Change of Heart (16 page)

He didn’t look apologetic at all. For all she knew, he could have found some other stupid woman to watch movies with last night.

“Yes, well, you and that slippery tongue of yours can take your coffee to go.” She tugged her elbow from his hand. “You know how to find the door.”

“Come on, Leah. You can’t be mad.”

She spun to face him. “Who said anything about being mad? I just have a few things to get in order for my
job.
You know, that thing I do here to ensure I get a paycheck, so I can give you back the money for my car repairs.”

She started down the hall, leaving him to watch her go. She might have thrown a little extra sway in her hips, but she’d never admit it to him.

“Which is exactly what I was doing last night.” Leah stopped just outside of her office as he went on. “I had to take care of some . . . issues with work. There were phone calls and arrangements to make. I need to go to San Francisco tomorrow.”

She turned slowly, facing him, trying to read him. He could be lying, but she didn’t think he was. He’d already mentioned trouble at work, but what if this was just an excuse?

“Leah, I wanted to come over, but by the time I finished, it was really late.” He ran a hand over his eyes. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to come over, and I wasn’t in any frame of mind to be able to do . . . well, this.” He let his hand fall to his side. “I was mentally exhausted and more than a little sore from the ride. I didn’t want to take that out on you.”

“Well, wasn’t that thoughtful of you?” The ice in her tone even caught her by surprise. She turned her back on him and reached for the doorknob.

She felt him behind her even before his hand slid up the wooden frame of the door. He didn’t touch her but he surrounded her—with his presence, his scent, the desire that rolled off of him in titillating waves. He brushed her hair away from her shoulder, his fingers moving over the curve of her neck exposed by her shirt, and she felt the longing coil tightly within her as his arm slipped around her waist, his palm lying against her stomach.

“You think I didn’t want to come? It was killing me all day remembering how it felt to kiss you.” His lips brushed over the sensitive spot behind her ear as he spoke. “I haven’t been able to get the taste of you off my lips. You were part of the reason I couldn’t come over last night. I couldn’t stop thinking about you long enough to focus on the work I needed to be doing.”

Leah let her head fall to one side with a sigh, giving him full access to the column of her neck. His lips found the pulse racing at her throat as he moved to one side of her, blocking her into the corner formed between the wall and the doorjamb. His hand slid around her back and curved around her waist. His thumb slid up over her ribs, teasing the underside of her breast; and his lips trailed hot kisses to her jaw. Leah’s hands found his waist, clutching at the T-shirt he wore, wishing she was bold enough to slide her hands beneath and feel the flesh that was scalding her through the material.

“You’re not ready for this. Any more than I am.”

His words fell around her, each one stabbing her heart. He was saying exactly what she’d already thought, but hearing it come from his lips hurt more than she’d ever imagined.

“I
SHOULD GO
.” Gage sucked in a shaky breath. He didn’t try to move away from her, and she didn’t release her grip on his shirt. He could feel her palms heating his skin through the material.

Looking up at him through feathered lashes, her eyes sparked with desire. “No,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t.”

He lifted his hand and brushed away the thick wave of hair that had fallen into her face, tucking it behind her ear. He pressed his forehead against hers and felt her tense. Gage took a deep breath and pressed a kiss to her cheek before reaching for her hands. “Yes, I should.”

“Gage?”

He knew he should walk out of the house and head back to his cabin. He should be thinking about the meeting he’d set up with George, Cooper, and their fourth partner and CFO, Griffin Masters. He
should
be studying the spreadsheets to see if there was a way they could still pay out the court settlements without laying off loyal employees. Being at Heart Fire, watching Jessie adamantly champion Leah, made him remember that, not too long ago, before he’d fallen victim to the whims of corporate greed, he’d done the same for his employees. He wanted to be that man again. Leah made him want to stand up and be that man again, the one who defended those who couldn’t fight for themselves, the one who would be an advocate for those who couldn’t speak. He shook his head and walked back toward the front door.

She stopped at the edge of the hall, forcing him to pause and turn back to her. “Why?” Her voice was quiet but demanding.

He pulled her toward him, and she came into his arms willingly but kept her palms against his chest, as if she was ready to flee if she felt threatened. He put his finger under her chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze.

“Leah, you flinch whenever I touch you. I can feel you tense up. I don’t want you to feel like I’m forcing this on you.” Gage ran his thumb gently over her cheek. “I’m going to go for now. I’ll come back later after you’re finished with the boys today, and we can have dinner or something, okay?” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and started for the door.

