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That moment became so uncomfortable that I broke our eye contact.

“Not all of them,” he rumbled.

I wanted to ask him how he knew that, but then I’d be admitting that I wasn’t being entirely truthful.

It was an almost unbearable position to be in, and I had to stop myself from squirming in my chair.

It hurt that he couldn’t trust me the way I was coming to trust him, but he was incredibly intuitive, and I wasn’t about to compound the lies by saying I wasn’t hiding anything.

I wasn’t a good liar, and there had been enough falsehoods for me since I’d moved to Crystal Fork.

I hated dishonesty, so it was ironic that I’d been forced into this situation.

“Do you trust me, Reese?” Devon asked in a low baritone voice that was as intense as I’d ever heard it.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Then why can’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”

My heart melted and I gave up trying to pretend that I was holding nothing back.

Somehow, Devon knew that I was withholding some information.

He wasn’t guessing or wondering.

Heknew.

The two of us had some kind of weird chemistry between us, and we were starting to be able to read each other’s emotions.

I could sense it.

“There’s just some things I can’t talk about right now,” I confessed, stumbling a little over the words. “It’s not dangerous to anyone. It’s personal.”

He shook his head. “I think I’ve gotten to know you well enough to realize you’d never intentionally hurt anyone. But something is eating you alive, and if you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.”

“Not now,” I said in a voice that was barely a whisper.

He could read me far too well, and I found that a little bit scary.

The whole situationwaseating me alive, but there was nothing I could do about it.

“Look at me, Reese,” he insisted in a guttural voice.

His tone was so insistent that I locked eyes with him almost immediately.

“I can see the turmoil in those beautiful eyes of yours,” he rasped as he held my gaze. “Some fear. Some panic. And I fucking hate it. I can wait until you trust me completely. I don’t want you to ever feel that way when you’re with me.”

Tears started to swim in my eyes, and a single tear plopped onto my cheek.

Before I could protest, Devon rose from his chair, picked me up, and sat back down with my body sprawled over his lap.

He wrapped his powerful arms around me, and my whole world felt like it tilted. I wrapped my arms around his neck and started to uncontrollably sob on his shoulder.

I’d held so many emotions back for so long that it was a purging that burst from my heart and soul in an enormous flood of sobs that racked my body to its core.

Devon held me tightly as he soothed, “You’re safe with me, Reese. I promise you that.”

I believed him.