I blanch. “Because I’m not. You know I’m not.”
“Can you prove it?”
“You know I’m not,” I repeat.
His hands come down on my shoulders and he pulls back to look at me as he says, “I do know you, but that still requires me trusting you and I’ve had plenty of reasons in my life not to offer you that trust. Reasons you don’t know. Many reasons, Aria. Many betrayals. But I give you my trust anyway. I’m not after the formula, but all I have to offer is my word. You have to decide if you trust me.”
My hand settles on his chest, and his heart beats a rowdy song beneath my palm. “I’m very confused right now,” I confess, and it’s as honest as I have ever been with him or me. “And my head is spinning.”
His hand covers my hand on his chest. “Then let me take care of you. Let me take you home.”
There is a library filled with books the size of all the reasons I should say no, but even as I have that thought, he says, “Don’t say no.”
Words he’s said to me every moment of indecision I’ve ever shared with him. And right or wrong, like every time before, I don’t say no. I say, “Yes.”
CHAPTER THREE
Kace and I exit the alcove into the gust of wind and I swear my head spins with the mix of weather and drugs. I huddle into Kace’s jacket, but it all but falls from my shoulders. Kace catches it and settles it back in place, sheltering me. He is the one in short sleeves, without a jacket, and yet he is quick to slide his arm around me, pulling me close, his big body holding the jacket in place and blocking the next cold gust. I snuggle in closer to him, and without reserve, I simply cannot muster, I cling to him with my free hand. The sun is a beam in my eyes, the light as illuminating as this day has proven to be.
Kace knows who I am.
He’s the first person outside my family who knows who I am, who I really am. It’s surreal, an odd feeling of liberation followed by fear.
We reach his Roadster and he clicks the locks, opening the passenger door, but doesn’t just wait for me to climb into the car. He literally eases me into the seat and kneels down beside me. “You okay?”
There is tenderness in his question, and in the sea of emotions swimming in his blue eyes, the kind of tenderness I struggle to see as anything but real, honest. “That’s a complicated question.”
“I suppose it is right now,” he agrees, smoothing my good hand down my leg. “Beyond us, your body, how do you feel?”
“Sitting is good,” I say. “They gave me a pain pill. I think it’s messing with me.”
“We’ll get you into bed and you can rest.” He grabs the seatbelt and pulls it over me, his big, wonderful body pressing to mine as he latches it into place, but once complete, he doesn’t move away. He hovers over me, his palm settling on my face. “I care, baby.” His voice is a rumble of masculinity and emotion. “I care. Never doubt it.” His lips brush mine, sending a shiver down my spine, and then he’s gone, standing and shutting me inside his car. My world is spinning right now. I want to believe him when he says he wants only me, that he cares about me, not the formula to create a Stradivarius. I want to trust him, but I quickly remind myself that I need to tread cautiously. Kace has money, but what’s the one thing a man who can have everything wants, but what he cannot have?
Kace joins me in the car, claiming the wheel while setting my bag of meds behind the seat. His scent is everywhere. On my skin. On my clothes. In the air. And his eyes are on me as he settles not into his seat, but facing me. I shift in his direction, meeting his stare, and only then does he ask, “Can I take you home with me, Aria?”
This is a loaded question. I know he knows it’s loaded question. We both know it’s a loaded question, that knowledge punching at the air between us.
If I go to his place, it feels to me that he’s in total control, but if I invite him to mine, it feels as if I am offering him another piece of me. Right now, though, control feels important, my control. My home. Decision made, I say, “I need to be in my own space.”
His lashes lower, the afternoon sunlight breaking across the hardening lines of his handsome face. “All right then,” he says, his eyes meeting mine again, amber flecks in their depths. “We’ll go to your place. Do you have everything you need in that bag they gave you?”