Page 49 of Those Who Are Bound

Elliott shook her head. “I don’t… I don’t talk about this much.” More terse than she intended, she said, “I came back, I got a job, Gage started the event space, and I eventually came to work for him. I moved into the house with him. Those are the facts of what happened after college. The rest isn’t worth dissecting.” She didn’t want to get into these details, these memories. They weren’t all bad, but some were painful. Gage struggled. She struggled. “I don’t know what you expect to hear.”

“Just conversation,” he prodded gently.

Eyes watering with both memories she’d rather not revisit and a hint of resentment, her face still turned away, she gave him a steely side-eye. “It was a game, Jonah.”

He nodded. “Yes, we played a game today. But this isn’t a game, Elliott. I’m sorry you were hurt. I’m not asking to hurt you.”

She turned her gaze away again to glare at the building across the street.

“Why does it still hurt so much?”

Her disbelieving gaze swung back to his. “Are you a sociopath?”

Jonah shook his head calmly. “No.”

She challenged, “Tell me about the tragedies of your life, the worst, most painful things that you don’t want trotted out and discussed like party favors.”

He sat back, rolling his head to one side as he regarded her. “That was your worst? Your parents?”

Elliott looked at him for a long moment, then gave a short, small shake of her head. “Gage was the worst.” Her words fell like a stone between them, the tension in the air palpable. Her expression grew cold as she ordered in a low tone, daring him, “Ask.”

He looked at her like he knew the moment of her pain. Impossible, but she sawsomethingpass over his expression that hinted at more than imagining it. He shook his head. “No. That’s yours until you decide to share.”

Elliott stared at him for a few beats and then looked around. She spotted and then pulled her backpack onto her lap, unzipping one of the pockets and withdrawing her cell phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Ordering an Uber.”

Knew it; knew this would end with an Uber.

Jonah reached across the table and grabbed the phone from her hand, paying no heed to her gasp. He turned it over to gauge how far she’d gotten in the process. He closed the app—she hadn’t confirmed the ride—and looked back up at her. “You aren’t taking an Uber back to your car; I’m taking you.” He pocketed her phone.

Elliott pointed to where her phone had disappeared, jaw dropped open.

Ignoring her, he said, “But I’m finishing my pizza first.”

“You can’t steal my phone and hold me hostage. I think that goes against all dating etiquette.”

“You’re being a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

She indicated once again to his pocket. “No.”

“You don’t get to run away. We’re learning about one another. That’s what people do.Sometimes it’s uncomfortable; it shouldn’t be, and I’m sorry it hurt you, but avoiding me isn’t a solution.” His tone was low, calm, and soothing, as it had been earlier when she’d gotten upset. “Your pain isn’t a party favor any more than mine is.”

Elliott wanted to take a jab at him, ask if he’d ever had a bad day in his seemingly vanilla life. For Pete’s sake, he’d married a woman in college to have sex with her. How remarkably normal was that? So normal, it was abnormal in her world. She imagined his worst day involved the day he and his wife had gotten divorced.

“And I can tell you what my worst day was, but I won’t.”

Her jaw clenched; she tensed.

Before she launched into a verbal attack, he said quickly, “Someday I will, but I won’t now, not when you’re challenging me so you can make comparisons on whose worst day is worse. This isn’t a competition. I won’t make a mockery of your experiences or mine.”

Elliott continued to stare off into space, talking herself down, letting the rush of blood and the thumping in her ears recede. He wasn’t testing her or pitying her. And she was overreacting. This was the side effect of shutting herself off, of starving the beast inside her.

She risked a glance at him, filled with fear that her reactions today were enough to put him off.But he was sitting back and watching her patiently, those eyes of his steady and—as he’d promised—free of judgment.

She tried to deflect. “I’m sorry. This isn’t usually who I am; how I am.”

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