If he didn’t crush her again.
God, am I just a weak idiot waiting to be completely destroyed?
His ragged voice cut through her thoughts.
“It was fear,” Gideon finally answered, his voice like shards of regret, like the words had been ripped from his very soul. “You terrified me.”
At that, Kendra’s mouth dropped open. “What?” she blurted, her voice high-pitched with offense. “Iterrifiedyou? Are youserious?”
Kendra nearly fell off the couch when Gideon Maddox’s ears turned red, his face growing pink as he dipped his chin as if to hide from her scrutiny.
“Gideon Maddox,” she snapped, “you are outrageous! How could you possibly be scared of me—I love puppies and babies, and I can’t stand the sight of blood, and I tear up at St. Jude’s commercials?—”
“Baby,” he cooed, cupping her face and pressing his thumbs against her mouth to silence her. “Take a breath.”
She quieted quickly, shocked at the gentle contact.
Silently, his emerald gaze pouring into hers, he bent and pressed a soft kiss to her nose.
Oh Lord…the man was absolutely devastating! Where was this tenderness over the last three years?
Her mind shocked into silence, her body humming with unlawful carnal knowledge of the man encompassing her, and her heart aching for all that she’d missed with him and all that she still wanted with him she just watched, her gaze on his beautifully masculine face, as emotions she’d never seen on him before swept over his expression.
They filled his eyes, making her breath catch.
Fear was there, yes, but so was weariness and sorrow and regret and anger and…something deeper, more significant.
In a voice barely loud enough to be heard over her own pounding heart, her husband rasped, “What I felt for you…scared the shit out of me….” The words spoken were so broken she could feel them bleeding. “I was never a man of emotions, Kendra, not when any sign of softness was ridiculed and despised by the only parent that didn’t outright abandon me. Yes, my father didn’t leave us, but it would have been better ifhe had. Scraped knees, bad grades, broken bones, broken hearts, grief, exhaustion, loneliness, and even hunger—nothing was safe from Nathaniel’s noxious rage. Not a tear could be shed, not a whimper could be made, not a complaint could be spoken because Maddoxes weren’t pussies, they took what they wanted and didn’t give a shit who it hurt.”
Left speechless, Kendra could only watch as Gideon’s expression shifted to rage.
“Nathaniel Maddox took everything, hurt everyone, and still felt the need to ‘teach his sons’ what ‘being a man’ was about—the asshole wouldn’t know how to be a true man if one tore out his fucking throat, but that didn’t stop him from targeting Adrian, Logan, and Lucian—and I couldn’t let my brothers get hurt. So…I took it; every ugly word, every slap, every kick, every drop of his poison.”
Her breath caught on a quiet sob. “Oh…Gideon….” Tears burning the backs of her eyes, Kendra brushed her lips over his jaw, pouring her strength and love into him.
He chuckled humorlessly. “I’m the cliched cold-hearted billionaire with a broken childhood,” he sneered, “is it any surprise I ended up being a piece of shit husband?” His clamped his eyes shut as if in pain. “And that I’ll be a terrible father?”
Oh God!
Her heart racing, the tears breaching the dam to slide down her cheeks, she choked out, “Gideon, you can’t think like that! That is your past, yes, it made you who you are, but you don’t have to be that way. Your father is an asshole, your mother is a selfish bitch, and, yeah, okay, you have hurt me so much….” Her voice cracked, and he tensed beneath her. “And I honestly don’t know if I will ever forgive you for that…” she said. “But the way you are with your brothers, how you care for them, protect them, and how you care about Cora, and how you look at those little nieces of yours, how you spoil them…you have a better man, agood man, buried there under all that childhood trauma…and that is the man I fell in love with.”
Just saying those words hurt more than anything could.
They were true—Gideon was driven by survival instinct, which left no room for softness, but that hadn’t stopped him from doing those little things, things no one really mentioned, for those he loved.
Even for her….
Sadly, for her, those little things were far and few in between, greatly outweighed by all the painful, hurtful, mean, and damaging things he’d done. The neglect, the coldness, the purposeful distance, all the nights away from home he’d spent with Isabella Mancini, all the sparkling parties where she might as well have been invisible to him—there for the familial image but otherwise non-existent. And the emotionless sex, like a transaction paid in orgasms and tears silently cried into her pillow.
How was she ever supposed to forgive him?
Looking at him now, subdued, defeated, vulnerable…how could she not feel compassion for him?
His voice shaky, he repeated, “The man you fell in love with….” He shook his head, disbelief and sorrow shifting in his eyes. “How is that possible?”
“Because love isn’t something you earn with good deeds, it is a gift, given away freely,” she replied. “I fell in love with you, Gideon, not because of the charm you flashed, the money you spent, or the image you showed to everyone. I fell in love with you because I saw that better man hidden beneath the power suits, the fancy watches, and those dark, all-knowing eyes.”
He smirked, though it was edged in self-deprecation. “You were fooled, then.”
