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He might as well since he seemed to be a pro at denying everything else.

It was strange how it could fill me full of relief and warmth all while leaving me completely hollow.

He gruffed an annoyed sound as he eased down on the bed next to me.

The bed creaked under his weight, and my heart drummed at a frantic pace.

He kept two feet between us, his body more rigid now than it’d ever been.

“I don’t bite.” I’d intended for it to come out playful, but it was wispy.

Every molecule in my body buzzed as his aura skimmed the air and wrapped me in an embrace.

It wasn’t like he never touched me. He hugged me a lot. Set protective hands on the small of my back. Danced with me at the clubhouse since he wouldn’t allow anyone else to do it.

My assigned protector, and those little brushes were all part of the job.

Except there were so many times when it felt like those caresses were more. Something weaved into the connection that flamed whenever his skin touched mine.

I mean, maybe I was completely delusional, but I swore it’d been there. Swore that he looked at me longer and in a way that meant far more than him simply being my guard.

Though since he’d been staying here with me, something had changed.

Those touches had come more frequently, and something new was matted in their urgency.

He shifted his head on the pillow so he could peer over at me. His brow was slashed in all kinds of surly irritation. “You sure about that?”

“I’d never hurt you, just like you’d never hurt me.” I whispered it emphatically.

Like those words were a hook, he rolled all the way onto his side.

Torment filled his dark eyes that blinked at me through the bleariness of my room. “You think I haven’t hurt you, Elena? Failed you? You think I’m not failing you right now by lying next to you?”

“How could you say that? You’ve saved me time and again.”

“You never should have gotten outside the compound walls. Either time.”

Hurt and regret balled in my chest. Wounds so big and ugly that they took up all the space. Forever competing to stamp out the joy that I had found in the middle of it.

“And both times I was just trying to find myself.” I wasn’t trying to make an excuse. I was only trying to give him my truth.

The loneliness and confusion I’d felt for so many years seeped out from where I kept it contained. Infiltrating that ball in my chest and multiplying it by a thousand.

It pillaged every cell, a storm that invaded every crevice of my being.

Heaviness pressed in from all sides, and tears burned my eyes.

“I never wanted anyone to get hurt.”

Memories surged. I wanted to bat them down. Fight them off. But I knew it was also important that I felt them, too. I never wanted to become calloused.

Closed off and bitter.

But sometimes it was so much easier pretending like it had never happened.

Pretend the chances I’d taken hadn’t turned into tragedy.

A severe frown cut into Trevan’s brow, and he reached out with one of those big hands and brushed back a piece of hair that had gotten stuck to my cheek.