by T. J. Kline
He shot her a playful grin. “I’ve been trying to tell you that, but you wouldn’t believe me.”
Her smile faded, and she quickly looked down at the sleeping kitten again, avoiding his gaze.
“Leah?”
She took a deep breath. “It hasn’t happened in a long time.”
“You have PTSD.”
She nodded slowly, keeping her focus on anything but his eyes. “How’d you know?”
“My brother.” Gage prayed Dylan wouldn’t fault him for telling her. “When he was in Afghanistan his entire unit was killed. He was the only one to survive. It messed him up pretty bad.”
“Roscoe’s his service dog.”
Gage nodded. “We tried for over a year to find something to help. Medication didn’t touch it. A therapy dog was his last hope.”
“He’s the reason you knew about the breathing technique.”
“I learned pretty early not to touch him when he was having a flashback, but if I could get his attention, get him to focus on my voice, I could use it to help force his mind back into the present. It didn’t always work, but it kept either of us from getting hurt.”
“Thank you.” Her voice was strained, frail, and vulnerable. When she raised her hand to pet the kitten, he could see it was unsteady.
“I didn’t mean to trigger it, Leah. If you tell me what I did, I’ll avoid doing it again.”
“It wasn’t you,” she repeated, but he could easily read the lie in her eyes.
He set Lynx onto the couch and moved to sit on the table across from her. “We’re friends, right? At least, as much as two strangers bound by kittens can be.” She gave him the faintest hint of a smile and nodded. “Friends don’t lie to one another, Leah.”
Gage curled his fingers around his knees to keep from reaching for her hand. He could see the war waging within her—to purge the poison that was festering or to continue to try to hide it. She ducked her head so that he couldn’t see her face, or read the emotion in her eyes.
“It’s not anything you did. It’s who you are,” she confessed.
Damn.
Her words hurt more than he thought they would. Gage knew she didn’t mean to hurt him, but it didn’t stop the way his chest constricted. Deep down he’d been hoping she’d say something else had triggered her flashback, but hearing her admit it was him made the weight of the past few weeks crowd around him again, dragging him back into the pit of guilt he was trying to crawl out of.
He’d hurt yet another person, without trying. Even on the Heart Fire Ranch, where he thought he’d hole up, away from the trouble he’d caused his partners and employees, he just found someone else’s life to ruin.
THROUGH HER LASHES, Leah saw Gage flinch at her words. Her breath caught in her throat at the agony she could see in his eyes. It wasn’t fair to let him shoulder the blame that shouldn’t be his to bear. As much as she didn’t want to talk about her past, she wanted to hurt him less.
He pressed his hands against his knees and started to rise and she reached out a hand to still him. Now that she’d made the decision to tell him, she didn’t want him to go until he understood.
“Wait, don’t go.”
He stared down at her fingers around his wrist. “Leah, I don’t want to put you through this. I didn’t mean to . . . I’m sorry.”
“It’s just because you’re a man, Gage,” she whispered.
Leah wanted to be strong, to deny that her past could still hurt her, but she couldn’t stop the wavering in her voice, or the way her skin felt hot and raw, or the difficulty she was having just trying to remember how to breathe.
“I was eight the first time I saw her with her dealer. It was also the first time a man hit me. But I could handle that. That was something I could avoid by hiding. At least until the day it wasn’t her they came for. I was only ten the first time a man . . . hurt me. I’d already seen them with her for years, so I knew not to cry, but it didn’t stop them. Afterward, I wanted to die.”
Gage slid back down to the coffee table, as if his legs couldn’t hold him up. He didn’t say anything—not that she expected him to—and she could see the empathy in his eyes for the life she’d led. Her brain warned her to stop talking, but she didn’t really want to.
Now that she’d begun, she wanted to get it all out, to purge the poison festering in her. She was surprised at her voice. It wasn’t angry or strained or wavering any longer. Instead, it sounded disembodied, like it belonged to someone reciting a story, like it had happened to someone else.
