by Kate Hewitt
“I know.” He shrugged, giving her a half smile. “But it felt like more.”
And it had felt like more to her, too. She kept trying to pretend it hadn’t, but with Jaiven staring at her so honestly, she knew she couldn’t anymore. That’s why they were here. Because it had always been more, maybe even right from the beginning.
She swallowed and looked away, her mind a ferment of indecision and want. She’d spoken the truth of both her body and heart when she’d told Jaiven she missed him. She missed the sex, yes, most definitely. But she also missed the way he’d understood and accepted her. She missed the fun, the lightness she felt in his company. She missed being with him in a way that had nothing to do with the amazing things they’d done in bed.
“What would you want,” Louise asked, her heart pounding so hard her chest hurt, “if I said that maybe we could…try again? If I…forgave you?”
Jaiven didn’t answer for a moment, just met her gaze evenly. “I don’t know,” he finally said, and everything in Louise fizzled.
Oh, all right, then. So much for the big moment she’d been bracing herself for. What had she been expecting, some kind of declaration? A marriage proposal? He might have said he’d started to care, but the truth was they barely knew each other. How many times did she have to keep reminding herself of that?
“Louise,” he said, and stopped. She stared at him, waiting, surprised and moved to see a sudden torment contort his features before his expression ironed out and he shook his head. “I told you I’m not good enough for you.”
“Maybe I should be the judge of that.”
“You don’t know…” He stopped, his lips pressed together, and Louise took a step toward him.
“You’re right, Jaiven, I don’t know. I don’t know a lot about you. I can tell there are things you haven’t told me. Just like there are things I haven’t told you. But I want to know. I want to know more about you.”
“How can you say that,” he asked in a low voice, “when you don’t know what there is to know?”
“Because what I do know of you, I like. A lot.” Admitting that much had adrenaline racing through her so she felt dizzy. “Tell me,” she implored. “Tell me why you don’t think you’re good enough for me.”
He was silent for a long moment, his gaze distant. “I left school when I was thirteen,” he finally said, and she almost laughed. Really? That was it?
“I get a bellyful of academia at my job,” she told him. “That doesn’t matter to me, Jaiven.”
“I can barely read.” He turned to look at her, his expression coolly challenging, as if expecting her to recoil in disgust. “I had learning difficulties and teachers kept passing me through the grades just to get rid of me, but I never learned much.”
“And yet you’re CEO of a multimillion-dollar empire. Pretty impressive to me.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “Now you’re the one with the rose-tinted blinders on.”
“I don’t think so,” Louise told him quietly. “Trust me, Jaiven, I’m not saying any of this lightly. It took a lot of thought and courage to ask you up here tonight. To tell you I want to try again.”
He swallowed, the muscles working in his throat. “I want to try again, too,” he said in a low voice. “But…” He closed his eyes briefly and then snapped them open. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“And I don’t want to get hurt.”
“I haven’t told you everything,” he told her.
“And I haven’t told you everything.”
“Do you want to tell me?” he asked. She didn’t answer, and slowly, gently, asking permission with his eyes, he reached out and cupped Louise’s cheek. “Because you can.”
She closed her eyes, felt her knees, and just about everything else, weaken. “I’m scared,” she whispered, and Jaiven’s hand tensed against her face.
“Of me?”
Her eyes flew open. “No, of me.” She let out a shuddering breath, knowing then just why she’d asked him up here. To tell him the truth. To tell him about her past.
“Why are you scared of yourself, Louise?” Jaiven asked quietly, and she drew another deep breath.
“Because I don’t have the greatest track record with men.”
He frowned, his hand still against her face. “You’re talking about a relationship. That jerk who hurt you in the past.”
“Yes…but I’m also talking about how I was with him.”
“What do you mean?”
And she knew she couldn’t skate over the truth, as much as she wanted to. Knew bone-deep that she couldn’t have a healthy relationship without admitting everything.
