Page 25 of Branded
Brown eyes on mine.
A curl in my gut slowly tightening.
Fuck. I’d overstepped again.
Then he smiled, chuckled in a low, rasping way that had goose bumps prickling on my nape, heat replacing the tightness in my stomach. “Yeah, Kay. You’ve got that right, and add in the fact that I haven’t been sleeping well and that I need to finish this before my meeting with Hazel, and…it’s a disaster for my luscious locks.”
Self-deprecating again.
Paired with a disarming smile.
Hmm.
I’d been smiling about the luscious locks comment, but that clue into his behavior, the self-effacing remarks, had an awareness trickling through me.
It also had my lips parting.
“I have anxiety.”
“What, honey?” he asked.
“I have anxiety,” I said. “Sometimes I’m fine, but most of the time I’m not. It like…gets me in its grip and clamps down so tightly that sometimes I can’t breathe or talk. People will look at me, expecting an answer, waiting impatiently, and I can’t—” Air shuddered out of my lungs. “I want to reply or say something witty and I can’t.”
I froze.
That wasn’t what I’d been expecting to say, wasn’t something I often admitted to anyone. It was my shameful, pathetic secret, something I’d worked to hide for so long, something I’d been pressured to hide.
And now it was just out there.
Kind of like Smitty had put himself out there.
“Baby,” he whispered.
The endearment slid through me, roughened fingertips on my cheek, along my throat, dipping between my breasts.
My anxiety ramped.
“I can’t do this,” I whispered back.
His brows drew together.
“I know you think, like, you and me and”—I broke off, gestured between the two of us, eyes dipping to my hands—“b-but I can’t do that.”
“Hey.” His voice was gentle.
“I try,” I said softly. “I’ve worked so hard to get better and to not be like this, but…I am. There’s something wrong with me inside.”
He inhaled sharply.
And then he was on his knees in front of me, his big hands wrapping around mine. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with you.”
It was said in his big, fierce way, the expression on his face so intense that I could do nothing but sit there and listen to him, to let his words wash over me.
“Nothing,” he repeated.
“If there’s nothing wrong with me,” I said, my voice wobbling at first before it stabilized, before it got strong, like I was trying to be, “then there’s nothing wrong with you.”
He went still.
