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“You’re cold. Get inside, woman, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder.”
“Fine.”
I stormed across the street and through the hotel like I was carving a warpath. I heard Knox chuckle to the front desk staff, “It’s that time of the month, you know? Carry on.”
As soon as he closed the door behind us, his cheery demeanor dropped.
He crossed his huge arms over his chest and looked at me like my father had when I misbehaved as an unruly teenager. “Mind explaining why you snuck out like it was a fucking one-night stand?”
“Not really.” I tried to shove past him to lie on the bed and shove chips in my mouth until I choked on them.
Knox blocked my path. “You’re unbelievable.”
“Excuse me?”
In the dim light of the bedside lamp, his bruised face looked ghastly, and my gut churned with guilt. “You crawl into the shower with me like you fucking care,” Knox ground out, “then bolt the second I fall asleep? What the hell is that, Caroline? A mercy fuck to soothe your conscience?”
“No!”
“I mean, I get that we just wanted to fuck to forget our pain, but now I’m wondering if you just used me for my body.”
“No,” I snapped again, miffed and hurt by the accusation. “Don’t twist it like that?—”
“You’re the one twisting shit!” Knox barked, throwing his arms up. “I didn’t use you, Caroline. I wanted to make you feel safe. I wanted to take care of you.”
“Because you pity me.” I couldn’t help saying it. He had denied it before, but it was just an old habit that died hard—the habit being self-deprecation so extreme that it was mistaken for confidence.
Knox turned sharply, dragging his hands through his hair—it was damp; he must have showered—as he stalked across the room like he couldn’t bear to be close to me. “Fuck, Caroline, will you stop with the fucking pity angle?”
I took an angry step forward. “Why? I’m destroying your life.”
He kept his back to me. His voice was measured when he said, “I let you see me falling apart. I’ve never let anyone—anyone—see that before.”
Knox turned but didn’t cross the room. My throat closed at the burning look in his blue eyes. “You think I don’t know what you’re feeling? Shame. Guilt. Fear. You want to blame yourself. You think that’s easier than letting someone give a damn.”
“I didn’t ask you to give a damn!”
Knox jerked forward, too. Two strides, and he was a few feet away. “No. But you sure as hell wanted someone to.”
I hugged my arms around myself. “You don’t know what I want.”
“I do.” His voice lost its anger, shoulders slumping a little. “I know you want someone to tell you it’s not your fault. I know you want to crawl into your darkness and stay there. I know you’re scared shitless that if you don’t have control, you’ll crumble and have nothing left of yourself.”
Well, that was a bull’s-eye to what I buried in the dark depths of my soul. “Oka, maybe you do. So what?”
“So you’re even more like me.” Knox took another step toward me, hesitant this time, as if expecting me to bolt. “You’re afraid to let someone love you because they’ll see how broken you are and leave.”
Hook, line, and sinker.
“That’s…” I whispered brokenly. “That’s not true.”
“Yeah, it is,” he said, his voice rough. “And there’s no shame in that. Okay? I care about you. I’m not letting you leave Reno without you knowing that.”
Silence stretched between us like a rubber band. I knew it was going to snap. It was just a matter of who let it go.
I felt hollowed out—Knox hollowed me out. He was patient with my defensiveness from the moment we officially met outside the poker den. And from the moment he saved me from Vane, he stripped me layer by layer to see all the ugliest parts of me.
And he wasn’t fazed.