Page 38 of Bride for Keeps

It was that more than anything that had the words tumbling out of her mouth. Broken up by sobs, but said nonetheless. He wanted her flaws? He wanted to make this harder than what it was? What choice did she have? He was the one who knew best. The one who made the choices.

“Just let me go, Carter. I’m not good enough for you.”

“Sierra—”

“No. No, don’t argue with me. You finally saw it—I know you did. Because you didn’t turn to me when you were in your darkest hour. You shut me out because you knew I wasn’t good enough to be at your side. And you were right. Completely, utterly right and I won’t go back to wondering when the other shoe’s going to drop. I’m not good enough. I was stupid to think I could pretend. So, let me go.”

He exhaled, something close to a gasp as if she’d physically harmed him, and then his hands weren’t on her face, they were around her, pulling her close and against him. He held her there, so tight she could barely breathe enough to cry, but the tears poured out of her anyway. The pain searing and deep.

But he pressed his forehead into the crook of her neck, holding her, whispering against her skin. “No. God. No.”

She wanted to argue with him.Yes! Let me go! Now!But all she could do was cry into his hair. She shouldn’t let him hold her, but it felt…

She’d been holding herself so tight, so apart. Even that night they’d made this child growing in her there’d been a silence, an edge keeping them apart. But this…

Against her will, against all her determinations, her muscles relaxed. She melted into him, truly and really. She cried all of her broken-hearted dreams out and into him, and he held her. Whispering words of love. Promises she couldn’t ever believe again.

She didn’t know how long it lasted, how many tears she had. But he held her through it all. He murmured everything she’d wanted to hear months ago, but even with all the crying she was numb to it.

“I love you,” and it was said in that same vehement voice he’d used when she’d laughed the first time he’d said it to her. She’d laughed because she’d wanted so badly to tell him she loved him too. Because she knew she shouldn’t. And he shouldn’t.

She’d always known, but he’d used that voice and she’d been a goner. Look at where it had gotten her.

She had to find her strength. She had to walk away, but he punctuated those weaponized words with the brush of his mouth against her shoulder where her collar had slid down. He held her and he kissed her there.

“You’re beautiful and bright. You make my dull, plodding life sparkle.” He kissed her again, the brush of his lips up the curve of her neck would never, ever fail to make her knees go weak.

But she had to be strong. Tell him to stop. Words didn’t change what they were, and what they couldn’t be. Neither did the warm, lazy sensations spilling through her.

“You don’t want your life to sparkle, Carter. You want it to matter.”

He paused briefly before his mouth brushed her cheek, featherlight, sweet. “I want both. I want you. I want to fight for this.” His mouth closed over hers, insistent, needy. Vulnerable.

Carter McArthur vulnerable. She really had ruined him. Spread her brokenness or something and she couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand it. She had to do something to prove to him this was a mistake.

So, she kissed him back, because they’d done this a few weeks ago, hadn’t they? Come together and he’d disappeared. Maybe they hadn’t talked then like they’d talked now, but it was all the same.

A weakness. A lapse in judgment.

When she was gone when he woke up in the morning, he’d know, really know, how right she was.

And it’d all be over.

*

There was astrange moment in the kiss when Carter didn’t think Sierra would reciprocate. He’d kissed her and for seconds she’d stood there like a statue, as if figuring out a difficult math equation while he poured his heart and soul into her.

But then her mouth moved under his. Not soft—and if it had been anything like the last time they’d done this he would have found that amazing. New. Hot.

But he was raw.Raw. Cut open and bleeding and he needed some softness. Some healing. So he swept his fingers into her hair, cupping her scalp, angling her head so he could settle himself at the corner of her mouth and make his way to the other side.

She let out a shuddery sigh, and though there was some acquiescence in that, there was also a band of tension in her. Even in kissing him, in crying into him, in holding each other, there were pieces of herself she was holding apart. Saving to give herself the fuel to run away.

He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t give her that, because while he was an expert in thinking he knew what was best for people, and probably being wrong on occasion, this wasn’t like that. It wasn’t in knowing better than her. It wasn’t in having a better view on the situation.

It was seeing her fear, her insecurity, hercracksand needing to fill them. With love. With all the certainty he felt. Because she was wrong. She thought his silences had been about her, about her lack of worth.

Guilt, dark and vicious and ugly swept through him, but he didn’t let that leak into his kiss, into the gentle way he held her hair.

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