Page 47 of Even if You Fall

“I need you to leave me alone,” I shot back. “If I frustrate you that much, why not just ignore me the way you have been?”

He blew out a harsh breath through his nose as he studied me. “It isn’t that your personality frustratesme, it’s that I can’t trust it because?—”

“It’s ‘a lie,’” I mocked as I quickly wiped at the tears now sliding down my cheeks. “Then let me live my lie. Whatever I’m doing is not a threat to you or anyone. It’s just what I need to live, so let me do that.”

“Who wants to live a lie?”

“I do,” I practically yelled.

“Chloe . . .”

“Stop saying my name,” I begged as I once again turned away from him. I couldn’t handle the way my body lit up and responded whenever he said my name. I couldn’t handle the way he was looking at me, like he was trying so hard to figure me out. I couldn’t handlethis.

I pressed a hand to my rapidly moving chest and tried to focus only on breathing and forcing back the tears that were quick to flow now that they’d begun.

And then I felt him step up directly behind me—tall and commanding and torn.

“No one wants to live a lie, Bubbles,” he murmured in a gentle tone that had my eyelids slipping shut as a quiet sob escaped me. “Tell me why you feel you have to.”

My head moved in slow shakes for so long it almost felt unnatural when I eventually stopped. “Is this why you hate me?” I asked instead of answering his plea. “Because you think I’m harboring some deep, dark secret that’s going to destroy everyone you love?”

“I don’t hate you.”

A disbelieving scoff left me as I once again twisted to face Adam, but before I could call him out on it, he continued.

“I don’t trust you, that doesn’t mean I hate you,” he assured me.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

A subtle, bouncing sort of nod was his only response for a moment before he muttered, “I’m sorry. I know I’ve been...”

“A jerk?”

Amusement left him on a breath. “Intense,” he countered. “But my job for over a dozen years has been to find the people who have something to hide and to eliminate them. You sent out red flags before I ever got up off the floor the first day we met, and I’ve been trying to figure out what we were up against with you ever since.”

“Nothing,” I said on a shocked laugh. “Literally nothing.”

“But I don’t know that,” he argued, gesturing to his chest like it was destroying him to not knowwithout a doubt what was real and what wasn’t.

And if I hadn’t been trying so hard to fight back the emotions breaking free, if I hadn’t been warring over what all to tell him when I’d never shared this withanyone, I might’ve caught onto that. Lingered on it.

Because Adam didn’t look like a man charged with clearing a threat. He looked like a man desperately searching for any confirmation that he could trust the woman in front of him because hewantedto trust her.

But again, I was too wrapped up in my own spiral to notice.

“All right, yeah,” he continued, “I’ll admit my suspicion initially conjured feelings close to hatred, but I don’t—” A frustrated sound left him, almost like a laugh. “I don’t hate you.”

“Comforting.”

“Chloe—”

“I don’t owe you anything,” I said over him, ignoring the way my heart stuttered and butterflies took flight all because he said my name, then straightened my spine. Not that it did anything for my height, considering I still had to tilt my head back to look him in the eye, even with my four-inch stilettos. “Because I just realized that if Asher felt the same way, Lainey wouldn’t be living with me, and he wouldn’t let me work for him. That means it’s only you who has a problem with me—well, and I think Beau. But that’s beside the point because I’m pretty sure Beau hates everyone.”

I waved a hand through the air, dismissing the side ramble. “As much as you having an issue with me bothers me”—and it bothered me more than I wanted to admit—“I’m not gonna bare my soul and tell you every part of my past until you’re satisfied that I’m trustworthy.”

He took a step closer until I could feel the heat from his body and felt myself sway toward him. I could’ve blamed it on the plane, but I knew every part of me was aching to be close to him again. “This is my job,” he said in a gruff tone that still heavily hinted at what he was asking for.

“This is my life that you don’t deserve to know.”

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