Sanctuary(139)

He tasted blood in his mouth, wasn't entirely sure his jaw wouldn't turn out to be broken, and finally managed to hold her down on the seat while both of them panted for breath.

"Would you stop it? Would you pull out some modicum of control and stop trying to beat my brains-which I'm assured are in perfect working order-to a bloody pulp?" He tightened his grip, shifting fast as she tried to bring her knee up and render him helpless. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Well, that's too bad because I want to hurt you. I want to send you off limping for treating me this way."

"I'm sorry." He lowered his brow to hers and tried to catch his breath. "I'm sorry, Jo."

she refused to soften, refused to acknowledge the little trip her heart experienced at the utter despair in his voice. "You don't even know what you're sorry for."

"For more than you know." He eased back, met her eyes. "Please come inside. I have things to tell you. Things I wish I didn't have to tell you. After I do, you can beat me black and blue and I won't lift a hand to stop you. I swear it."

Something was wrong, horribly wrong. The anger dropped away into fear. she kept her voice cool before her imagination ran wild. "That's quite an arrangement. I'll come in, and you can say what you have to say. Then we're finished, Nathan."

she shoved him away and pushed open her car door. "Because nobody walks away from me," she said in a low, vibrant voice. "Nobody ever again."

His heart sank, but he led the way inside, switched on the lights. "I'd like you to sit down."

"I don't need to sit down, and what you'd like doesn't interest me. How could you go that way?" Even as she rounded on him, she wrapped her arms around herself in defense. "How could you leave my bed and just go, without a word? And stay away when you had to know how it would make me feel. If you were tired of me, you still could have been kind."

"Tired of you? Sweet Jesus, Jo, there hasn't been a minute of this past eight days that I haven't thought of you, wanted you."

"Do you think I'm stupid enough, or needy enough, to believe that kind of lie? If you'd thought of me, wanted me, you couldn't have turned your back on me as if none of it mattered. Had ever mattered." "If it hadn't mattered, didn't matter more than anything else in my life, I could have stayed. And we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"You hurt me, you humiliated me, you-"

"I love you."

she jerked back as if to avoid a blow. "You expect my knees to go weak now? You think you can say that and make me run into your arms?

"No. I wouldn't love you if you couldn't stand there and spit at me after I'd said it." He walked to her, gave in to the need to touch her. just a brush of his fingertips over her shoulders. "And I do love you, Jo Ellen. Maybe I always did. Maybe that seven-year-old girl ruined me for anyone else. I don't know. But I need you to believe me. Iced to say it, and I aced you to believe it before I start the rest."

she stared into Is eyes, and now her knees did start to tremble. "You do mean it."

"Enough to put my past, preset, and future in your hands." He took hers in his for a moment, studied them, memorized them, then let them go. "I went back to New York. There's a friend of the family, a doctor. A neurologist. I wanted him to run some tests on me."

"Tests?" Baffled, she pushed at her hair. "What kind of- Oh, my God." It struck her like a fist, hard in the heart. "You're sick. A neurologist? What is it? A tumor." Her blood shivered to ice in her veins. "But you can have treatment. You can-"

"I'm not sick, Jo. There's no tumor, there's nothing wrong with me. But I had to be sure."

"There's nothing wrong?" Slic folded lier arms again, hugged them to her body. "I don't understand. You went back to New York to have tests run on your brain when there's nothing wrong with you?"

"I said I needed to be sure. Because I thought I might have had blackouts or been sleepwalking or had fugues. And have maybe killed Susan Peters."

she lowered herself gingerly, bracing a hand on the back of the chair as she sat on the arm. she never took her eyes off his. "Why would you think such a crazy thing?"

"Because she was strangled here on the island. Because her body was hidden. Because her husband, her family, her friends, might have gone the rest of their lives not knowing what had happened."

"Stop it." she couldn't get her breath, had to fight back the urge to clap her hands over her ears. Her heart was beating too fast, making her head spin, her skin damp. she knew the signs, the panic waiting slyly to spring. "I don't want to hear any more of this."