Hell.
But Jaiven was worth it, Louise told herself. And even if it didn’t work out between them, she needed to try. To finally take that risk.
“I need to tell you some stuff,” she said, and Jaiven cocked his head, his gaze gentle, curious, and just a little wary.
“Okay.”
She turned away, leading him to her living room. She sat on the squashy velvet sofa, her hands curled around her mug of tea, drawing comfort from the warmth. Jaiven sat across from her in an armchair, his body loose-limbed and relaxed, yet also alert.
“So what kind of stuff are we talking about?”
She stared down at her mug, drew another breath into her overinflated lungs. “This isn’t easy, Jaiven.”
He nodded. “Trust me, I know.”
“I don’t tell anybody this stuff.”
“So this is some serious stuff?” He was joking, a little, trying to put her at ease, but she was too wound up even to smile.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
His calm acceptance relaxed her a little, even as fear screamed in her head. Don’t do this. Don’t give him all your emotional baggage because it’s too damn heavy. It will make whatever could be between you sink like a stone.
“I was married,” she said abruptly, “a long time ago.” Jaiven nodded, waited. His expression was both alert and curious, but also guarded. As if he was bracing himself a little for whatever came at him next.
And what did come next? How far back to go? How much to admit? She couldn’t really explain how she’d ended up marrying Jack without talking about her childhood, her insecurities. “Okay, so it was like this,” she said, her voice still terse. “I had a shitty childhood. So did Chelsea. We lived in a trailer park—that’s not the shitty part—and our mother was a drunk with one deadbeat boyfriend after another. She also preferred Chelsea to me, because I was chubby and had a lazy eye.” That sounded so stupid, Louise thought suddenly. So pathetic. What did she want, his pity?
No. Never.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” she said, sitting up, sloshing tea over her already-burned finger.
“Because it matters,” Jaiven answered. “Because it’s affected who you are and the choices you made. Trust me, I get that, Louise. I had a pretty shitty childhood, myself.”
“Why?”
He shook his head. “We’re not talking about me.”
“But we could,” Louise offered. “We could talk all about you. I still want to know you, Jaiven. Understand you—”
“But now it’s your turn.”
She gave him a tiny smile. “Damn it.”
“Yeah. I know.”
She sighed and leaned back against the sofa. “So there I was, poor little me, with the corrective glasses and puppy fat. Nobody loves me.” She shook her head, and Jaiven cocked his own, his gaze sweeping slowly, speculatively, over her.
“Whose voice was that, Louise?” he asked quietly. “Yours or your mother’s?”
She blinked, shocked into silence by his perception. “You’re not supposed to be all sensitive and emo,” she accused, and he laughed.
“Me? Emo? Now you’re really scaring me.”
“I haven’t even started, Jaiven.” She took a breath and swallowed hard. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there.”
He arched an eyebrow. �
��Because I can’t handle it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can’t handle it.”
“Only one way to find out.”
She needed to do this, Louise told herself again. No matter what the outcome. She sat back against the sofa once more, tucking her legs up. “My mother died three weeks before my high school graduation. I had a scholarship to the University of Alabama. Chelsea was still in high school, and…” This part she didn’t like admitting, didn’t have the emotional energy to get into, and so she skated over it. “She stayed with her boyfriend’s family to finish school and I went to college. I was determined to break out of the trailer park, make something of myself, but the truth is I didn’t. Couldn’t. I was lonely and scared and I felt so separate from everyone else, driving to college in their parents’ station wagons while I came on the bus with one cardboard suitcase.” She shook her head. “I should have just risen above it all, but I was so insecure then…” She sighed before continuing, “Anyway, it was hard. Which doesn’t excuse it, I know.” She shook her head again. “So what happened is I dropped out after one semester. I’d met a guy working at a diner off campus. He didn’t go to college. He was tough and sexy, at least he seemed to me at the time, and kind of a bad boy.”
