Oh, how she got that, and she relaxed a bit too. Aided by the cherry pie, which really was fantastic.
“So.” He fixed himself another bite, very carefully not mixing any of the foods together this time. “You never go home?”
And . . . so much for relaxing. She shook her head.
“You’re not close to your family?”
She took another bite of pie and gave him a vague shrug, but he simply waited her out with that endless patience of his.
“We’re close,” she finally admitted and met his warm, curious eyes. “But it’s not that easy to get to Atlanta.”
“No? They don’t make planes that fly there several times a day?”
She snorted. “You know what I mean.”
He nodded and didn’t say anything, and damn if she didn’t fill the silence for him like a rookie. “I don’t like to go back there,” she admitted.
“Why?” Simple question, no judgment.
“Bad memories,” she admitted. “And I guess sometimes it’s hard to remember the good memories over those bad and very loud memories, you know?”
Looking at her with those warm, dark eyes, he gave her a slow nod. He knew.
Unbearably touched for reasons she couldn’t begin to fathom, she got very busy separating out the piece of cranberry that had gotten lodged in the gravy, like it was her job.
“Charlotte.”
Oh, look, there was some gravy touching her stuffing, so that took another minute—
He put his hand over hers and she stilled, lifting her gaze to his.
“You don’t have to talk about something you don’t want to.”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“But in my experience,” he went on quietly, “when the memories get loud, it’s because they need to be heard.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and then another. She played with her fork with suddenly clammy palms as her stomach turned. Same symptoms that assaulted her every time she thought about that night. “Something happened to me. A long time ago. And sometimes . . . sometimes I let it affect me now.”
“Time’s a bitch, isn’t it?” He got up, went to the front counter, bought two water bottles, and brought them back, sitting right next to her again. “Sometimes, long-ago memories can feel like just yesterday.” He opened one of the water bottles and handed it to her. “Or right now.”
She took a long drink. Stalling. Not sure whether she wanted to run out of the cafeteria or keep going. But when she made herself look into Mateo’s eyes, she saw compassion and understanding. “I know you’re supposed to talk about this stuff,” she said slowly. “That I should let it out and trust that people will understand. But they don’t. Not really.”
“Try me.”
She took another drink, then set the water down and began to play with the condensation on the bottle. “It’s a long, clichéd story about a small-town girl going off to college in the big city, and as a freshman who went out to celebrate her birthday, let herself get taken advantage of.” She shook her head. “She was young and naive and stupid. So stupid.”
“There’s nothing wrong with young and naive, and I have a hard time believing you were ever stupid.”
Her laugh held no humor. “I let myself get charmed by a southern accent similar to mine. He played me like a fiddle, bought me a drink, told me how out of his league I was, and took me dancing.”
She scraped at the water bottle label with her nail, shredding it. Horrified at the tell, she clasped her hands together, wondering why her mouth kept flapping. “I got drunk.”
“Not a crime.”
“No, but it made me foolish, and foolish should be a crime,” she said. “Because instead of calling my parents when I started feeling weird, I stayed.”
“Weird?”
She looked away. “Yeah. Not drunk weird. Drugged weird.”
“Someone put something in your drink,” he said grimly.
“Yes.” For so long she’d kept this to herself, but in doing so, she’d given that night all the power. She knew it was time, past time, to let it all go, because if she didn’t, it’d continue to keep her from living the life she secretly dreamed about.
Which meant Mateo was right. She needed to say it all out loud and take away its power to hurt her. “I woke up the next morning alone in a strange bed, in a strange place, no clothes, not knowing where I was or what had happened.” The not remembering was probably a blessing, but sometimes in the dark of the night her brain liked to fill in the missing time, and she had to admit her imagination might be a whole lot worse than the truth.
Mateo sat quietly next to her, calm and steady, but there was a storm in his eyes. “How badly were you hurt?”
She shook her head. “Not badly.”
“There are levels of hurt,” he said carefully.
As she knew all too well. Charges hadn’t been pressed because she’d never been able to ID anyone. “I’m fine. No long-lasting damages.” She made the mistake of looking at him again, seeing a genuine concern for her and a carefully banked fury for what she’d gone through. And also . . . understanding. “Well, no lasting physical damages anyway,” she admitted with an attempt at a smile.
He’d stopped eating and set his fork down. “And the not-physical damages?”
She shrugged. “I’ve had counseling. I don’t hate men. I just . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t like to talk about it. People get weird.”
“Weird how?”
She bit her lower lip. “Okay, they don’t. Because I never talk about this, not with anyone.”
“Not even Jane?”
“She knows, but only because she saw my reaction when a man . . .” She shuddered. “There was a situation in Colombia, at a medical clinic. It got held up, and I reacted badly.” She drew a deep breath. “But other than Jane and a bunch of therapists, no one else knows.”
“What about in your past relationships?”
She froze for a beat. “I get claustrophobic in relationships,” she finally said. “So I don’t do them.”
“You’re sure about that?”
She blinked. “What does that mean?”
“Look, there are all kinds of relationships, right? Like us,” he said quietly. “Technically, what we have could be called a relationship. We’re two neighbors who fight over who plows the snow.” He smiled. “It also might be the best relationship I’ve ever been in.”
She was . . . well, she didn’t know exactly. Flustered? “But we’ve never—”
“There are all kinds of relationships,” he repeated softly.
She stared at him some more. He just flashed another small smile and went back to eating.
Around her, the sounds of the busy cafeteria kicked in and she realized she’d been holding her breath, so she breathed. He’d heard her deepest, darkest secret and he wasn’t scared off. Even more than that, he hadn’t asked invasive questions or pulled back in horror. He wasn’t treating her like a fragile piece of glass that could shatter at any moment.
Normal.
He was acting completely normal.