“Every man who has ever touched me has hurt me, except you.”

Her words stopped him mid-stride. Gage hung his head, praying she wouldn’t go on, hoping that what he was sure she was about to tell him hadn’t happened to her.

“The first time was when I was ten. He made me strip down, and she told him he could touch me. I can’t even count how many times it happened after that. But when I was twelve . . . ” Gage turned to see Leah shake her head, saw the ashen pallor of her skin, the coldness in her eyes. “She needed more money, so when he told her what he’d pay to have sex with me . . . she was too strung out to even know what was happening to me.”

Gage didn’t need to ask who. She’d already mentioned her mother. He felt repulsion at the nightmare Leah lived as a child, hating the one person who should have protected her. His fists clenched at his sides, and he could feel the bile rising in his throat at the perversion she’d been forced to endure.

“I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Every time I ran away, they brought me back. If I told someone what happened, she told them I was lying.”

Gage wondered if she even realized she was crying. The tears slid down her cheeks, unchecked, but Leah seemed distant, completely detached from the girl who suffered so deeply. Her arms hung limply at her sides, and although she looked at him, Leah’s blank stare didn’t see him. She was completely focused on the nightmare she was reliving.

“So, I finally decided that if I couldn’t make it stop, I would at least control it. I started making them pay me directly, instead of her. At least that way, I could manage the situation and keep myself from catching something the way she did. I could hide some of the money for food and bills.”

Gage felt like he’d been kicked in the gut by her revelation. She couldn’t possibly be saying that she’d prostituted herself. But Gage couldn’t work up the self-righteousness to judge her. As bad as things had been when his father was alive, he’d had his brother and his mother. He’d still had a family he could count on. Leah had no one. Everyone had failed her. The hardened exterior he believed she revealed to the world was formed for sheer survival.

He reached out to her, unable to control the instinct to want to comfort her.

Her eyes suddenly cleared, and she took a step backward in the hall, distancing herself from him. He could see her trying to build the wall between them, higher and stronger. She’d let him see her deepest vulnerabilities, and now she wanted to hide.

“How can you touch me? Don’t I disgust you? I’m dirty. Contaminated by everything I did, and I’ll never be clean again, if I ever was.”

Her voice broke, and her strength seemed to disappear as she leaned back against the wall, sliding down it to curl into a ball on the floor. Her entire body trembled as tears poured from her. Gage fell to his knees in front of her, reaching out to pull her into his lap, wrapping himself around her, whispering words he wouldn’t even remember saying, sharing the pain he could feel flowing from her like an infected wound finally cleansed.

He felt his own heart breaking for her, for the child she’d been, for the young woman who hadn’t been able to figure out a better way, for the innocence she’d lost. She’d opened up to him and revealed more than he’d ever expected. She’d entrusted him with a gift. And a curse.

They couldn’t go back. Gage couldn’t unhear any of this. It had changed things between them, but he wasn’t sure to what extent. Contrary to what she’d expected, he wasn’t turning away from her. He wasn’t repelled by her past, just by what had been done to her. He found himself wanting to help her more than ever before.

Leah was a fighter, a warrior who battled odds that would have made most people drown in fear and self-destruction. She had continued to fight her way to the surface, and he respected her. He wanted to lift some of the burden from her shoulders, to give her a safe place to be weak, knowing someone else would be strong for her.

“Leah,” he whispered against her hair, wishing again he could shoulder the pain for her, to change her past. “Baby, look at me. You’re not dirty.” His hands cupped her face, forcing her to look into his eyes, to see the truth in them instead of in the tainted words she’d been told by others. “You’re beautiful and strong and . . . God, Leah, you’re incredible.”

Gage pressed kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, her eyelids, tasting the salty tears that continued to slip down her cheeks, as she shook her head in denial.

“Listen to me.” Her eyes opened, and he could see she was. “What happened to you wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to do to survive. You got out.”

“But what I did . . . ” She buried her face into his chest.

He could remind her that she would never judge one of her patients the way she was judging herself. Or point out that she hadn’t had other options. Or point out to her how far she had come from the girl she’d once been. But none of those things would offer what she needed most—someone to hold her until the terror of the past faded, like a child waking from a bad dream. Leah needed him to be a rock for her to cling to while the waves of self-recrimination crashed around her. He would help her hold on as long as she needed him to.

L
EAH WOKE AS
the light streamed in through the window, while the dark brown curtain blew slightly as a light breeze fell into the room. She stretched out on top of the large bed, feeling spent and wondering how she ended up in her room.

