Timberman Werebear(10)

“Why’d you leave in the first place?” His voice sounded raw and unused, but his eyes stayed steady on her.

“I didn’t want to be someone’s second choice. I’d thought we were more, but you didn’t feel the same.”

Denison linked his hands behind his neck and leaned back against the plush couch cushion. “How can you sit there and look me in the eyes and say that? I was willing to give up everything for you. I was scared as shit about what was happening between us, but I was still willing to try and keep you.”

“Keep me?”

“Yeah, keep you! Keep you happy, keep you with me. Keep you here. I knew you had to go back to school, and I wasn’t going to stand in the way of your education. I saw how much working in the woods meant to you. But I wanted the relationship, even if it was just summers and holidays together, I would’ve waited. I wanted you to come back to me when you were through. Instead, you just bailed. You never answered my calls, probably shredded my letters. And for what? Because you thought I didn’t care about you enough? I cared about you too much.”

Heartbreak hunched her forward and a sob clawed its way up her throat. “Then why did you cheat on me?”

Denison froze, eyes wide and furious, mouth set in a thin, shocked line. Slowly, his eyebrows raised. “Cheat on you? And who is it you think I cheated on you with? That’s not even an option for my kind, Danielle! Not when we’re in that deep. I didn’t want anyone else.”

Danielle shook her head and shot him a warning look. “Don’t.” Of course he’d deny it. All men did after they were caught. The walls came for her when she stood, collapsing by inches until they threatened to snuff her out completely.

“Oh, yeah,” Denison said, standing. “Run. Run when it gets hard. See, this is why we wouldn’t have ever worked. As soon as you get scared, you bolt. If a conversation turns too serious, you disappear like you never freaking existed. Have I ever walked away from talking to you?”

Danielle reached for the doorknob and clutched the cold metal in her damp palm. Tears rimmed her eyes, threatening to overflow. How mortifying that he’d snuffed out all her bravado with a few words.

“No,” she whispered. “You never did that.” Inhaling deeply, she turned, but was unable to meet his gaze. “I saw you that night. You’d invited me to your show, and I had all these plans.”

“What plans?”

“I was going to tell you I loved you that night. I’d felt it for a while, and I’d never said it to anyone, and you’d been saying it for weeks, but I hadn’t been able to accept that you could feel that way about someone like me.”

“Someone like you. How did you see yourself?”

“The same way everyone saw me. Brainy, unsocial, awkward. But you made me feel pretty and special and cared for, and I wanted to finally tell you how I felt. But you were with her.” She dared a look at him.

He was shaking his head with his palms open as he approached her like a rancher soothing a spooked horse. “Her who?”

“The redhead. You had your arms around her, and you were both smiling and whispering in each other’s ears. And then…” She swallowed down the yellow bellied chicken in her. “And then I saw you kiss her.”

“Laura?”

“Sure. Great. Now I know her name. At least it’s not Cinnamon the whore-faced, nipple clamped, smelly vag—”

“Laura Beck. My sister.”

“Oooh.”

His sister.

His freaking sister?

No way did Danielle make that big of a mistake. No way did she throw away a relationship with Denny because she was too caught up in being hurt to confront him. The door was smooth against her back as she slid down and pulled her knees to her chest. That certainly put a different spin on how she’d seen him that night. Maybe the embraces hadn’t been as flirty as she’d imagined. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“What, you’d rather I cheated on you?”

“Well, I’d been trying for three months to get you to open up to me, and you hadn’t given me anything. You didn’t talk about your family, you didn’t talk about why Brighton doesn’t have a voice, you were always meeting up with the boys and sharing all these secret little looks every time I asked a question, and it left me on the outside. You with that girl, cheating on me…well…it made sense why you wouldn’t let me in. She made everything make sense.” Danielle bit her lip hard to keep another round of tears at bay.

Denison ran his hand roughly through his hair. He picked up a throw pillow, as if he were going to throw it at the wall, but decided against it and yelled into it instead. When he lifted his gaze back to hers, his eyes were blazing a lighter color, as if the shitty fluorescent lighting above him reflected off his face at a strange angle. “Dammit, Danielle, all you had to do was confront me. Literally, all you had to do was pick up your damned cell phone one of the hundred times I called you and let me explain. I knew you were feeling like an outsider. Don’t you think I could tell that? I was hurting you, but it was either let you all the way into my life, which included the scary parts, or cut you loose to spare you. I was going to let you know how I felt that night, too. My mom and dad don’t live around here, but Laura lives up in Denver. I asked her to drive out here to meet you. That was a big step for me. I was going to ease you into what my life was really like because I…”