“After that, I stayed away from the house as much as I could. But she always found me, and she needed the money . . . ”
“Leah,” Gage began. She could hear the emotion choking him, his voice thick. She realized she was no longer holding his wrist, but his hand was closed around hers, her palm gently cradled in his. “Who?”
She looked up at Gage, her gaze crashing into his. His eyes were wet with unshed tears, tears for the child she’d once been, for the nightmare she’d lived. This man who barely knew her, this stranger who had offered more of himself than anyone in her childhood, was going to cry for her lost innocence. He had no idea how much worse it got.
“My mother.”
Gage pinched his lips together and wiped the hand not holding hers over his eyes, rubbing at them roughly. “Fuck me.” He slid his hand over his jaw, covering his mouth.
Leah felt suddenly guilty for laying the burden of her past on Gage’s shoulders. She shouldn’t have told him, should’ve kept the secret hidden in the vault of her nightmares. But after the kindness he’d shown her, she’d owed him some explanation for the way she’d reacted to him. She couldn’t let him think he was to blame.
“It wasn’t you. I just . . . ” Sanity seemed to return in time for her to censor her admission. She couldn’t tell him it was her attraction to him that had triggered her anxiety attack. “I just haven’t been alone with men much since Nicole took me in as a foster kid.”
It’s not a lie. It just isn’t exactly the entire truth.
Leah took a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly, waiting for Gage to say something—anything. His thumb brushed over the top of her hand, igniting a spark of affection in her that pooled in her chest, warming her. She was sure he had a million questions running through his mind, but to his credit, he didn’t ask any of them.
“I’m sorry.” Gage shook his head, still in shock at what she’d told him. “I had no idea, and I pushed you to go to town with me.” Self-recrimination settled on him, and he ran a hand over his head.
“Gage, you didn’t know. No one does.”
She reached for his other hand. It seemed oddly comforting for her to be reassuring him instead of the other way around. It helped for her to analyze the situation clinically, void of emotion, as if it happened to someone else. She also didn’t have to scrutinize how much she was still affected by her past. Or how her mother had betrayed her, the rage that fought to be released. But she’d battled all of those emotions, and more, when she’d let Nicole help her. She’d learned to keep them contained.
His gaze snapped up, his dark eyes worried.
“Gage, please, don’t tell anyone. People don’t want a therapist who has issues.”
“We all have issues, Leah.” He looked at his hand around hers then back to her eyes. She could tell he was searching for answers to the questions he was too afraid to ask. “It explains a lot.”
“You mean, why I’m a bitch?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Actually, you did. But don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. It’s not the first time I’ve ever been called a bitch, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.”
He studied her. “How are you just . . . okay with this?”
“I’m not okay with it. But it’s over, and I don’t want to rehash it.”
Leah sighed. She didn’t want to talk about the details any more than she already had. If she avoided the discussion, she could avoid rel
iving them. He didn’t need to know how many nights she’d gone to bed hungry or praying her mother might overdose so the nightmare could be over. He didn’t need to hear about how she’d been beaten at fourteen by a john who’d used her and refused to pay her mother afterward or about the favors she’d traded in high school just to be able to keep their electricity on. He didn’t really want to know about the foster parents who’d failed her, making her live in a closet while they collected their monthly checks until she was sent back to her mother and wished for the closet again.
No one needed to know those things. It was bad enough that she’d lived through them.
She turned her back on Gage and walked into the kitchen, the way she had turned her back on everyone who’d tried to get close. It was her protection. Keep her guard up and no one could touch her heart; then she wouldn’t get hurt. Except Nicole hadn’t allowed her to put up a wall. She’d forced her way through the barrier, and now Gage was gradually making his way through with his gentle kindness.
Leah wasn’t surprised when he didn’t follow her into the kitchen, nor was she surprised when she heard the front door close with a soft click. She couldn’t blame him. If she were someone like him, she’d run away from her, too. She was walking, talking baggage and issues.
