“Unless you don’t want to reopen your business in this town,” Gideon asked, his voice raspy. He watched me, tentative, like a heavy weight hinged on my answer.
I gulped. “I’m not sure I want to reopen my business at all.” Speaking the words out loud made fear thrum inside me. It felt like a big bass drum being hit in the depth of my gut. Without my business, who was I? Just a defective nobody. Unsuccessful. Unlovable. “I’m afraid,” I admitted in a small voice.
I caught the edge of an emotion on Gideon’s face. A kind of resigned devastation that he hid in an instant. “What would you do instead?”
I huffed a bitter laugh. “I don’t know. Be a housewife?”
“For this?” The derision was thick in his voice. He flicked a hand, indicating himself. The marriage.
That pissed me off, because he was doing the same thing he always did. Making it seem like his scars were a dealbreaker, and I must’ve been out of my mind to put up with them. But his scars were a part of him! How could I look at them and not see the man who’d held me so tightly last night? The man who’d finally made me feel safe?
“Stop doing that,” I snapped. “You make it sound like I’m so shallow.”
“Isn’t everyone?” he answered, bitter.
We stared at each other, and I bit back half a dozen retorts. I could see the shape of the walls he threw up around himself, and I knew in that instant that attacking them would do nothing. He was so sure that his scars defined him, and I wasn’t going to change his mind.
He hadn’t even let me see them.
So instead of fighting him, I pushed myself off my chair and circled the table. Gideon frowned at me, suspicious, until I plopped myself down on his lap and wrapped my arms around his neck. I rested my head on his shoulder and felt his heartbeat against my palm. It took a few long seconds for his arms to come around me, and slowly, the tension eased out of his body. When he stroked a thumb over my side, I spoke.
“What happened,” I asked softly, “with the fire?”
His body went stiff, then, muscle by muscle, it eased, as if he were consciously trying to drain the stress out of his body. His hand resumed its stroking, and I let my fingers drift over the soft fabric of his shirt. He smelled like himself, clean and male and delicious.
“It was a warehouse fire. One of the old derelict warehouses on my grandma’s land. Used to be where they let the wood dry out after it was milled. I got an alert that some kids broke into the building one night, so I called the cops and drove over. Three of them had gotten in. Teenagers who were bored with nothing to do on a Friday night.”
I kept my head on his shoulder even though I desperately wanted to see his expression. “They started a fire?”
He grunted. “The warehouse was almost a hundred years old, and it was full of sawdust and half-rotten wood. They found some old solvents in a box that hadn’t been stored properly and started messing around with them. They had lighters. It went up within seconds, and one of the roof beams collapsed in front of the exit.”
My heart thumped. “You got there first.”
His throat bobbed with a thick swallow, and he dippedhis chin. “I could hear them screaming,” he answered, his voice hoarse. “And then they stopped.” He shrugged and stretched his neck, as if his scars had started itching. “I was able to break a hole in the wall at the back, where the wood had almost rotted away. By that point they’d passed out from the smoke, so I had to drag them out one by one.”
Three times. He’d gone into a raging inferno three times to save them. This time, I couldn’t resist the urge to sit up. I kept my hand on his chest, even though I desperately wanted to stroke his face, to touch his skin, to tell him how incredible he was.
But Gideon’s eyes were faraway, as if he were reliving that night. “I was lucky,” he finally said, shifting his gaze to meet my eyes. “I only got burned on my last trip in, and I was able to put my arm up to protect most of my face. My forearm and shoulder got the worst of it. The doctors said I was fortunate. The firefighters said I was an idiot.” He huffed at himself and shook his head.
Blinking back tears, I exhaled a shaky breath. “Wow. That’s awful. Were the kids okay?”
“Few weeks in the hospital and they came out fine.” He gave me a small smile. “One of them was Cash Bridges’ nephew. After that, we reached a bit of a truce. They stopped going for rides through town, intimidating the residents. Stayed up near their clubhouse and in the surrounding hills. That’s one of the reasons I don’t think Cash or any of his people are Mr. Titty,” he added. “If he knew one of his guys was tagging all over town, he’d put a stop to it.”
I accepted this change in topic, even though I wanted to ask him more about the fire. I wanted to tell him how bravehe was and how much I admired him for what he’d done. Instead, I laid my head back down on his shoulder, and we both drifted back into silence.
He held me tightly, and my body eased against him. I’d never felt so comfortable with anyone, especially not a man. But how could Inotbe comfortable with Gideon? Someone who put others first, always. He’d run into a burning building three times to save a bunch of delinquent teens. He’d driven hours to sit with burn victims. He’d gotten married to me so that his brothers wouldn’t lose their livelihood when his grandmother sold off his business.
He put me first every time we got physical. Even his rejections had been his way of prioritizing my needs. He hadn’t thought I’d want him that way.
The magnitude of Gideon’s selflessness was staggering, even if it sometimes seemed misguided. After all, he’d pushed me away the same way he’d done to his ex. He’d broken up with Lenore because he thought she deserved better.
Then my mouth opened, and words vomited out of it before I could hold them back: “Do you regret breaking up with your ex?”
There was a pause. “What?”
I could taste his confusion in the air, and I lifted my head to look at his expression. There was a deep furrow between his brows, and he scanned my face like I’d just started explaining the finer details of quantum physics. I gulped. “She told me you broke it off with her when you were in the hospital because you didn’t want to subject her to a life with you.”
Gideon blinked. His frown deepened. “That’s what she told you?”
