Pulled Within (33 page)

Brady had blown through his savings before he took off for Bangor, so I knew he didn’t have the cash to pay them. And he loved his truck; he’d worked so hard to pay it off. It broke my heart to
know he had to give it to them. I figured he’d be getting out of rehab and starting his life completely fresh. I hadn’t considered he’d be starting it indebted to drug dealers.

“How much do you owe?” I asked.

His clear blue eyes showed fear. “With juice, close to fifteen.”

“That’s nothing
—
”

“Not fifteen hundred, Rae. Fifteen
thousand
.”

It felt like all the air had been kicked out of me. “Shit, Brady.”

“Shit is right.”

I swallowed and shook my head until I was able to get my
emotions under control for him. “We’ll figure this out.”

“They gave me a break once, but guys like this don’t fuck
around.
You saw my face…they’re capable of doing much worse. If I don’t
figure this out, they’ll kill me.”

I couldn’t accept this as part of his reality. “Nothing is going to
happen to you. I won’t let it.”

He laughed, his nervousness and grief rained through the sound
of those chuckles and soaked my bones. “Unless I pay them off,
there’s nothing you can do to stop them from coming after me.”

I needed to be closer to him. So I slid forward and wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face in his shirt. “We’ll find a way to pay them off just let me get through these next five days.”

I truly hoped we could figure this out.

I WAS SLEEPING
on Shane’s couch, tucked beneath a cozy blanket with the early morning darkness surrounding me, when I felt a pair
of
hands touch the outside of my thigh. They rubbed in circles,
traveling
to my waist and dipping to my knee. I knew the touch, without
seeing the hands it belonged to.

Hart.

I smelled him before I even opened my eyes. The lavender from his house clung to his clothes; the sharpness of cedar and musk
carried on his exhale.

I sat up abruptly. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t move. He stayed on the floor, kneeling in front of me as he reached over to turn on the lamp. “You know why I’m here.
The question is, why are
you
?”

I hadn’t asked him for space—I hadn’t asked him for anything,
in
fact. I hadn’t answered his texts or his calls, and I hadn’t sent any
more of my own, either.

That was wrong of me. I knew that. But Brady’s news only
added to everything I had already been feeling. It was too much.

Four days
was all I could handle.

Brady had been able to come clean and tell me everything that had been holding him down. Was I ready to do the same with Hart?

“The morning you let me sleep in, your mom came to the
house.” Ready or not, there it was. By blurting it out, I didn’t have a chance to second-guess my decision.

He bit his lip and tapped his fist lightly against my knee. “It all makes sense now.”

I focused on his fingers. It was too hard to look at his eyes. “I’ve had a lot of accusations thrown at me over the years, Hart. Many of them I’ve deserved, but the things she said to me…” I paused, trying to figure out the right way to continue. I couldn’t repeat what she’d said; that would have only made me more emotional. I didn’t think that would help us at all.

“She thought you were the maid, didn’t she?” I nodded and finally
looked into his eyes. He knew exactly what kind of cruelty she was capable
of, which made my stomach hurt even worse. “She did the same thing to
my last girlfriend.”

I couldn’t believe he’d said that. “If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t.”

I hated that she’d thrown me into the pile with all the other ex-
girlfriends. He had a past
—
both of us did
—
but it really stung to be lumped together with everyone else, as if I wasn’t any more important than those other girls. Maybe it hurt more than it should
have.

And it made me feel like I was on the bottom of that pile.

He shook his head, leaning in so our faces were closer. I had no choice but to continue staring at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like
that. I was testing to see how far she’d taken it. Obviously she went
all the way and probably said things far worse than I’m imagining.”

I pulled back and rested against the cushions. “Are you sorry for the things you
didn’t
say?”

Confusion crossed his face. “What would that be?”

“I don’t know…maybe that we’re a couple. That the maid isn’t your assistant, but your
girlfriend
is since it’s their company I work for, too.” My voice was starting to rise. I couldn’t stop it. “How about that the person picking you up for those meetings was your mom? Dammit,
Hart! My head has been all over the place wondering who she was
and what you weren’t telling me.”

He gripped me behind my knees, like he was going to pull me into his lap. A wrinkle creased between his brows and the muscles in his jaw
began to flex. “It’s because of my ex that she’s like this. Katrina
basically ruined any trust my mom had in the girls I date. Mom will get over it, and she’ll treat you right
—
I’ll make sure of that.”

“You hid me from her, Hart. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“I was trying to protect you, Rae. I knew how she would be, and
it sounds like she did exactly what I was afraid of, regardless.” His gray eyes had taken on a charcoal cast as they filled with emotion. “I should have told you—I realize that now. And I should have told
her about you, it just happened so fast. I thought it might have been too much, too soon.”

I appreciated everything he had said up until the last part. It
threw my stomach right back into motion.

“What about
us
?” I asked. “Are we too much, too soon?” I held my breath while I waited for his answer.

 Hart shook his head. “They’re my parents, Rae. My ex put them through a lot. I have to take things slowly with them.”

I brushed the tears away before they had a chance to rain down. “What did she do, exactly?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this, but if it answered questions about how his mom had treated me, then I needed to. I doubted
anything he was about to say would make me like her more. Maybe, instead, it would help me understand her.

“Katrina worked at one of the salons I was opening. She knew my mom very well. You could say she was her protégé. Mom was pushing hard for us to get together. After a few months, I was
getting ready to
go to a new location, and Katrina didn’t want me to leave…she
thought getting pregnant would make me stay. She went as far as pulling the used condoms out of my trash and emptying them
—
”

“I get the point.”

