Page 179 of Those Who Are Bound

Tilting her head back to look up at him, she said again, “I am sorry.”

“Tell me why.”

“You won’t understand it.”

“You need to do better than that.”

She chewed on her bottom lip as she stared up at him. He saw the concern; concern that he would judge her for her words. It was an odd thing to worry about. She’d broken his heart already, but she was worried that he would judge her for it.

“It’s… I’m trying to protect you. It’s my way of protecting you.”

She was right; he didn’t understand. So he kept quiet, hoping she would enlighten him.

“I’m going to want to… I want to hurt you.”

Pretty damn late for that. But he clarified, “You don’t want me hurt?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Because to not want to hurt someone—ignoring the fact that she’d already done so—with the intention of protecting him meant he did mean something to her. He wasn’t disposable to her.

But she hesitated, breaking eye contact.

“Say it.”

“I shouldn’t have to, you know. You know I like you.”

“It’s more than like if you feel you have to go to such an extreme to protect me. But I don’t know that I believe you.”

“It’s for you,” she said, a quiet desperation to her voice.

He grasped her jaw, tilting her head back even farther. “You got on to the back of a stranger’s motorcycle. You could have been killed. And you’re telling me to believe you did it forme?”

“In a fucked-up way, yes.”

“A really, really fucked-up way.”

Her brows drew together. He wasn’t sure if her distress was over his disbelief in her words, or that he wasn’t understanding her motivation. At the moment, it should be over both. “We’re—we were—in a relationship. There were two of us in that, but you unilaterally made a decision to end it. Without discussion. Over… what? Differences in belief? Interruptions on a trip? All of it? Which one tipped the scales? Because that was a determined and dramatic stance you took that morning.”

She stared at him as though shocked that this was his take on things. But how could he interpret that morning differently?

“I’m sorry,” was all she said.

Reaching up, he grasped a handful of her damp hair. “Damn it, I don’t want to hear you apologize. I want to know how you can turn your feelings off like a switch. Because mine are all still here, Elliott. And I feel like shit because I don’t know what I did wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it; fix us.”

Her lashes fluttered; she tried to shake her head, but he held on too tightly. “You can’t fix it,” she said in barely a whisper. “But I haven’t shut off my feelings for you. That’s not possible.”

She was creating a maze in his head; his heart. “Explain it to me like I’m an idiot, because clearly, I am.”

Again, she tried to shake her head despite his hold. “You aren’t. It’s me. All me.”

He almost growled. “Don’t start with that ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ bullshit. At least be honest with me; we’re above this.”

Laying her hand on his chest, she said, “I wish I could explain this to you, I do. It was everything that happened and didn’t happen, and it was what I had in my own mind.”

“The expectations you’d talked about.”

“Yes.”

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