Page 72 of Smith

“Oh shit, are you okay?”

I shook my head. However, my negative response had nothing to do with the house. My mind was full of Smith. The hope Zane had given me dwindled as fear set in.

“I think I’m falling in love with Smith,” I whispered.

“You think?” Ivy whispered back.

I nodded.

Ivy glanced at Kira. Kira looked at me. My gaze bounced between the two women.

“That’s crazy, right?” I asked. “He warned me not to. He was totally honest with me. He told me to keep my eyes open and my heart closed.”

Ivy pulled out a chair, unceremoniously plopped her rear end into it, then tipped her head to the chair next to hers. I didn’t have a good feeling about her inviting me to sit. Sitting meant she was settling in for the long haul. Yet I sat, needing wisdom from women who knew Smith.

“Zane’s right,” Kira told me.

“Don’t let him hear you say that. The man’s head is big enough. It’s a wonder he can fit through a doorjamb it’s so big,” Ivy teased.

“You ain’t lying, sister.” Kira’s smile slowly waned when she looked back at me. Not a good sign. “Without breaking confidence or speaking out of turn, I agree with Zane. People like us who have gone through what we’ve gone through, we build walls. We keep people out. We protect ourselves from the people who we feel the most connected to. The risk is too great. If we let them in, they’ll see all the hurt we’re hiding. We convince ourselves if they see the hurt they’ll abandon us. They’ll find us unworthy or unlovable. Do you get what I’m saying?”

Oh, I got it all right. I got it and hated it. I hated it for Smith, I hated it for her, and I hated it for Zane. That was a shit way to live, but I got the need to protect yourself. I just didn’t like that they felt that need.

“I get you,” I told her. “But what if his walls are too high? What if he doesn’t think I’m worth it? What if he doesn’t want to let me in because I’m not what he wants?”

“What if he does? What if he’s just scared and needs you to break down those walls because he’s lived behind them for so long he doesn’t know hownotto live behind them?”

Smith scared? The mere thought of that was preposterous. At least from the outside it was. But after learning about his parents and witnessing him shutting down the way he did—not so much. I didn’t like that thought. I didn’t want a man as good and brave as Smith feeling a single moment of being unworthy or unlovable.

“It’s worth it,” Ivy softly told me. “If every day reset and I had to break down Zane’s fortress all over again just to get what you just saw, I’d do it. Because what you didn’t see, what you couldn’t feel, was the way my husband looked at me before he took Rose.”

“What didn’t I see?” I pried.

Ivy’s beautiful face went soft.

There it was again—peace, serenity, adoration.

“How much he loves me. How he shows me a thousand times a day his world begins and ends with me. How when he looks at our children it’s full of amazement and wonder, then he looks at me like I alone made every dream he had come true. He never lets me forget I am his and he is mine totally and completely. That makes every sarcastic, unhinged, insane remark he makes worth it.”

I was right, that was exactly what I wanted. Deep abiding love and friendship.

And I wanted that with Smith.

So I was going to put on my steel-toed boots and start kicking down walls.

Or I’d sledgehammer my way through.

One way or another I was going to make Smith understand he was more than worthy. One way or another I was going to show him how he was meant to be loved.

Unfortunately, Zane coming back into the room with a sinister look meant I’d have to delay the planning of how I would execute the herculean task of winning Smith’s trust.

“Your dad’s expecting a call from you,” Zane said with a pointed glare.

Motherfucker.

“You’re a rat bastard,” I informed him.

“I’m not lying to the man who dropped into a hot zone with RPGs flying to save my ass.”

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