Page 18 of When He Defends
She wanted to grab onto him. Hold him tightly. “Come in so we can talk.”
“No.” Another flat denial. “You don’t…” His hand fell as Gray backed up a step. “I’m too raw. I can’t be near you right now. You don’t want me close the way I am.”
She did want him close. “What happened when he broke down the door?”He…Gray’s father?
“That’s a story I don’t share.” His gaze cut around the area, then came back to her.
“You know sign language.” It was how he’d communicated with Timothy.
“I know sign language.” A roll of one shoulder.
She stared at him.
A sigh slid from his lips. “Not a big deal, Emerson. My aunt was deaf. My mom made sure I could communicate with her.I also speak French, some Russian, and a little bit of Chinese. Anything else you want to know?”
Just a million things.
“How about you save the rest of your questions for another time?” He edged toward the nearby door. Room thirteen. “Get some sleep, partner. I’ll see you soon.”
“Gray!”
He stood in front of the door to his room. Didn’t open it. Not yet.
Partner.She blinked. “Am I still your partner?” Emerson turned her body toward his.
The tension between them seemed to thicken. She could practically see what they’d done before flash between them. The kiss. The lust. The tumble onto the bed.
Is that why he won’t come into the room with me? Because he doesn’t want us to pick up where we left off?
“You’re my partner.” His stilted reply. “That’s what you’ll continue to be.”
Ouch.Okay, that hurt. But then again, she’d been the one just picking hard at his painful past. She got that he didn’t like to be vulnerable. She more than understood. And it wasn’t fair to parade his past out for her to see. At least, it wasn’t fair unless she intended to reveal her own pain. “My father was schizophrenic.” The words just came from her. Flat. Unemotional. “Delusions drove him to take his own life when I was seven years old.”
“Emerson.”
“For years, I was terrified that the same fate would happen to me. Schizophrenia is supposed to have a strong hereditary component.” She’d pretty much made the study of schizophrenia her life’s focus. In order to be a psychiatrist, she’d had to get her MD. So many years of study. Of research.Of fear.“I grew up with a ticking time bomb inside of me. Always afraid, justwaiting for warning signs to appear. Disorganized thinking and speech. I feared when my mind would become scattered and the words I wanted to say wouldn’t emerge.” Should she confess that a ticking, time bomb terror sometimes still came to her in the dark…and in the light? “I worried about hallucinations.”I still worry.“Most people don’t fear that they’ll see things that aren’t there. I spent years trying to make sure that everything I sawwasreal.” And living in fear that one day, it wouldn’t be real. That she wouldn’t even realize when she was hallucinating. But her fear didn’t stop there. “And then there is the trifecta. The delusions. My father suffered from so many delusions at the end. Delusions that he was being hunted…that he was being tracked and persecuted by those closest to him. Those delusions led my father to run blindly and leap straight off the cliff near my mother’s home in Maine.”
Sympathy burned in his eyes. And, oh, horror of horrors, was that pity, too? Gray was looking at her with pity now when he’d stared at her with fierce desire hours before? Pity was the absolute last thing that she wanted from him or from anyone. “Don’t.” A sharp snap as Emerson realized that she’d just made a serious miscalculation in her relationship with him.
I shouldn’t have told him. Why, oh, why did I tell him? I don’t tell anyone.Her father’s condition was a closely guarded family secret. Or it had been, until she’d blurted out the truth because she was going on twenty-four hours of no sleep, shaking with adrenaline, and fueled by too much fear.
She didn’t normally make mistakes like this one. But it was too late to pull the words back.
Gray was stepping toward her. Reaching for her.
She had to minimize the disaster, immediately. “You were right.” Brisk. “We need to sleep. We’ll regroup later and talk about our partnership after we’ve rested.” When she was less likely to spill more deep, dark secrets.
“Emerson—” His hand almost touched her.
She fumbled and pressed the keycard against the lock. The little bar flashed to green, and Emerson shoved open the door. Darkness greeted her. She didn’t remember turning off the light, but she must have done it before they’d gone to the police station with Misty and Timothy. Emerson kicked the door shut. She didn’t immediately turn on the lights. Instead, she stood with her back pressed against the door, with her heart racing far too fast in her chest, and she let the darkness surround her. Comfort her.
It was so easy to hide in the dark.
“Emerson…” She heard Gray’s voice quite clearly. After all, the door was paper-thin.
But she didn’t respond to him.
Was he going to knock? Demand that they talk? Was he going to tell her how sorry he was about her father? Was Gray going to look at her with more pity when she needed him to stare at her with that wild desire? A desire that had made her feel so incredibly alive andwanted?
