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“I thought maybe you’d been playing me the whole time,” he continued. “I thought you were just in it for the money and once you’d gotten what you needed, you were done. But then, then I replayed it all. And I couldn’t find a single sliver of a moment where you were noticeably pretending. Antagonizing, yes. Coy, yes. Desperate, yes. But fake? I don’t think you’re capable of that, Ray.”
“I’m not the one who was faking.” The words fell from my tongue before I could think them through, every syllable quivering. He recoiled.
“You think…?” He blinked, his eyes darting left and right as he mulled it over, as the words took shape. “You think I was using you?”
All I could do was stare back at him.
“I haven’t faked anything with you,” he murmured. “Would I be standing here if I had? Would I have driven all the way here from the resort without taking a second to warn you if I was lying to you? Would I tell you that I loved you if it was all a hoax?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Maybe you need me for another deal.”
“I don’t need you for another deal, Ray, I need you because I’m fucking in love with you.” Every time he said that it felt like a burning hot knife was being plunged between my ribs. “When you told me you didn’t want to go back to how things were, it was the biggest goddamn relief of my life. Bigger than being able to walk again. Bigger than any win I ever had. I was terrified of it ending, baby. I would have given anything to keep you around longer.”
The backs of my eyes burned as he stepped closer. I didn’t retreat that time, and when his hand met my face, cradling it, brushing his thumb against my cheek, I knew I couldn’t fight the tears that would inevitably come.
“I haven’t been able to think straight. I haven’t been able to work. You should know better than anyone how much I’ve been pushing things back,” he said. And he was right, he had been slacking massively. “I can’t think of anything but you, can’t dream about anything but you. You are everything I could have ever asked for and I can’t just let that fall apart. I want this to be real. I want to be with you. I’m ready for that and you’re the only one I want.”
He waited for a reply. A single tear escaped and he brushed it away with his thumb, and everything I wanted to say was caught in my throat, a million words silenced because I couldn’t work up the nerve. All I could muster was, “I overheard you talking with Zane.”
“What?”
“In the parking garage,” I sniffled, the words wavering as they spilled. “I heard you tell him that all I was to you was a fucking business transaction. I heard everything.”
He exhaled roughly, his body trembling as he held my face in his hands. “I didn’t mean any of that. Not a single word, baby. You have to believe that.”
“How? How can I?” I whimpered. More tears broke through, dripping down over his thumbs before he could catch them. I didn’t know if I could believe him, didn’t know if this was just another ruse for some overarching plan of his. Everything was muddied. The pregnancy, his words, the likelihood of none of it being okay.
“You have to trust me,” he insisted. “Please, baby, please, trust me. He was threatening to fuck all of it up and I said whatever I needed to just get him out of there. I’m so sorry you had to hear it.”
I needed air. I needed room to breathe. I needed to process it, tear it to pieces, and rebuild it from scratch in my mind. What was real, what was fake, what he was feeding me just to make things okay. How could I believe anything that came from his mouth?
How could I believe that he loved me after saying something like that?
Chapter 32
Wade
Ray’s small frame shook as I held her face in my hands, her mind spiraling. I could see it in the way she looked up at me frantically, could feel it in the way she breathed.
My chest felt like it was on fire. I didn’t know what I could do to get her to believe me, didn’t know how to fix things. I never should have said what I said to Zane. “Let me fix this. How can I fix this? Please, tell me.”
“I don’t know,” she sobbed, her head falling forward as if she were crumpling in on herself.
I had done this. It was entirely on me, my fault, and I had no idea how to come back from it. Every bit of trust I’d built with her had dissipated, and she’d had weeks to build up her walls again, brick by agonizing brick. “Listen to me,” I breathed, my fingers scrambling to get her to look back up at me, to face this head-on. “I love you. I’m so fucking in love with you, baby. I don’t use that word lightly and I sure as hell wouldn’t be saying it to you if I wasn’t sure of it.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“Then please believe me.” My own voice wavered, too much at stake to hold myself together. I’d come in angry with her, but now all I wanted was to piece her back together, convince her that I was true to my word. I wasn’t the kind of man that could do that to her. She just had to believe me.
I pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Please,” I said, my voice breaking.
Another kiss, this time on her damp, tear-covered nose.
“Please.”
Softly, gently, I pressed my lips to hers. She didn’t retreat, didn’t try to fight me, and I could feel the tears burning at the backs of my eyes.
