“Rebecca, my life wasn’t always what it is now. This isn’t about living in your car. This is about trusting me with the truth. Would you ever have told me?” He didn’t know what to think. He felt hurt, but at the same time, he knew that wasn’t her intent, and he wanted to understand everything about Rebecca, including, and maybe most importantly, this.
“Yes. Later. Much later.”
“When? When I asked you to marry me? When we had kids? When would you have trusted me enough, Rebecca?” His voice escalated and he paced, trying to calm himself down.
“I don’t know. I just know that this isn’t like lying about cheating on someone. I didn’t do this to hurt you, Pierce. I did what I felt I had to.” Her eyes welled with tears, but her voice was so angry that he couldn’t tell if they were tears of anger or sadness.
“And I didn’t do it to deceive you. I kept it from you so you could decide if you liked me for me without having to fix me or toss me aside because I was…homeless.” Her shoulders dropped as the word fell from her lips.
Homeless. Holy Christ. Homeless. The word stung Pierce as badly as he could see it had stung her. He reached for her hand and she shrugged away. It was agonizing not being able to hold her, feeling like they were on the opposite sides of a fence when really he wanted her inside his fence, always, right there beside him.
“Okay, okay,” he managed. “Let’s both take a deep breath.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. There was so much he wanted to understand. “Why the car, Rebecca? Why didn’t you stay at a shelter?”
“You won’t understand.” She sat back down on the rock.
“Try me.”
She drew in another uneven breath. “Because staying at a shelter is like saying I’d really hit rock bottom.”
“It’s about being safe.”
“I was safe.”
“In your car? Do you know what could have happened to you?” Just the thought made his skin crawl.
That sent her to her feet again, pacing the small clearing. “Yes. Okay? Yes. Every time I walked into that cold parking garage, I knew what could happen to me. Every time I woke up to the sound of a car door slamming or wheels squealing, I knew.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I did what I had to do, and damn it, Pierce, I made it out the other side without any of those awful things happening to me, and—oh God—I showered at the gym every morning after my workout, I kept applying for jobs, so please don’t think that I was dirty or any of those awful things that go along with being homeless.”
The word stung as badly the second time around.
“I wasn’t dirty or…broken. I was just broke.” She covered her face with her hands, but not before Pierce saw tears stream down her cheeks.
He folded her into his arms and didn’t release her when she halfheartedly shrugged him off. “Oh, Becca. I don’t care about any of those things. I just wish you would have told me.”
“Right.” She sniffled, wiped her tears. “So you could save me.”
“Maybe,” he said honestly. “I don’t know. I certainly liked you enough to want to save you. But I have a feeling you wouldn’t have let me.” On the surface she looked vulnerable, fragile, with damp eyes and a trembling lower lip, but behind the tears he saw fierce determination.
“I love you, Rebecca. Whether you lived in your car, on the street, or in a boat on a river makes no difference. My love for you isn’t contingent on any of those things. It’s unconditional.” He pressed his lips to her forehead.
She closed her eyes and he held her close, feeling her heart beating against his. He knew how hard this was for her. She wore her pride like armor, and to have this secret revealed—a secret she thought was so powerful that it might change his love for her—explained the fight he felt in her rigid body.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was so worried that you would judge me.”
“The only judgment I’ll make is that you impress the hell out of me, Rebecca. You’ve overcome so much, and you haven’t backed down on your principles, or let it define you. I think I’m the luckiest guy on earth to have you in my life.”
When he tried to draw back and look into her eyes, she fisted her hands in his shirt and pressed her cheek to his chest.
“Don’t look at me. Just hold me. Please just hold me.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
IT HAD BEEN hours since Pierce had found out about Rebecca living in her car. In an effort to move past the reveal of her most intimate secret, they’d gone to a specialty store and bought a set of monogrammed champagne flutes for Daisy and Luke, had a nice dinner out on Pierce’s patio, and still Rebecca couldn’t shake the feeling of embarrassment. She hated that now when he looked at her he probably saw an image of her sleeping in her car. He’d never say as much—she’d probably scared him into keeping that kind of thought to himself. But she saw something different in his eyes, and she’d been trying to dodge it all evening. It was inescapable. It followed her around the room, stealing pieces of them. He kissed her more softly, more lovingly, instead of heated and impassioned. And what made matters worse was that she wasn’t sure if it was intentional or a reflection of how she was acting.
Pierce was busy talking on the phone to someone about the Grand, and as much as she hated herself for it, she just wanted to be alone. She needed to come to grips with the fact that now he knew. He was acting like he accepted the revealing of her most embarrassing point in her life like it didn’t make any difference at all, but she knew it had to. How could it not?
I lived in my car.
How could he just accept it? He had to be connecting her to something unsavory, didn’t he? Or was she losing her mind? One minute they were driving down Meet My Family Lane and the next, she could barely look at him without feeling like he pitied her.
She needed to get past this.
Rebecca closed her eyes and rested her head back on the couch, listening to Pierce’s voice filter in from his home office. His voice was sharp when he was discussing business; his answers were succinct and confident, unlike when he was talking with her. Everything about Pierce was different with her than with anyone else. She smiled at the thought of how his rich, smooth voice wrapped around her like a velvet drape and warmed her to her core.
Will it still feel that way? Or will I always see and hear pity no matter what he does?
Oh God. She loved him so much it hurt to think about things between them being different. She heard footsteps approaching from his office, felt his presence behind the couch, and a moment later, she felt his lips on her forehead.
She loved his lips on her forehead.
“Sorry that took so long, babe.”
Smooth as silk. She opened her eyes and damn it. She was sure it was her imagination, but she saw something different in his eyes. They were softer. Softer? Like he had to handle her with kid gloves? Ugh. She couldn’t take it. Even if it was in her mind, she needed to figure out how to get past it, and she couldn’t do that here with him.
She rose to her feet. “Pierce, would you mind if I stayed at my place tonight?”
“Wha…? Your place?” He came around the couch and reached for her hands. “Why?”
“I just need a little space to think. I…”
He drew her down to the couch beside him. “Babe, talk to me. Please don’t shut me out. What’s wrong?”
“I can’t—” Look at you without seeing pity. She looked away. “I just need a little time to think clearly.”
“To think clearly? How about telling me what’s really going on? Are you upset that I said I wished you’d told me about staying in your car?” His tone was compassionate, but she heard an edge to his voice.
“No. No, that’s not it. I just…I think I need time to deal with it all coming out in the open.” She met his gaze, and everything good about them swirled around her. She was herself with Pierce, and even though she knew it was a struggle for him not to wave his money around and make all her troubles go away, he respected her need to do some things for herself. At the same time, he pushed in the areas that made sense. And she liked those things he pushed for: opening doors for her, pulling out chairs, wanting to protect her when they were out. She’d noticed the way he held her tighter when other men were around and the way he always took an extra second to make sure they were in sync in the bedroom. She loved so much about him that she needed to get ahold of this other stuff that was clouding her vision before she ruined everything.
“I feel funny about all of it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away, but I did what I felt I had to. Now that you know, I just feel weird. I think I need a little time to digest it all.”
He pulled her closer. “Can’t you digest it with me?”
“No, because every time I look at you, I feel it between us.” She pulled back. “Not between us like breaking us up, just like it was this big thing that…” She shook her head to try to clear her thoughts. “I don’t know how to explain this except to be brutally honest.”
“Babe, I’m used to your brutal honesty, so go ahead. Give it to me.”