“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to sleep in a guest room for a while. Unless you’d rather I get the kids and leave altogether. It’s clear you don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you.”
I stared at the man who’d just crushed me, not believing a word from his mouth. “No, you don’t.”
31
Mason
“What the hell happened to you?”
I looked up from my computer, blinking a few times and trying to bring Cain’s face into focus. My eyelids felt as if they were made of sandpaper. “I fucked up.”
Cain stepped inside my office and shut the door. “Anna?”
I nodded and pressed my fingers into the corners of my eyes, trying to alleviate some of the pressure.
“What’d you do?”
I took a deep breath and leaned back in my chair. “I asked Dante to look into her. See if there was anything that could come out and bite us. She found out.”
Cain let out a low whistle. “That was dumb.”
I glared at my friend. “I can see that now.” I’d thought she might be pissed when I told her. But I hadn’t seen things through her eyes. I hadn’t meant to break her trust, but that was precisely what I’d done.
Her words about me wanting to know things that she wasn’t ready to share echoed in my mind. She might have been right there. Ididwant to know. Every secret and every single thing she hid away. The good and the bad. I wanted all of it because I wantedher.
I’d fallen in love with a woman who gave so much to others. Who never gave up, no matter the odds stacked against her. Anna’s unique mix of tenderness and fire was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. And now, I might have lost her.
“How are you going to fix it?” Cain asked, breaking into my thoughts.
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I? I can’t even get her to listen to me.”
Every time I’d tried to get her alone this morning, Anna had used the kids as shields. I’d asked if we could talk, and she’d insisted that she was late—she’d been thirty minutes early.
Cain eased into a chair across from my desk. “You’re going to have to shock her into pausing long enough for you to throw yourself on her mercy and tell her you’re an idiot.”
“I think I’ve got the groveling part down.” I’d been running through what I wanted to say in my head all night.
“You need a grand gesture.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Let me and Kenz take Justin and Lyla for a sleepover tonight. Get an elaborate dinner for Anna, candles, the works. That should make her pause long enough for you to at least start talking.”
“I’ll make her dinner.”
Cain raised a brow. “You a good cook?”
I grinned. “I’m damn good.”
“That’ll make it more meaningful.” He paused.
“What?”
“You need to make peace with the fact that Anna may never be ready to open up to you the way you want her to. If you can’t handle that, you need to walk away. It’s not fair to either of you to expect her to be someone she’s not.”
I knew it would always be a struggle for her to let me in. But I believed she would get there, bit by bit—as long as I didn’t keep pulling bonehead moves like I had yesterday. “I love Anna for exactly who she is. I just want her to feel safe enough to let down her guard with me.”
“Hell,” Cain muttered. “You’re done for. I can see it already. Just don’t get your hopes up that things will change overnight.”