“She couldn’t seem to let go. So she went to Mom and dragged her into the whole shitty situation. Needless to say, it didn’t end well.”

When I tried to lift my knees up to my chest and rock, he
wouldn’t
let me. He forced me to keep my feet on the ground. I knew why,
and I knew he was right.

I had to get through this without
back and forth
.

“Your mom thinks I’m after your money. She probably thinks I’m going to start emptying your condoms, too…” If she only knew we’d stopped using them, I’d be even farther down her list. “At this
point, there’s nothing I can do to show her I’m not a gold digger. I’m living in your house, I’m working for you…I’m sleeping with you. She has everything she needs to distrust my intentions.”

“She has more…”

“More?” How much more could there possibly be?

I’m afraid you and your scar simply don’t fit into his clean, perfect world.

His head cocked. “The reason she came into town was to look at two more locations in Maine.”

“But you have Bar Harbor, Bangor and Portland.”

“I want a few more.”

“And why is that?” I didn’t need more puzzles. I needed
something truthful, something

I could trust again.

“Because I don’t want to leave you. Your family is here and I
don’t
want to be the one who drags you away from them.” Family was such a loaded word and it could have meant many things. I
wondered how he’d ever understand how dark and chaotic it was for me. “I may not
have confirmed our relationship to her, but she isn’t stupid. She knows why I’ve kept her away from the house, and why I’m
pushing for more spas in Maine.”

“No wonder she said those things to me. She hates me.”

“She’s
wary
of you. That’s all. She’ll come around
—
trust me.”

I thought again about the way she’d looked at me, what she’d said about my scar and how she’d treated me when she thought I was the maid. According to Hart, she’d probably known who I was
the whole
time. She was just toying with me to be a bitch. That only made it worse.

“Do you think anyone will ever be good enough for you?”

He slowly leaned forward and brushed his lips over mine. “You. Only you. That has always been the answer.”

I truly cared about him. I wasn’t sure I had ever felt love for someone
I had dated, but I knew my feelings were deeper and stronger than ever before. I wanted it all
—
everything I’d had for the last week, and everything I thought we might be able to grow into.

Maybe it wasn’t the right time for that.

“Maybe I should move out and look for another job. Do
something to prove to her that I’m not after anything but you.”

His hands tightened over my knees as he slid me off the couch and into his lap. I wrapped my arms around his neck; my legs straddled his waist. “
You
are not the issue here; I won’t let you do
that, so don’t even think about it. Things have been a mess at the jobsite since you’ve
been gone. Shane’s crew needs you. I need you
—
at work, at my
house…” He pulled my hand off his neck and pressed it against his chest. “In my heart.”

I felt something inside me start to soften, stir. It lessened the
resistance I’d been building up. “I won’t leave the spa, then.”

 His eyes scanned mine, drawing my doubt to the surface. “I don’t want you to leave my house, either, Rae.” I tried to protest, but he spoke right over me. “But you’re not giving me all of you. Haven’t I proven how crazy I am about you? That even though you try not to show me your scars, I think you’re absolutely beautiful regardless of
them. What you did, what you didn’t do, what happened to make things the way they are—I don’t care about any of that. I just want to be with you.”

He was right.

Every word he had spoken was the truth. I felt completely
protected whenever I was with him, cared for. Loved, even. So why did I have such a hard time sharing this part of my life?

Why couldn’t I let him into the darkest part of me, and flood him with my truth?

Even I didn’t know the answer to that.

“Soon,” I whispered. It was all I could offer him.

His hands moved to my shoulders. He dipped his head so our eyes aligned. “Give me something, Rae. Something…
anything
.”

I swallowed a mouthful of air and dug my nails into his skin. “Darren’s birthday is in four days. I just have to get to that without falling
apart. Then I promise I’ll tell you everything.” Part of me regretted those words as soon as they left me. The other part wished I had already told him.

“That’s fair.” He slid me a few inches closer so my chest pressed against his. “But you’re going to stay at my place, aren’t you?”

Home
.

“I…I don’t know.”

“If you’re not comfortable there, then we’ll move out.”

That was a huge sacrifice for him, one I didn’t feel he needed to make. “I don’t want that.”

He was trying so hard
—
I could feel it in the way he held me, the way he breathed, how his forehead tensed. His hands wanted to reach out and stroke my cheek, my skin. He resisted. “You don’t
want my place, you don’t want us to have another place. What can I do, Rae?”

“Help me find a place of my own.”

There was a gaping pause before he spoke again. “I can find you a rental by tomorrow.”

A rental was temporary, like every place I had ever lived in. I
needed
something more stable than that. A place no one could take away
from me as long as I kept paying for it.

“Not a rental,” I said. “I want to buy a house. My house.”

“Do you know how much money that would take?”

“I have the money.” The last deposit I’d made had brought my
total
to almost twenty-five-thousand dollars. If I found something small and not on the water, that would hopefully be enough for the down payment. My salary would more than cover the mortgage. “And you
can live with me there.”

“Then let’s find you a home.”

It was a word that couldn’t live on its own.

“No,” I said, “let’s find
us
a home.”

In my belief, everyone who lived in a perfect home would be safe.
The hands inside would never harm anyone else. Days wouldn’t be
counted down as a means of getting past the darkness. No one was scared; no one was scarred. The walls withheld the storms. In a
perfect home, there was nothing inside but pink and sparkles and twirling. And endless sunshine.