She both felt and saw the frustration that fueled the light pressure he put on her jaw so that she had to meet his gaze again. “Like hell you aren’t.”
“I know you don’t watch reality TV,” she shot back, “but if you knew more about me and my world, you’d get why people would judge you if they found out you and I even know each other.”
“And if you knew more about me and my world,” he echoed back, “you’d get why I don’t give a damn what other people think. Especially when I know they’re all dead wrong—and that the only thing that matters is what I think. What you think.”
Every argument she made, he came right back at her with his own. She hated herself for even considering saying something about his parents—but she had to do whatever it took to save him, didn’t she?
“What about your father? What about how you said he was obsessed with painting your mother? What about what happened to him after she left?” Every word tasted sour on her tongue, and her stomach clenched so tightly she felt sick from poking him right where they both knew he hurt.
A muscle jumped in his jaw, but he didn’t back down. Didn’t back away. “Maybe—” His jaw tightened even further for a moment. “Maybe being with her was worth it.”
Rosa’s eyes went wide. “But...you said...I thought...”
She couldn’t even think a straight thought right now, let alone speak one aloud.
“I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers, Rosa. Hell, I’m not going to pretend that I’ve got any answers at all right now. All I know is that I’ve suddenly started to see things differently. Black used to be black and white used to be white. But as soon as you showed up on my cliffs?” He stroked her cheek, a feather-light touch that rocked her all the way down to her core. Rocked her in ways she hadn’t known a man could. “You started to change everything.”
“But what if it’s a bad change?” The words spilled from her lips as if from a faucet on full blast. One propelled by all the fear she’d been trying to keep at bay for so long—a soul-deep fear of making changes in her life that might end up being the wrong ones.
His slow grin warmed her like a beam of sunshine. “I don’t need to know where things will end up to be sure that I don’t want to go back to how things used to be.”
“I don’t want to go back either.” It was the only thing she was sure of, the only thing that hadn’t wavered in the past seventy-two hours. No, the second thing. Because she’d been drawn to Drake from the first, and she couldn’t even imagine that changing.
Yesterday, she’d told him she wasn’t a victim. But if she never took another risk, then she’d be proving herself a liar, wouldn’t she? Yes, Drake was dangerous. Shockingly so, considering how much she wanted him—and not just his body or his hands on her. Because if she was being totally honest with herself, it was his heart that she wanted most.
Right now he wanted to paint her, wanted to kiss her. But what if that was as far as it ever went? What if she let herself fall...and he didn’t fall with her? And what if she not only had to crawl back to her family and the TV show, but also had to do it with a broken heart? What would be the point of putting her walls up then, when behind them she was already destroyed?
“Oscar misses you.”
Drake’s words yanked her from her infinite worries spiral. “Oscar?”
“He’s been a mopey mess since you left, just keeps staring at the door wishing you’d walk through it.”
Though her worries were still spiraling around and around, sunshine began to break through anyway. Just the way that lone beam of light had fallen on her in the middle of the storm on the cliffs two days ago.
“Are you playing your dog card to get me to come back with you?”
“I am,” he said with another gorgeous grin. “But only because the apple pie didn’t work.”
This time when she laughed again, it didn’t feel quite as rusty.
Maybe he was right—maybe everything didn’t have to be quite as complicated as she was making it out to be.
And even if it did turn out to be the most complicated, messy thing she’d ever done?
Maybe, just maybe, he was also right that it would still have been worth it.
“If you wouldn’t mind waiting outside,” she said, suddenly feeling shy about her near nudity even though she’d been wearing only a towel the entire time they’d been talking—on top of already having been wrapped naked around him, “I’ll put my clothes on and go back to your cabin to see your dog and eat your pie.”
When he grinned at her before turning around and heading for the door like the gentleman he’d been from the start, Rosa suddenly wished she knew how to paint.
Simply so that she could capture him forever the way he’d already captured her.
Chapter Twelve