“Don’t diminish yourself—what you’re capable of, what you’ve accomplished.”
I studied him, and the moment dragged out as tension—sexual tension—ratcheted up between us. I wasn’t ready for that.
Paxton glanced away and accelerated, moving us forward three whole car lengths.
This time, I remained quiet as I stared out the window. I wasn’t sure I could handle more of Paxton’s thoughtfulness. It made me want him too much.
Eventually he turned in to a neighborhood with tall oaks that shaded the sidewalk and huge homes that sat back from the street. The pitched roofs done in slate or terracotta seemed to touch the hazy blue of the sky. Each yard was jewel green and neat, the driveways snaking back behind wrought-iron gates.
If we hadn’t just spent over an hour bucking traffic, I wouldn’t have known we were in the Houston city limits. I swallowed my shock when Paxton pulled into a driveway. The gate slid open, seemingly without even a remote click, and he drove up toward the large, white house. It had black shutters and thick flowerbeds that cradled massive trees. The front door was painted gleaming black with a brass knocker in the shape of… I squinted. “Is that a spiral?”
Paxton followed my finger and cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
“Is that the Milky Way?” I asked. Ours was thought to be an excellent example of a spiral galaxy, in part because the Hubble telescope had been able to photograph it, so we had images to view—unlike some of the galaxies we believed to be hundreds or thousands of light years from ours.
“Yeah.”
I pressed my lips together, unsure what to think. Paxton had the Milky Way galaxy on the door to his home. My focus, from the moment I fell in love with aerospace engineering, had been the Milky Way.
Today had been such a sea of emotions, with all the vagaries of an untamed body of water. I felt myself at low tide now, a bit laggy and unsure how best to proceed.
Pulling in a huge breath, I turned to face Paxton just as he parked his sleek, foreign sedan in the cool dimness of the four-car garage.
“I’m really confused right now,” I blurted.
“Something I can help with?” he asked as he slid the shifter into park. With a touch of a button, he turned off the fancy car and faced me.
I gripped the edge of the buttery soft leather and swallowed, needing a moment to compose my emotions into words. “Loving you was easy, Paxton.” I raised my gaze to meet his. His eyes were direct and guileless, showing me his soul, just as he used to. “I was completely unprepared for you dumping me.”
I bit my lip as we both flinched. He opened his mouth, but I held up a hand. If he interrupted, I wasn’t sure I could get these next words out—and they held the key to our future. If he really wanted one.
“You leaving started a chain reaction that I can still feel in here,” I pressed a hand to my temple, then my leg. “You leaving is tied up with pain and fear and grief and…and being here, just sitting with you now, means that’s in my head, warring with my mind about whether I’m safe and won’t be hurt again. But the pain—not just my heartache over losing you, but what happened to my body—is, well, imprinted. And I want to run away, because right or wrong, I equate that with you.”
My breath sawed out between my lips, and I blinked back tears. “I don’t know if I can stay here, if I can be with you. I’m—this is a lot for me, Paxton. That’s why I asked if you’d be gone. I thought maybe, maybe if I dipped my toe in, it wouldn’t be as overwhelming. But I’m freaking out, and I…I…” The sob hitched my shoulders to my ears and bowed my back. I shoved my fists against my lips, not wanting to break down.
“Ah, Hana. Dammit. I don’t know what to say. How to fix it.”
I closed my burning eyes, no longer trying to fight the tears. “I don’t know if you can. My mind is telling me to flee and protect myself. And part of me wants to do that, desperately.”
He absorbed that a moment. “What does the rest of you want?”
I smiled, though it drifted away. “For you to hold me. To make everything better.” I looked over at his tortured expression. “That’s the whole knot. I want you even as I know I shouldn’t. Even as my mind and body remind me of what happened when I did before. I can’t express how much that accident changed me. It broke me, Pax, and fair or not, it’s all tangled up with you.”
Chapter13
Paxton
Well, that was a skate blade to the chest. Not that I should’ve been surprised by Hana’s admission. She sat there, her expression tortured and miserable, with longing calling to me from her brown eyes. And I ached to hold her, to fix the muddle I’d created.
I cursed my younger self, railed against my stupidity, all silently. She didn’t need to hear my self-flagellation. She needed me to prove myself better than I had been years before. To put her first. To show her with my actions, every day, that she was my top priority.
That was much easier to say than to prove. Yet, Imustprove it, probably many times, before Hana would lose that haunted look.
With unsteady hands, I unbuckled my seatbelt. “I’d like to hold you now. Please, Hana. I know I can’t wipe away the past. I can only start here and prove to you that I’m yours, that I’ll be with you every step of the way.” I edged a little closer, and when she didn’t shy away, I gently gathered her, holding her to my heart.
“Even when I freak out and am sure you’re going to run again?” Her reply was muffled against my chest.
I hated that she asked that, but we were analytical thinkers. It was logical, and it was probable. “Yeah, even then. Because I love you, Hana. I do. I never stopped. I can’t stop. It’s part of me, like breathing. So if you need me to prove it over and over again, I get that. I respect it, too.”