Jaiven sat back, understanding gleaming in his eyes. “A bad boy, huh,” he said, his voice neutral. “And this was the guy you married?”
“Yes. Jack. We were married for two years.”
“Let me guess. Did he have a tattoo?”
“Yes, but it was tacky. Yours is…” He arched an eyebrow, waiting, and she finished awkwardly, “Tasteful.”
“Well, you did enjoy licking it,” he reminded her, and she laughed even as she blushed.
“So I did. Does it have a significance, anyway?”
He stilled then, looking almost trapped. “A bit,” he said after a moment. “But like I said before, we were talking about you.”
“Right.” He was still being cagey about his past, Louise decided, but she wasn’t about to push right now. Jaiven was right. They were talking about her. Or trying to.
And she’d said all the easy stuff, and even that had been excruciating. Now came the hard part. The part where she admitted she’d stayed in an abusive relationship for two freaking years. Where she confessed she’d allowed herself to be mocked, scorned, humiliated and even hit because she’d rather face that than be alone.
Who wanted to admit they were that weak, that insecure, that stupid? And that ten years later they were afraid of it happening again?
“Louise.” Jaiven leaned forward, placed one large, comforting hand on her knee. “What did this guy do to you?”
“Well,” she answered with a shaky laugh that bordered on something more like a sob, “the better question would be what didn’t he do to me.”
Jaiven’s hand tightened on her knee. When he spoke, his voice was a low growl. “What do you mean?”
She looked up, felt the tears starting to pool in her eyes. Okay, so no blinking. “A month before we got married, he slapped me across the face.” Shock blazed across Jaiven’s features and Louise almost laughed. Yes, the acclaimed Women’s Studies professor who lectures about reclaiming our bodies and gender politics let herself be physically abused. “I should have got out then, of course,” she continued, “while it was easy, or at least easier. But I didn’t. I didn’t even make the excuses that it was a onetime thing, or he didn’t mean it, because I knew he did. He didn’t even apologize later. He just pretended it hadn’t happened, and so did I.”
“Why?” Jaiven asked, the one word a whisper of sorrow and sympathy, or maybe just pity, which made everything in Louise curl up in cringing self-protection. Maybe telling him all this had been a huge mistake. How could he ever look at her the same again? How could he see her as someone who was strong and sexy and desirable, that woman he’d shown her in the mirror, when he knew what she’d willingly endured? What she’d chosen?
“I’ve asked myself that many times, and I don’t know if there’s a single answer.” She stared back down at her tea then, because it was easier. “I was desperate to be loved, and while my head knew what Jack felt for me wasn’t remotely close to love, the rest of me convinced myself it was. At least he wanted to be with me. He asked me to marry him.” Not the most romantic proposal, but he’d still asked. Or at least sort of said. I guess I’ll marry you counted, right? “I told myself that being with him was better than being on my own, which was what I was facing.”
“What about Chelsea?”
Damn it, she didn’t want to talk about Chelsea. About how she’d so spectacularly let her sister down. That was too much on top of everything else, at least for now. One revelation per night. “We’d lost touch by then.”
Jaiven pursed his lips but didn’t say anything else. He just watched her, his hand still on her knee, his body bent forward, almost as if he wanted to hold her. And she wanted him to hold her—although, on second thought, maybe she didn’t, because then she’d probably start howling.
The misery and memory were both there, a burning lump in her chest, and it was only going to get worse.
“So he hit you,” Jaiven said, his voice flat. “Often?”
“Often enough.”
“There’s no enough about it,” he answered, a savage note entering his voice. “He gave you that scar, didn’t he?” He pointed to her eyebrow.
“Yes.”
Jaiven shook his head, his face filled with fury. “I wish I could find that bastard now.”
“He’s long gone, Jaiven. Probably still in Alabama somewhere, making someone else’s life miserable, no doubt.”
“Did you prosecute?”
