Chapter 18
Reese
O kay, I couldn’t say that I wasn’t disappointed, but I gave Devon a lot of credit for speaking his truth.
He obviously didn’t want me as much as I wanted him, and I was going to have to be alright with that.
Unfortunately, my heart still ached, especially after what had just happened between the two of us.
“I understand,” I said as I stepped back.
“No, I don’t think you do,” Devon said huskily as he moved forward, picked me up, and carried me into the family room.
He put me down on the sofa, sat next to me and wrapped his arm around me, pulling me close before he spoke. “You can’t be a hookup for me, Reese. I care way too much about you for that, but I’m also not sure how to be your guy. I haven’t been anyone’s man since college, and that relationship soured my desire to have any kind of relationship with a woman for a very long time. I honestly didn’t think I’d ever want that again.”
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” I queried gently.
I wasn’t quite sure where all of this was leading, but I sensed that it was important.
No, it was probably beyond important. I was fairly certain I was about to discover why there had always been two sides of Devon. One that was kind of a jerk and another that was the kindest man I’d ever known.
He finally nodded. “It was a really long time ago. I was in my last year at the university. I dated in high school and college, but I’d never fallen hard for anyone until I met Claudia. I thought she was a student. In the end I found out she wasn’t. She was a con artist that just happened to be at the college when we met. All of the details aren’t that important since it happened so long ago, but I was a total idiot. Our parents set all of us up with a large college fund to use while we were in school. I barely touched it until I met her. I wanted to make my own way and pay for most of my college expenses by working my way through school. She always needed something. Tuition. Money for things she needed to pay. A new vehicle. I gave her everything until I had nothing left to give her. It was a very short relationship. She managed to drain me dry in a very short period of time. But I was really infatuated, and she was incredibly good at making me feel like I mattered to her. Honestly, I was a stupid, na?ve kid who didn’t know the difference between love and extreme infatuation. I felt like an idiot when I found out that she was just trying to get everything she could from me. I also felt stupid that I’d never realized that she was quite a few years older than I was. She already had a boyfriend who was in a gang. After she dumped me because I had nothing left to give her, her boyfriend found me in a deserted location and tried to kill me because he didn’t want me to go to the police.”
I took his hand and squeezed it tightly. “What happened?”
He grinned down at me. “He obviously didn’t succeed because I’m still alive and talking to you. I fought back and managed to get out of the situation with a few stab wounds that were fixed up in the emergency room with a lot of sutures.”
“Oh, God, Devon,” I said, horrified. “You could have been killed.”
“I wasn’t,” he said nonchalantly. “But that incident taught me a lesson. I’ve never wanted to get serious with a woman since that day.”
“You never told anyone? Not even your brothers?”
“I felt like a complete loser. I still do,” he explained. “I never wanted anyone to know. I fell for a con. My brothers were already working to be successful in New York. It took me a long time to get over the fact that I’d fallen for a stupid con and almost died because of it. I was bitter and cynical after that. I never completely trusted a woman again after that happened. I just shut down emotionally. I figured I was better off staying out of relationships, and I’ve been perfectly okay with that decision…until I met you.”
God, he’d been scared to trust any relationship after that, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him.
He had put up so many walls that no woman ever had a chance of reaching the real Devon again.
It made me so angry that any woman could do that to a young man that had just wanted her to love him.
I remembered being in college and how na?ve and unworldly I’d been at the time.
He’d been vulnerable prey for a greedy con woman.
“Now,” he continued. “I want more for us, but I’m not sure how to be a good boyfriend or even if that’s what you want, too.”
Tears filled my eyes, and my heart ached for Devon.
He was making himself completely vulnerable to me right now, and I knew how hard that had to be for him.
He’d been alone for so long because he’d been too afraid to trust his own judgment when it came to romantic relationships.
“I want it to be real, too,” I told him truthfully. “You’re already a good man, Devon. You’d be an incredible boyfriend. Nothing that happened to you was your fault. You were young. I was pretty stupid when I was in my early twenties. We think we know everything, but we really know absolutely nothing about the world yet. What happened to the bitch who did this to you and her boyfriend?”
“They were both picked up the next day on another case. I wasn’t their first victim, but I was the last. The last I knew, he was in jail for life for murder, and she was put away for a long time on multiple charges.”
I nodded. “Good. Although that’s kind of a shame because I’d like to punch her in the face myself.”
His grin widened. “Are you becoming my protector now? I thought you were a healer.”
“Not when somebody hurts someone I care about,” I said fiercely. “It pisses me off.”
“It was a long time ago, Reese. The incident doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It matters,” I argued. “It left a very good man with emotional scars.”
“I think I’m looking at the woman who can heal those completely,” Devon said huskily. “I trust you, Reese, and I never thought I’d say that to a woman ever again.”
A tear plopped onto my cheek. “That’s probably the greatest gift anyone has ever given me. I trust you, too.”
Given his history, it almost seemed like a miracle.
“Speaking of trust,” he said sheepishly. “I have a confession to make since I want to make sure that I’m always honest with you from now on. You were right not to trust my motives in the very beginning. Originally, I had planned to get you into a more comfortable place to find out what you were hiding. That plan got derailed fairly quickly when I realized that you’d never do anything to hurt my family. It didn’t take me long to realize that I’d been a total idiot, and that you were an incredible woman that I wanted to get to know because I liked you. I’ve been attracted to you since that first night at your apartment.”
