When the pillow drops to the floor after hitting Gage square in the face, his expression is distraught, eyes panicked, his mouth in a firm line. “You don’t mean that.”
“Oh, but I do.” She can barely stand to look at him. How had he become everything to her in so short a time? This wicked man with his wicked past?
Desperate to make her listen, Gage tries to hold her hands, saying, “Minnie, you have to know that Ihatewhat I did. That I’m not that man anymore. I would doanythin’for you. And I lo-”
A fear so great slashes through her guts. Minnie leans forward and covers his mouth with her hands, urgently saying, “Don’t you say it! Not now. Not…notnow.” Her voice cracks.
He patiently waits for her to stop caging his words. Then, “Minnie,please. I-”
She doesn’t want to hear it, perhaps she isn’t capable of it right now. Her emotions are running wild, anxiety pushing at the edges of her nerves.
“No, I don’t think so. I’d rather talk about what a farce this has been.” Betrayal is sour on her tongue. “How long did you know? That I wasThe Abducted Girl? Was it before or after I told you? Did you come to my library, knowing I was there, just to torment me?” Getting off the couch, practically crawling out of her own skin, Minie begins pacing in a circle. She utters hoarsely, “…and your dastardly friends figured it out. Chase and Marlin may not have said anything, but Red certainly had no problems mocking me directly. God, I’m such a fool-”
“You’re not a fool,” Gage says desperately, trying to stop her frantic movements in the room. He finally gets hold of her, enclosing her in his arms again. His familiar scent breaks her heart because it soothes her. And itshouldn’t. “I didn’t know until you told me that first night we…the first night you came home with me. I swear, I never knew. I felt there was something familiar about you, but I didn’t…I didn’t realize…Ididn’trecognize you and put two and two together. I certainly didn’t seek you out, trying to hurt you in the first place.”
His utterance of those words momentarily calms her. The panic and humiliation settles into a persistent ache, but nothing she cannot handle.
A large hand strokes through her hair, trying to pacify her. He kisses the top of her head.
It feels nice, so for the moment, Minnie allows it. She allows him to hold her, because the moment he lets her go, she knows she’s going to want nothing to do with him again.
“I need you to leave me alone right now,” Minnie says against his chest, wanting to vanish. She sniffles pathetically. “I need to process this new level of mental trauma you’ve unlocked for me.”
He sighs and bows his head in reluctant acceptance. Slowly, his arms drop away from her person, leaving her cold and empty once more. “Is this your way of telling me to fuck off?”
“Yes.”
“For good?”
Minnie can’t meet his gaze. That’s what her father wants; he wants her to get rid of Gage for good. A part of her wants to never see him again. The other part simply wants the hurt to stop, the past to vanish, and for him to just be a man that she loves.
She’s not ready to give him up. “For…now.”
Gage nods, looking as though he wants to kiss her goodbye, but wisely decides against it. “Okay. That’s.Um. Well. You know where to find me.”
Minnie crosses her arms over her chest, hugging herself tightly, trying to self-soothe.
The heavy sound of his footsteps walking out her front door meets her ears. When she hears the door click shut, she falls apart.
Chapter 13
She hates him. She adores him.
She never wants to see him again. He’s all she ever wants to see.
Gage’s sudden absence in her life is a physical wound in her chest, and it bleeds, no matter how much Minnie tries to convince herself that it isn’t, that it shouldn’t. She shouldn’t be heartbroken over him, that lying, criminal scoundrel-
And yet, her heart lies in pieces, and she doesn’t know how to gather them up again.
The division within Minnie is a startling civil war. She cannot help but see her momentary happiness and freedom as a lie, that she was drawn into it by the very skeleton that terrorized her in the first place.
Ariel went home a few days ago, although she’d been wary to leave after Minnie had her brutal revelation. Her phone calls are mercifully plentiful, because although Minnie put on a brave face when her sister left town, she needs someone to talk to.
…and Momma Marla isn’t going to cut it at the moment, despite her well-meaning.
As it stands, she and Ariel have been talking for twenty minutes already, the clock ticking upwards on her phone. Her younger sister is a built-in therapist whom she always gets for free. Minnie has never been more thankful to have Ariel in her life than now.
“I just don’t get it. Am I sick in the head?” Minnie says into the phone, voice unsteady. “How can I still have feelings for the man who ruined me? What’s wrong with me?”