She looked away. “No. It was all I had in me to get out.”
“Damn it, Louise. I wish…”
She turned to him with a twisted smile. “What?”
Jaiven pressed his lips together in a hard line. “That I’d known.”
“I don’t want to be defined by it,” she told him. “I never did. It was a mistake, a horrible mistake, but it isn’t all I am.”
“I know it isn’t.”
“Anyway, the hitting thing—I know it’s shocking, it’s awful, but it wasn’t even the worst part for me.” She drew a deep breath, forced herself to go on. “It was the emotional stuff that got to me. The insults. The…humiliation.”
Jaiven looked up, his eyes blazing even as his body went terribly still. “What do you mean?”
“He ran me down all the time.” She felt herself flush, still embarrassed to admit all this. “He told me I was ugly, fat, you name it. A lousy lay, too. I heard that one more than once. No good at sex.” Her throat tightened, and anger darkened Jaiven’s face, color slashing across his cheekbones.
“Trust me, Louise, this bastard is full of shit. You are the best lay I’ve ever had.”
She let out a wobbly laugh. “Umm—thanks?”
His hand tightened on her knee again. “I mean it.”
A tear spilled then, splashing onto his hand. She bent her head so her hair fell in front of her face, hiding herself from him. “I’ve been hearing his voice in my head,” she whispered. “I drowned it out for a decade but it—he—started coming back. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because being with you has brought it all back.”
Louise stopped when Jaiven dropped his hand from her knee, easing back from her, his expression appalled. “So I… I remind you of him?”
“Louise, do I remind you of your abusive ex-husband?”
“No—”
“But that night.” Jaiven Rodriguez swallowed. “That night, I reminded you of him, didn’t I? Humiliating you like he did.”
Louise Jensen wiped the tears from her face. “You didn’t know.”
Jaiven didn’t answer, just lowered his head, his hands fisted in his hair. He growled a swearword in Spanish under his throat, his whole body taut. When he looked up, the naked regret on his fa
ce made Louise let out a muffled cry. “I’m sorry, Louise.”
“Oh, Jaiven, I know you are.” She drew a shuddering breath, tried to keep the tears in, for Jaiven’s sake as much as her own. She didn’t want to cry in front of him. Didn’t want him to feel any more guilty than he obviously did.
But she clearly wasn’t fooling him for his voice broke as he said, “Louise—let me hold you.” He came and knelt in front of her, a supplicant. “Please, Louise, let me hold you.”
The fact that he was asking, even begging, just about broke her heart. More tears spilled. “I want you to hold me,” she whispered, and then his arms came around and he sat down on the sofa, settling her against the hard wall of his chest as she curled into him, her legs across his lap, her cheek pressed against his heart.
It felt so good. Better than any sex they’d had—on a desk, up against a wall, in the shower—forget it all. This was what she needed. What she wanted most of all.
But if she thought a little cuddle was going to stem the tide of emotion inside her, she was dead wrong. Jaiven’s arms around her were akin to taking her finger out of the hole in the dam. The emotion rushed over them both, a scalding river as sobs shook her body and tears streamed from her eyes.
She knew, on an intellectual level, she needed this release. She’d kept it in for so long. She’d wanted to keep it in forever, but that was impossible. Caring about someone again, about Jaiven, made that impossible.
And yet in the midst of the emotional bloodletting she felt herself cringe inwardly. This was going to freak Jaiven out. This was going to drive him away at about a million miles an hour. How could it not? This was the man who had thought forty-eight hours was a long-term relationship.
At least he was holding her now, Louise told herself, which was incredibly nice of him, but how long before he gently eased away from her, picked himself up off the sofa and walked out of her life?
Who wanted this kind of complicated? She certainly didn’t. If she could have checked her emotional baggage forever, she’d have done it. She’d wanted to forget everything, even her own name, and, ten years ago, had tried to start over with a clean slate and no painful memories.