“I love you so much, Talon,” she said.
My eyes were closed, my body sated. “I love you too, blue eyes.”
We lay there for a while as the sun went down. The sky turned pink and orange and fuchsia, and then silver gray, and the first star sparkled in the night sky.
It was so easy to be with Jade. To just be. We didn’t have to be talking, we didn’t have to be making love, we didn’t have to be doing anything. We could just be together—a state of pure being. Everything felt so right.
But it was time.
If I was going to go the distance with Jade, I had to tell her all my secrets. As much as I didn’t want to lay this on her, I had to. And I had to trust that she wouldn’t turn away from me.
“Do you want to sit in the hot tub a while?” I asked her.
She let out a yawn. “Sounds heavenly, but it might put me to sleep.”
“Good point,” I said. “We’ll stay here. Do you want something to drink?”
“Maybe another glass of wine. Or some ice water’s fine too.”
“You got it.” I’d get her both. I got up and ambled into the kitchen, naked as a jaybird, for two glasses of ice water. When I returned I poured two glasses of wine and took a plate of strawberries out of the basket by the bed.
“You’re a gem,” she said, taking first a long sip of water and then a small sip of wine.
“You want a strawberry?” I held one up to her mouth.
She took a delicate bite and licked her lips. “Mmm.”
“Jade?”
“Yeah?”
My nerves tensed up. You don’t have to do this, Talon. You can put it off. No. I had to. I had come so far. I cleared my throat.
“Remember when I told you something happened to me when I was younger? Something horrible?”
She set her glass down on the tray and snuggled up to me, laying her head on my shoulder. “I will listen to whatever you have to say, Talon. I want you to tell me if you’re ready. But I need you to trust in one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing will ever change the way I feel about you. Nothing will ever change how much I love you.”
And in that moment, trapped in her steely blue gaze, I believed her.
I trusted her.
“It happened twenty-five years ago. I was ten.”
* * *
She stayed quiet beside me, letting me talk. She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t ask questions. She let me say my piece. And although she sniffed and I felt her tears trickle against my shoulder, still she stayed quiet, and still I continued.
The words came out of me robotically, without emotion. In truth, I forced it that way. If I had let emotion into it, I wouldn’t have gotten through it. When I was finally finished, she pulled away from me and sat up.
And I saw what I feared most.
The look of pity in her silver-blue eyes.
My ire rose. “Jade, I didn’t tell you this so you could pity me.”