She bolted upright in the bed as the memories flooded back—Gage coming for coffee, getting angry, telling him about her past—everything, including the mistakes she’d made. She looked around the room, searching for anything that might give her a clue where Gage had gone. Her eyes fell on the clock, and she realized the boys would be here in less than an hour for a final session before they left. Leah swung her legs over the side of the bed as Gage entered the room.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I have a session, remember? I need a quick shower.”

“Leah.”

She held up a hand, cutting him off. “Don’t, Gage. We can talk about this another time.” She turned her back on him, as she reached for a shirt in the closet. “Or not at all. Trust me,” she said, turning to look at him over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t blame you at all for trying to forget everything I told you.”

Gage crossed the room in just a few strides and turned her so that she faced him, his hand curving at the side of her neck, his fingers burying themselves into her tangled hair.

“Don’t.” He closed his eyes. “Don’t start hiding from me again.”

Her hands rested against the wall of his abs, and she felt him tense. She wanted to deny everything, to fall back into the stoic persona she’d cultivated, but he’d already seen the truth. He’d seen how paper-thin that facade was. His thumb traced the line of her jaw, as he tipped her face up to his, and the familiar shiver of heat spread through her limbs.

“I don’t know how to do anything else,” she confessed. “I’ve been hiding all my life. From my mother, from people who wouldn’t believe the truth.” She let her forehead fall against his chest, hiding her face and her shame. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

“You have no idea what your trust means to me.” His voice was thick with emotion, sounding like he was holding back his own tears. “I never meant to make you feel the way . . . ” He didn’t finish the thought, but she didn’t need him to.

“Gage, you
never
hurt me or made me feel afraid. When I’m with you, when we . . . ” She took a step back so he could see her face. “I don’t feel the way I did. That’s what’s so confusing for me. It scares me.” She felt the blush cover her cheeks and turned away before he could see it, walking to the end of the bed. “Everything in my life has taught me that sex is a tool, either a bargaining chip or a weapon to hurt. Use or be used. But with you . . . it’s not like that.”

Gage took a step toward her, but she held out her hand. She wanted to finish saying this before her nerve left her, before she let fear or common sense swallow up her courage.

“Wait, let me finish. I’m not saying I expect anything from you in return, especially after everything I told you. Obviously, I’m not as far removed from my past as I like to believe I am, but you make me feel like I could be, like I could get to that point where it can’t affect my future.”

Gage stopped where he was, about two feet from her, and tucked his fingers into the front pockets of his jeans. She could see the tension in his shoulders, but she couldn’t tell if it was because what she said encouraged or upset him.

“I don’t know what this is,” she said, waving her hand between them, “but thank you for this morning. I have never had anyone but Nicole who would just be there for me.”

“How long were you with her?” His question was quiet and not the one she’d expected, giving everything she’d confessed.

“She was my high school counselor and eventually became my foster mother for two years.” Her eyes misted with tears. “She’s the reason I wanted to become a therapist. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for her.”

Gage’s shoulders seemed to relax slightly as he closed the distance between them, letting his hands fall to her upper arms, pulling her back into his embrace. “I’d love to meet her someday,” Gage said as he tucked her head beneath his chin.

She smiled sadly against his throat. “You can’t, but she’d have liked you.”

“I’m sorry. She must have been a great woman,” he whispered against her hair, and she realized he must have guessed by her use of past tense that Nicole was no longer in her life. “And I will be there for you whenever you need me.”

“You can’t promise that. You don’t know me that well.” In spite of her cynical nature, Leah wanted to believe him, to take him at his word and trust his promise. After what he’d seen and heard this morning, he was still here. That alone said a lot about Gage’s character.

“What? You don’t think spending twelve hours a day together for the last week is enough to know you?” She felt his smile against her hair, felt him relax as he ran his hand over the back of her head. “Leah, I don’t know everything about you, but I told you I would be your friend. I wasn’t lying then and nothing you’ve said can change that. I care about you.”

Relief coursed through her, sapping whatever strength she had left, and she leaned into him, tightening her arms around his waist and enjoying the moment. For the first time, she felt like she could trust someone else to be strong for her and allow herself a chance to release the fear that had dogged her for so long. He hadn’t tried to fill her head with pretty words, he didn’t try to pretend her past didn’t matter, he didn’t try to convince her that he loved her or ask her for something she couldn’t offer him.

All of those things would have been lies. Instead he gave her his honesty, and that made her feel safer than any lie ever could.