That wasn’t exactly surprising to me. I’d always suspected his motives in the beginning, but what developed after that was definitely real for both of us.
I could hardly fault him for trying to protect the people he loved.
I had been lying to everyone, so his intuition had been right.
Even though I hadn’t always been honest with him, he trusted me, and I’d die before I ever betrayed that trust in any way ever again.
“I’m glad you told me,” I said softly. “But I really don’t care what your motives were in the beginning. I was hiding things, and you didn’t know me. You were just trying to protect your family. Your protectiveness is one of the things that I adore about you.”
“So are you willing to give this a shot?” he asked in a serious voice. “I’ll definitely screw up, and I probably won’t do all of the things I should for you. I’m going to be incredibly inept with the relationship thing, but I promise that I’ll try.”
I reached up and stroked his stubbled jawline. “Oh, Devon, you’re already more amazing than you know. We’ll take it slow. You know I haven’t had the best track record with boyfriends, so I’m no expert on good relationships.”
“I think I can do better than those idiots,” he rumbled. “They obviously didn’t know a good woman when they had one.”
Devon was at least a million times better than any guy I’d ever dated.
I wished he could understand that, but he apparently was worried about his lack of experience at being in a romantic relationship.
“I know a good man when I see one now,” I murmured as I kissed his jawline.
“I’m not going to press you about a future,” Devon commented. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when all of this is over for you. I just want to be with you with everything in the open. It’s getting pretty damn hard pretending we’re just friends. My family definitely isn’t buying it.”
I laughed. “I can tell you that Hannah definitely isn’t.”
“My mom and my brothers aren’t fooled, either,” Devon admitted. “We don’t have to sleep together, Reese. You deserve some dates first, and some boyfriend behavior.”
I wanted to argue after having a little taste of what it would be like to be with Devon, but I didn’t.
I was going to let him take this at his own pace.
“What did you have in mind,” I asked curiously. “We’re riding together tomorrow. Is that a date?”
“If I had my way, I’d take some time off work and fly you anywhere you wanted to go, but that’s not possible right now. I’ll think of something. You’ll also be getting endless gifts, and you can’t argue if they’re coming from your man.”
I sent him a warning look. “Please don’t get crazy.”
“Sweetheart,” he said rationally. “I’m a billionaire. I have so much money that I don’t know what to do with it, and I am going to give you things.”
“I don’t need anything,” I argued. “I only have a small savings here, but I have money in my real accounts, and I’m the only child of wealthy parents. They aren’t billionaire wealthy, but I’m their only child, and they spoil me rotten.”
“Then it’s my turn to spoil you rotten,” Devon said adamantly. “That’s my job now.”
“And what exactly can I do for you?” I asked.
“You already spoil me,” he said firmly. “You cook for me, you make me special things, and you care about me and not my money. Those things have meant a lot to me, Reese. A guy couldn’t want anything more than that. This guy doesn’t.”
“Mind blowing sex?” I suggested in a sultry voice.
“Don’t start on that, woman,” he growled. “Or you’ll never get a single date before you end up in my bed.”
I wanted to tell him that it was just fine with me if he wanted to go that route, but he obviously had his mind made up about exactly how all of this should go.
“It’s not easy to keep quiet about it,” I said teasingly. “Not when you’re about to date the hottest guy on the planet.” I paused before I asked in a more serious voice, “You obviously saw my scar from the shooting. Is it still ugly? I try not to look at it.”
“It’s not ugly,” he said like he was irritated that I thought that it was. “It’s part of you, Reese, and every part of you is beautiful. It is a little scary how close it was to your heart, and it guts me to think about how much pain it caused you, but nothing about you will ever be ugly to me.”
Sometimes Devon said the sweetest things that he didn’t even know were sweet.
My hand went to the healed wound on my chest automatically. “I’m hoping it will fade, eventually.”
Devon took my hand and removed it from my chest, holding it tightly. “It’s a testament that you’re a survivor, sweetheart. I’ll show you my scars if it makes you feel any better. I have plenty of them. We all have scars.”
I wiggled my brows. “Does that mean you’d have to take off your clothes to show them to me? If so, I’m all for that idea. I’d love to examine every one of them.”
Devon let out a bark of laughter. “You’re a wicked woman, Reese Monroe.”
“Only with you,” I told him with a sigh as I laid my head on his shoulder. “I guess I should check on dinner. It should be done soon. It’s your turn to pick a movie to watch, but I am not watching The Matrix or The Shawshank Redemption again. Pick something else.”
Unfortunately, I was all caught up on Antiques Roadshow.
Devon and I traded back and forth on picking movies to watch before bed every night.
He had a few that he could watch over and over if I let him.
Most of them were older classics that were definitely ‘guy’ movies.
“Die Hard?” he asked hopefully.
“We just saw that one earlier in the week,” I complained jokingly as I got off the sofa to go rescue our dinner.
“Then I’ll just let you pick,” he said magnanimously as he stood. “I’m happy just being with you. I really don’t care what we watch.”
My heart somersaulted inside my chest.
God, this man really did say things that made me adore him even more.
I walked over to him, put my arms around his neck, and told him, “We’ll watch Die Hard.”
He kissed me until my entire body almost melted.
The embrace was slow, sexy, and adoring.
“Why?” he asked when he finally lifted his head.
“Because I’m happy just being with you, too,” I confessed.
He shot me a shit-eating grin and then kissed me again.
The kiss was so thorough that our dinner was almost overcooked, but neither one of us cared.