Page 123 of The Truth Serum
So she stepped back. “What is your fear, Nate?”
“I have many of them,” he said. “But you can guess them all. I fear that you will be hurt. I fear that you don’t love me. I fear that just when everything is perfect, it will be ripped away.”
She felt the truth in his words. Indeed, it was as though she could see him opening to her gaze. It was the bravest thing she’d ever seen. And then he said the cruelest thing she’d ever heard.
“But it is not my fears that are keeping us apart. It is yours.”
She frowned. “I have no fears. Only excitement at the possibilities ahead. I have my own money and establishment now. At least for the summer. I have work ahead if I want it.” She touched his arm. “I have a man who says he will marry me.”
“All true. And yet, here we are, still talking, still discussing when we should be acting.”
“I am not the reason we are apart,” she said. And even she could hear the discordance in her words. From the moment she had arrived in London, he had stated his desire. He wanted to be with her. And she was the one who distrusted him.
She felt her face flush. They both knew she’d lied.
“How many of my books have you read?” he asked.
She blinked. “All of them.” Those she had missed before, she’d greedily read after she’d learned he was the author.
“And what did you think of them?”
“I loved them, of course.” It was true.
He smiled, and this time his fingers stroked down her arms. “What a pair we are. I wrote stories glorifying my love for you, but I never went home to find you. And you read those stories about you, but you never stepped off the page to find me.”
“I didn’t know!” she said. “No one knows you wrote them.”
He nodded. “And you have believed all the lies you were told about me.”
She frowned.
“You are no damsel in distress, Becca. You are not my princess to rescue nor the trapped girl in Cornwall who could never escape. You were just told that, and you believed it.”
She frowned at him. “And where could I have gone?”
“Exactly where you wanted to go. You went to Mrs. Chenoweth and trained with her. You wandered throughout the county—”
“I didn’t wander! I was treating people. Helping and learning.”
He nodded. “Exactly. You did as you wanted.” He smiled. “And I admire you for it. So now, you are being invited to help your country. It is something you say you want. Why are you hesitating?”
“I’m not. I’m thinking about it.”
He arched a brow. “What are you thinking?”
“That… That…” She had no words, and that wasn’t like her. But fear echoed in the air between them, which is when she realized he was right. It wasn’t his fear that was stopping them. It was hers.
“Don’t think,” he urged. “Just tell me what you’re feeling.”
Which would work if she had the words. Instead, she crumpled forward. She knew he’d catch her. And indeed, in a moment, she felt his arms around her. She felt his lips press into her forehead. And then she felt nothing else. Just him. His love. And his patience.
Then words spilled from her lips.
“I don’t want to do it alone.”
“You won’t. You never have to be alone if you don’t want to be.” He gently guided her to the settee. “If not me, then Lord Benedict and Major Vance will see you safe.”
“Benedict said I should be married.”
