Page 80 of Break My Fall

Too far. Too far. Time to pull this ship back to shore.“I’m not foolish enough to think that we’re at that point. But I want you to give me a chance. I want us to have a chance.”

Meredith’s jaw moved up and down, but no words came out. When they did, they weren’t what he was expecting. “I don’t understand you at all.”

The words nearly broke him, but he tried to keep his voice encouraging and light. “If you’d care to be more specific, I’d be happy to try to explain.”

“I”—she waved a hand toward herself—“said horrible things to you. How did we get from there to here?”

“I—”

“No. Wait. Don’t answer that yet. I need to apologize.”

“You just did.”

“No. I didn’t. I stated a fact. I didn’t ask for forgiveness. I didn’t tell you how sorry I am. I—” She blew out a breath, her shoulders dropped, and she closed her eyes. “Wow. This is hard.”

He waited. Giving her time, hoping that was the right call because he had no clue what she was about to say or what was hard. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“I want to tell you that I’m not like that. That I’m kind and gentle. But obviously, you heard me say the words. And in the moment, I meant them.”

He believed that. He’d seen it in her face, heard it in her voice.

“But the moment? It didn’t last. By the time I walked in my door, I was horrified at myself. I could hardly believe I’d said those things to you. But I did. And I did it out of a mean, spiteful place that I rarely turn loose.”

She looked at him with an obvious plea for understanding, so he nodded in encouragement while hoping she would keep explaining, because if he had confused her earlier, she had completely befuddled him now.

“And in response, you bring me all these gifts.” She threw her hands up. “And tell me you ... you...”

“I’m not sure that I spelled it out as clearly as I could have, but I would very much like to date you.”

“That!” She shook her head. “Why? I mean, why now?”

“Why not now?”

“I was mean to you!”

“Have you forgotten that I was mean to you first?”

“That’s no excuse!”

He rubbed his hands over his face. “Okay. Let’s back up a little bit. No confusion. No mixed signals. No crossed wires. Full disclosure. Total transparency.”

“That seems like a lot.”

“You don’t have to reciprocate, but please hear me out.”

She nodded.

“The first day I saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. You laughed with Cal, and if I hadn’t known you were cousins, I would have been consumed with jealousy on the spot. When I realized that I’d reacted to you so strongly, I made a conscious effort to minimize my contact with you. But you kept showing up. You redecorated and reorganized and painted and nearly killed me with kindness. Things were getting shaky on my end. But then your mom was diagnosed with cancer, and for a while you pretty much disappeared.”

“It was—”

“No apologies, Meredith. None whatsoever. Honestly, it was a bit of a relief for me. I thought I could use the time to get you out of my system. To clear my head of you. Build my walls higher to keep you from getting in. And I thought it had worked. But it turns out that when it comes to you, I might build walls, but they’re flimsy. One little push from you and they didn’t just fall. They disintegrated.”

He leaned toward her again. “It took me a while to realize that I was wide open to you. That the reason I needed to protect you, to be around you, to know what was going on in your life, was because you had already set up shop in my heart. I just didn’t realize it.” He reached for her hand, and she slid her fingers across his.

“I want to rebuild the walls, but I want to build them with you. I want to build them around us, together. I want the walls to protect what we’re building together. I want there to be things that go on behind the walls that are ours and no one else’s.”

He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I would never try to separate you from your family or your friends, but there are things I don’t want to share with Cal or Mo.”

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