Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
In a last ditch effort to keep him from getting too close, I’d told him I wanted to know more about him, knowing that he wouldn’t want to give me that information.
He never talked about himself. In fact, he went out of his way to not talk about himself. He didn’t like his mother. He wasn’t very close to his father. The minute any of them came up, he turned and walked away so he wouldn’t have to talk about them.
I’d seen him do it to no less than ten people in the last couple of weeks. And when I’d tried to broach that topic while he was seeing me strictly as a patient, he’d skirted the issue, and downright shut it down, unwilling to talk about it.
Now, though? He didn’t once hesitate to talk about it.
Dammit!
“Are you sure that you don’t want to ask about my sister? About my time in the Marines when I was deployed?” He paused. “Most of it you already know. When I was talking to you at your office in the beginning, I wasn’t doing it as your patient. I was doing it as the man who was falling in love with you. As the man who’s been in love with you since way before he ever should have had feelings for you.”
And the last of my misgivings melted away.
My eyes went to the corner of the room.
I looked at the innocent looking toy that I’d had for years.
Well, it wasn’t innocent to me.
My dad gave it to me as a reminder.
I was never smart enough to solve it, and when I got frustrated and tried to break it, my father had taken my birthday present back.
“My dad thought I was stupid.”
He didn’t say anything.
“If I give you my heart,” I said, walking over to the toy and picking it up. “You better take care of it.”
His eyes went to the toy that I’d dragged my finger across, then to me.
“He laughed at me when I couldn’t figure this out,” I said. “He gave it to me for my birthday. He’d said he’d ran out of time to get me a present, and had seen this at the dollar store.”
It still had the hundred-dollar bill in it.
Every once in a while, I picked it up and tried to solve it, but I never could.
“I try to solve this every couple of weeks. Have been steadily doing it since I got it from him,” I said, turning and handing it to him. “He laughed at me when he found out that I couldn’t do it.”
He took the innocent toy, looked at my face, and then down at the puzzle.
Then he stood up, dropped the toy to the floor, and slammed his booted foot down onto it.
The puzzle smashed into a hundred tiny pieces.
I gasped.
“Your father doesn’t have control of you anymore,” he said. “And I never had the patience for those, either.”
I started to laugh.
He watched me for a few long moments, and then took two long steps toward me.
The next thing I knew, I was on my back in the bed, all my carefully folded clothes scattering to the sides and the floor.
His mouth slammed down onto mine, and he growled.
“Your dad is a fucking asshole,” he said. “He probably laughed because he thought it was funny, but it wasn’t. It was a shit thing to do, and the moment that he saw that it was frustrating you, he should’ve done something to help, not made it worse by laughing.”
I agreed, wholeheartedly.
I was a psychologist. I knew that I should be practicing the same thing I preached.
But when it came to my father and all the crap he’d put me through over the years, it was hard to separate myself from the little girl I once used to be.
But before I could tell him anything more, he pushed my shirt up and over my head, and pressed a single chaste kiss to the base of my throat.
“I want to fuck you.”
My belly clenched.
“I want to show you that I’m not a bad guy.”
I closed my eyes.
Which meant I missed him when he stood up and pulled my shirt down as if he was never between my legs.
“But I’m going to give you tonight, and most of tomorrow to think about what we’ve talked about today.”
My eyes flashed open.
“And tomorrow when I come by, we’ll finish where we left off.”
Then he was gone, and I was left staring at what remained of the puzzle that I’d stared at for nearly half my life. Only this time its shattered remains didn’t fill me with a sense of unease.
And I found that by breaking that, Tate had somehow set something free inside of me, leaving me with hope that maybe he could set other things free, too.
Chapter 21