Page 66 of Every Silent Lie

So the ladies’ it is.

I push both palms into the door and rush through, flinching when I hear the wood smack the wall behind it. Two more doors get the brunt of my urgency before I’m safely in the ladies’, braced over the sink, my loose hair veiling my face, my eyes on my shoes. Why? Why would he say that? Think it, but don’t fucking say it. Never say it. The butterflies are swiftly burned to a cinder by the inferno of anger raging in my belly.

Every brick he’s just carefully deconstructed from my wall—the bricks I allowed him to remove—is flying back into place. I breathe in through my nose, my fists balling, my chest expanding, as I try to cool down. Try to reason with myself.

Before I react and ruin this.

It’s not unreasonable for him to ask that question. To make that statement. He’s every right to draw his conclusions, to test the water by voicing them, but I still resent him for it.

How do I come back from this? How do I make it clear that any talk about that part of my life isn’t going to happen?

I don’t have time to figure that out. The door opens and Dec appears, stoic but so obviously bracing himself for a backlash. “I’m done talking about me,” I say with grit. “Don’t make me want to leave.”

“You don’t already?”

“No.” My answer is quick and very wobbly, not through doubt, but through emotion. “I don’t want to leave.”

“Then don’t,” he murmurs, but there’s one thing he doesn’t say, the same thing I’m thinking.

We can’t avoid it forever.

How long is forever? And am I thinking that far ahead in this moment?

My gaze drops from his to the floor, uncertainty back with a vengeance.

“Stop overthinking it, Camryn,” he warns with gentle scorn, his voice getting louder as he closes in on me. My spine clicks one vertebra at a time until it’s poker straight, my shoulder blades pinching. He puts himself behind me, eyes on mine in the mirror, and slowly sweeps my hair aside, exposing my neck. I’m rapt, tingling all over, as he lowers his mouth to the column of my throat, gently pressing his lips into my skin. My exhale is a quiet, quivering sound, as my blood throbs in my veins. The way he’s looking at me, not touching me anywhere with his hands, only his lips, watching my unstoppable reaction. I’m not overthinking anything now, because my brain has short-circuited.

And I’m done for when he drags his lips to the small, sensitive hollow beneath my lobe, his hot breath close to my ear, sending a wildfire of desire racing through me. I lean into his body, my head falling onto his shoulder, my eyes closing. The burning, wet sensation of his tongue licking up the shell of my ear is my undoing, and my moan’s lost in the back of my throat.

“Turn around,” he whispers, looping an arm around my waist and turning me. My hands land on his shoulders, and I wait with agonising anticipation for him to kiss me. “I’m sorry I pushed your boundaries.” His fingertip traces the fading nick on my cheek, his other palm cupping my arse, forcing me closer.

“It’s okay.”

He gently kisses the corner of my mouth. “Something tells me you’d say anything in this moment. It wasn’t okay.” Kissing the other side of my mouth, he withdraws. “I just want to get to know the woman I’m falling for before I take her to bed.”

If a cannon ball hit me in the stomach right now, I wouldn’t feel it. Because the weight of that statement feels like it’s knocked me out.

He’s falling for me?

I don’t have the capacity to unpack that in this moment, but I vow to myself to revisit it as soon as cognitive thinking is mine again.

He’s smouldering so fiercely as he holds me tight to his body, our breathing ragged, mixing between our close mouths. “I’m not going to be a man you fuck and forget, Camryn,” he whispers, his fingertip tracing back down my cheek to my bottom lip. “There won’t be any walks of shame, you won’t be slipping out in the dead of night and disappearing into the darkness. When I make love to you, we’re moving on to the next stage, and I want you to accept that before I take you home, not because you desperately need me inside you right now, but because you’re falling for me too.”

He sees me. He sees my pain.

No.

He wants to understand my pain. Understand so he can help me overcome it.

I’m so tired of hating the world.

I want to make you love it again. Is that possible?

Is it?

Can he?

My mind feels as if it could explode under the pressure of thoughts pouring in, quickly filling my head to capacity. I haven’t got it in me to unravel this now. It’s too . . . charged. But I do know one thing beyond all the things I’m sure I don’t know.