was.” Dabbing a spot of blue onto my fingertips, I rubbed them together, smearing the pigment. “It made you change your mind about painting me.”
“I decided I needed the money.”
“Money for blackmail.” My fingers kept smearing paint, my stomach a churning mess. I was glad I had something to focus on, rather than freezing in Gil’s frost.
“Stop trying to connect dots that aren’t there, Olin.” He never took his eyes off me as if he hated me touching his things.
“I think there is a connection.” I looked up briefly, studying how close I was to pushing him over the edge.
Push harder.
Earn answers.
Be prepared to run if he snaps.
“Doesn’t matter what you think.” His body vibrated with tension, his eyes heating with a faint wisp of lust. Lust for my hands as I rolled my wrists and danced my blue-smeared fingers in the air.
He’d watched me enough when we were younger that my dancing was foreplay for him. The heavy focus of his desire, the erotic target of his want.
Dancing for him drenched me in a spotlight of forbidden, sinful things.
My tummy somersaulted as he sucked in a breath, unable to tear his eyes away from my painted hands.
“And the phone call that interrupted our first kiss?” I touched the sleeve of my cream blouse with blue tipped fingers, switching topics, marking myself. “Was that unimportant too?”
His jaw locked as hotter desire pooled around us. Sensuality suddenly threaded with frustration.
“That’s a trick question,” he grumbled.
“How is it a trick question?”
“If I say it was unimportant, then I make our kiss seem as if it meant nothing. But if I say it was the most important phone call of my life, then you’re vindicated in chasing this topic.”