She didn’t want him to stay anyway. At least that was what she’d keep telling herself. But the ache in her chest felt an awful lot like rejection.
Or regret.
Chapter Eleven
GAGE NEEDED TO get out. He needed a breath of fresh air, something to give him a moment of perspective on what Leah had just revealed to him. He could see the emotions roiling in her, slowly boiling her alive, could feel her anger seething below the surface, almost palpable, and he wondered how she continued to control it. Or why she was trying to pretend it didn’t exist.
Maybe he could see it because he’d seen his brother try to hide his own rage for so long. Maybe it was because he’d been abused in his own childhood, although from what he could ascertain from what she had shared, his experience had been a comparative walk in the park. Gage ran a hand over his shaved head, letting the rasp draw him back to the current predicament. Leah was hurting and angry, as lost as those kittens were, and as much as he needed to focus on his own troubles, he couldn’t turn his back on her. It just wasn’t who he was.
Walking to the cabin, he picked up the plastic case from on top of the DVD player and headed back to Leah’s. He opened the door without knocking.
He could see Leah from the doorway, curled in the same corner of the couch she’d been earlier, and he felt the empathy slam into his chest, painfully digging into his heart. He caught his breath again. How could someone have looked at that face as a child, with her slightly upturned nose and her pink cheeks, and hurt her? His eyes skimmed over her thin limbs and her petite frame. How could someone have deliberately injured her?
Her head jerked up as the door clicked shut behind him, and he could see the shock register in her eyes. “Movie?” he asked, holding up the plastic case.
“You came back?” The words slipped from her lips quietly, and he could see by her wide eyes, she hadn’t meant to say them aloud.
He walked to the television and slid the movie into the DVD player, grabbing the remote from the table as he walked past and settling himself in the corner of the couch opposite of her. He’d have loved to sit closer, to pull her into his arms and let her release the anguish he knew she was holding inside, but he could see she wasn’t ready for that yet. She might have trusted him enough to tell him some of her past but not enough to dig at that festering wound. Until she was ready, if that ever happened, he’d be her friend. She needed one more than anyone he’d ever known.
“You’re going to have to do more than break a few dishes to get rid of me.” He kicked his shoes off and crossed his ankles in front of him, lifting the remote. “I hope you’re in the mood for a comedy because it’s pretty slim pickings in the cabin.”
She stared at him for a moment before she arched a brow. “Depends on which one. I’m more in the mood for an action movie.”
“21 Jump Street. I think that should cover your desires.” Gage cursed his poor choice in words.
“Mmm, Channing Tatum? I think I can manage.” She sighed, ignoring his slip or, he hoped, not even noticing it. She reached for the afghan folded on the back of the couch and tucked her knees to one side before covering herself, struggling to get it over her feet.
Gage reached for the end of the blanket and pulled it over her toes, tucking it under. “There. Bet Channing Tatum wouldn’t do that for you.”
She smiled sweetly at him. “I bet he would.”
Gage chuckled quietly as the movie began. He was glad to see she had returned to their earlier friendly rapport, but it worried him that she could so quickly slip from one emotion to the next, disguising her pain so quickly. It made him suspicious what else she was hiding behind those whiskey-colored eyes.
LEAH FELT THE rumble against her cheek before she heard the quiet snore. She rubbed one hand against her face, wiping it over her eyes and trying to discern where she was. The disorientation alone should have been enough to send her into a panic attack, and she tried to figure out why it wasn’t. She blinked, trying to clear the fog from her barely conscious mind, and moved to push herself into a seated position when her hand landed on a wall of solid muscle. It gave way but only slightly, and she couldn’t move with the pair of massive biceps protectively curled around her.
Gage.
How had she ended up asleep in Gage’s arms? The last thing she remembered was them laughing at a particularly funny scene then leaning her head against the back of the couch so that she could rub her cheek against Puma’s soft fur. She must have fallen asleep facing him.
