I swallowed hard. “Dean, I… I haven’t held on to my virginity because of some moral code. I just… I’ve been so afraid of everything. Afraid of what people would say, what they would think of me, what would happen next. I didn’t date for years after I left Twelve Oaks.
“You’ve been the only man I’ve felt like I could trust. And that first time, when you kissed and touched me, I got scared because I liked it so much. I liked you. How you made me feel, and I… I started thinking about all the things I wanted to do with you…” I dragged in a painful breath. “Dean, why… why can’t you look at me?”
“What?” He straightened, his eyes blazing suddenly. He crossed the room and reached out to grab my wrists. “I can’t look at anyone but you, Liv. I can’t see anyone but you. I… I’m so fucking crazy about you that it’s scaring the shit out of me.”
I could hardly understand him through the pounding inside my head. I smothered the shame, fighting to focus on the here and now.
“I know, Liv.” Dean tightened his grip on my wrists. “I know what it’s like to blame yourself. To be forced into doing something you don’t want to do, then have it crash and burn around you. I’ve known for twenty-five years. And it’s bullshit. You have no reason to feel ashamed. None. Those bastards… goddammit.”
He stopped and pulled in a breath, as if trying to regain control of himself.
“You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Liv. I don’t think you even know how strong you are. You didn’t let your mother or any of those sick bastards define you. You started a whole new life twice. That takes a courage most people can only dream of.”
I stared at him. I had never thought of it like that. I didn’t even know it could be looked at that way.
“God knows,” Dean said, “I haven’t started a new life even once.”
I loosened one of my hands from his grasp, sensing that his own self-blame was rooted in his family situation.
“Now you know why…” Tears stung my eyes. “Why I wanted you to…”
I gripped the front of his shirt, trembling with the urge to confess everything I felt for him.
“I knew there was more, Dean, I knew it could be good. Not like it was for my mother or… or me. I so wanted to know what… what it could be like… and with you it is. It’s been what I wanted, what I’d hoped for…”
“There’s more.” He lifted his hands to the sides of my head, tangling his fingers into my hair. “You deserve so much more. I want to give you so much more. Not just sex, but—”
“You were wrong.” I blinked back a fresh wave of tears. “When you said I didn’t expect anything from you, you were wrong. And I lied… when I said I didn’t want you to fix me… oh, God, Dean. I think I knew you were the only person in the world who could.”
His mouth came down on mine, swift yet tender. Relief surged through me, diluting my anguish as our bodies sealed together like the pages of a closed book. My hands were trapped between us, and I spread my fingers out across his chest. Warmth collected around us and slid into the frozen places of my heart.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I… I don’t want to be someone who expects more from you than—”
“Stop.”
“But I…”
Dean lifted his head, his hands still in my hair. Our breath merged between us.
“You don’t need anyone to fix you, Olivia, least of all me.” Dean pulled me closer, his eyes never leaving mine. “Because you’re not broken.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Olivia
fter I’d told Dean everything there was to tell about me, we became nearly inseparable. As I’d expected, as I had known, he didn’t retreat. He was ever more determined to give me what I’d never had. And one late Saturday afternoon in mid-November, I knew. It was a moment of instinctive clarity, like sensing the exact time to plant a tulip bulb or pick a ripe apple.
I hadn’t had a shift at Jitter Beans, so I’d spent the day at Dean’s apartment, both of us doing very little. He worked some, I studied some. I watched a movie. He read an architecture journal. We ordered out for pizza, watched funny video clips on the Internet, played backgammon.
Backgammon.
I almost smiled. Despite evidence to the contrary, we were not incompatible. Not at all.
I put my book aside and looked up to find Dean watching me. He was sprawled out on an easy chair with a sports magazine spread over his thighs and his bare feet on the coffee table. He was all rumpled hair, intent gaze, hard-edged stubbly jaw.
My heart thumped. I sat up slowly, smoothing my skirt over my knees. Delicious tension tightened my belly.
“Dean.”
“Right here.”
He knew too. For an instant, he just looked at me. Something indefinable passed across his features before he pushed to stand.
“Come here,” he said.