“That I can do, sweetheart. That I can do.” Rowan sweeps me up into his arms and carries me to the stairs. The unopened jewelry box sits unopened on the grand old coffee table next to Rowan’s glass of expensive whiskey.
It should be that way. It’s the promise of a brighter future. And that happy ending just doesn’t exist, not for me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When we wake the next morning, the snow has fallen again, thick and deep like a blanket over the plains behind my house. With everything that’s happened between me and Cadence, I hadn’t checked to see if the flurry would change to anything else again. But we’re here again, stuck inside, and after a whole lot of talking that leaves both of us in a strange place.
Cadence is still asleep, and I catch myself looking at her again. Her chest rises and falls, and the look on her face is calm. Her eyelids flutter as if she’s dreaming, but her brows aren’t knit tight like they were last night when she told me about the thing I’d been wondering about for the last few weeks, that thing that weighed her down unnaturally.
If I could take it all away, I would.
But I can’t. There’s no cure to this pain, no way to make it end for her. So much time, so much loss. No wonder she came here, no wonder she took this job.
I brush the smooth skin on the side of her neck and trace my fingers down her shoulder, down to the tank top she wore to bed. I just held her. For the first time, we just slept together, nothing else. I held her until her body fell calm, until her breathing became heavy and deep, until her mind slipped into sleep. It was better without making love, just sleeping, just holding her and letting her know that I’d be there for her when she woke in the morning. That man—the man who left her—well, he was never there, it seems, not really.
There’s a world of distance between him and me. But hell, I don’t blame her for needing more time, for wanting to trust me but not knowing how, for wanting to take things slower. And we’ve been anything but slow.
I don’t often meditate on my own weaknesses. I was done with that when Joanna left—she pointed them out far faster than I could even think of them myself. But lying in this bed next to this woman, this strong, powerful, talented woman that I’m falling in love with, I know the weakness that’s reared its ugly head in the time that I’ve known Cadence. It wasn’t falling for her too hard, too fast—that was unavoidable. The universe brought us to the same place at the same time, and all of it happened just as it should. No, my fault lies in pushing her too hard, never stopping to listen to all the times she tried to convince me to put on the brakes, when she told me she wasn’t ready.
Her body was ready for me, ready to move on from the past and feel something else, something good. But her mind and her soul were screaming that it was too soon. And now she’s all the way past her breaking point, no turning back.
“I’m so sorry, Cadence,” I murmur, moving my fingers down the soft, rich skin of her arm. I could get lost in this woman’s curves forever, and I could lie here in this bed and die a happy man. But the pain I caused her by pushing too hard too fast, I wish I could take every bit of that away.
After a moment, Cadence’s eyes open, and she yawns. For a moment, her face remains still, just as it was in sleep. Then the worry sets in, and I see last night’s conversation written all over her face. I wish I could erase those lines from her face, do away with that expression she’s wearing.
She thinks she’s told me too much.
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” she mumbles. “If this is too much for you to handle—”
“What? What’s too much to handle?” I grin, and my voice comes out gravely from waking up too late in the morning.
“Me. All of the past.” She pauses and bites her lip, turning to look out the window. “Everything. I can go—”
“Go where, exactly? It’s Christmas Eve, sugar. And we’re buried under a solid foot and a half of snow. We thought it was bad two days ago, but that was just the beginning, apparently. This isn’t supposed to melt until sometime next week.”
She shivers against me, but her skin is still hot. “Oh God,” she moans, like she’s realizing she’s stuck here with the worst person in the damn world. There’s panic in her voice, and her body feels like a live wire against mine. I pull her in and put my arm over hers.
“Cadence, trust me. This isn’t too much. I’m too much.” I clear my throat and stop for a second to think. I might be able to talk up a storm when it comes to investors, but it’s hard to know what to say to a woman who’s trapped against her will in a snowstorm, a woman you’d like to hold onto forever. “I put names and titles on everything when you kept telling me to slow down.”