Gage sighed in his sleep, his breath fanning over the top of her hair where her head was tucked under his chin. She was practically curled in his lap with her arms wrapped around him. This wasn’t like her. She didn’t need to be touched, didn’t crave the intimacy of a caress. Just the thought usually sent her backpedaling. To some, it made her seem cold or callous, but it made her a good clinician.
Move away, now, her mind warned.
She tried to obey, even splayed her hand over his stomach to slip out of his arms, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. This felt good. Instead of panic, she felt completely at peace, secure and content. She felt safe with Gage, and she didn’t want to move for fear that the feeling would dissipate like morning fog.
Longing slid through her veins slowly, like a drug, leaving warmth in its wake, pooling in her stomach. Leah had avoided men whenever possible. Logically, after all of her years in psychological medicine, she knew what happened to her wasn’t her fault, but it had tainted her view of sex and men. She scorned the needful weakness and loss of control that lust encouraged.
But, right now, in Gage’s arms, she felt like she’d been missing some vital piece of a puzzle. She wasn’t feeling weak as desire moved in her, heating her blood. She let it dance through her veins, twirling and twisting, relegating the voices in her head telling her she was a dirty whore to the furthest recesses of her mind.
She wanted to be like other women, to know what it felt like to love and be loved. She wanted to feel passion, to touch and be touched, but more than anything else, she needed to feel safe. Gage made her feel that way.
Unlike the others in her life, he hadn’t rejected her. Even when she thought he’d walked away, Gage came back, and for that, she couldn’t begin to express her gratitude. That meant more to her than paying for her car repairs or rescuing her on the side of the road. Just the simple act of returning last night had indebted her to him in ways she could never repay.
Leah felt the strong, steady beat of Gage’s heart under her ear, and her fingers curled slightly into the muscles at his waist before sliding up his ribs. He sighed softly in his sleep and curiosity overpowered her fear. She felt his hands move over her back and lifted her eyes to his face.
His jaw was dusted with stubble, and her fingers itched to touch it, to feel the rasp over her palm. His full lips were slightly parted, and she wondered how a man so solidly muscular and with such chiseled features could have lips that looked so soft.
Gage dipped his face down farther and, through her lashes she could see him looking down at her, his eyes almost black.
“Leah?” he whispered, his voice still husky with sleep.
She wanted to kiss him. She’d never wanted to actually kiss a man before. She had always been forced to tolerate their touch, but this time, she wanted to see what it would be like when she wanted it. But she wasn’t sure he would welcome the kiss. Gage brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear with his finger, letting it trail over the outer shell and sending butterfly wings of longing to flutter in her belly. It was enough to jolt her from her indecision.
Leah slid her hand up, curling around the back of Gage’s neck and pulled him toward her. Relief flooded her when he came willingly. As his lips met hers, she gasped at the sheer pleasure of the touch, inhaling his breath as her own. His hands froze, one at her shoulder and the other at her waist, as if he was afraid any movement from him might scare her away. She brushed her lips over his slowly, and Gage seemed content to let her set the tone. He let her take as much as she wanted from him, allowing her to explore and decide where her boundaries were.
Leah realized she’d been right about two things: his lips were as soft as they looked, and Gage was safe.
Instead of making her feel good, that only made her more afraid. Safe meant she would be more likely to let down her guard. Safe meant he could break down the walls she’d built. Safe meant, for the first time, her heart was in danger.
BEING KISSED BY Leah was like entering heaven when he knew he didn’t belong, but Gage wasn’t foolish enough to try to stop it. He couldn’t deny the attraction he’d felt from the moment he’d seen her stranded on the side of the road, in spite of what he might have told her. When her lips met his, she sucked in a soft, sweet intake of breath and stole his will to resist her. He’d been able to endure when she’d fallen asleep on his shoulder in the middle of the movie, in spite of the heady scent of her perfume that surrounded him. When she curled against his chest, he’d been content to hold her, knowing he would never cross a line she’d drawn. But waking to find her watching him, with those amber eyes practically glowing with yearning, he didn’t have the strength to deny himself a taste of those lips.