Chapter 35 #2
That sharp impatience was like a hook, yanking my spine straight, forcing my shoulders back.
“I want to know why you won’t talk about your family.
I want to know why you ignored your mom.
Why you disappear at the same time every year, why you won’t talk about the scar on your belly when you’ll talk about all the others.
” I rounded the island to press my hands to his chest. “I want to know you, and you won’t let me. ”
“Bullshit,” Walker replied harshly. “You know me better than most.”
“Than most?” I smoothed my hand over his heart. “You know everything about me. I’ve let you in to every part … why won’t you let me in?”
He curled his hand around my wrist. “I have. But there are some things I don’t want to talk about. This”—he trapped my hand between his palm and his chest—“is what I can give you. That’s either enough or it isn’t.”
I yanked on my hand, and Walker’s eyes blazed as he reluctantly let me go. “So you’re telling me that there are important things about your past you’re never going to tell me?”
“They’re not things you need to know. They don’t affect us.”
Was he serious? Was he really that clueless? “If we stay the course, I’m just supposed to shut up when you disappear every September for two weeks?”
He seemed surprised I’d been paying such close attention. “It’s not about us so, aye.”
Hurt clawed at my throat. “Are you kidding?”
“Sloane—”
“Are you telling me that if I just up and disappeared with Callie for two weeks every year and didn’t tell you a damn thing about it, you’d be cool with that?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw, and I knew I had him. Yet still the stubborn bastard said, “If it was important to you to keep it to yourself, then aye.”
“You’re a liar,” I spat angrily, retreating from him.
Walker’s eyes flashed in warning. “Sloane.”
“No, don’t use that tone like I’m a misbehaving child.” My whole body shook as an awful decision weighed on me. “This is serious, Walker. I … How can this go anywhere if you don’t trust me?”
“I could ask you the same thing. I’m asking you to trust that this doesn’t affect us.” He reached for me, but I retreated. Hurt flared in his eyes and I hated that … but he was hurting me too.
“Of course it affects us. You’re a fool if you think your secrets won’t affect us.
They would eventually come between us. I …
” I stared at him, taking in every inch of his handsome face, hating him a little but myself more.
Because hadn’t I known it would end this way?
“I need all of you … I need your trust … I don’t know if that’s fair or not.
To want all your secrets. To know about your family, where you come from.
I really don’t. And I’m sorry if it’s not fair.
But just like you know who you are, I know who I am.
And I know that I need all of you, and not having that will fester between us.
” Because it would make me question if he could love me the way I needed to be loved.
I’d never been loved enough by my father; I’d been loved in the wrong way by Nathan …
My soul was battered and bruised by the men who had come before Walker. It wasn’t his fault.
But the reality was, they’d left wounds, and those wounds meant I’d need the man I loved to show me in every way he could that I was everything to him.
That I had him in a way no one else did.
I didn’t know if that was realistic or right, but it’s how I felt.
How I needed it. “So if … if you can’t give me that …
” I exhaled shakily, tears pricking my eyes. “This has to be over.”
Walker’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and a heavy silence hung between us as the color drained from his face. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, staring at me in stark disbelief, as the only sound in the room was the scrape of his fingers against his beard.
Finally, and just in time, because I thought I might puke with the suspense, Walker dropped his arm. Looking defeated.
He said nothing.
He didn’t need to.
His answer was written all over him.
I turned as my tears fell, and the effort of holding in the sob that wanted to break free was excruciating. Even as I hurried into his living room to grab my purse, I hoped he’d call out to me. That he’d stop me from leaving.
But I got to the front door, and then I was outside.
He never called my name.
The sob I’d been holding back burst out of me as I reached my car and fumbled to get in.
I struggled to contain it, to keep the gaping hole that had opened in my chest from swallowing me. My mind went into autopilot after I decided I didn’t want to be alone, but I couldn’t go to Monroe because Brodan was Walker’s best friend.
Instead, I drove to the estate, and the guards, faces stricken at the sight of my tears, let me in.
I parked outside Aria’s and had barely gotten out of the car when her front door opened. She came toward me, wearing a thick cardigan against the bitter December air. As I climbed the porch steps, her expression softened with sympathy at what she saw on my face.
“Sloane?”
I burst into loud, messy sobs as reality crashed down on me.
It was over.
Walker would never hold me in his arms again. Never kiss me or touch me or hold my hand. I’d never see his eyes crinkle with amusement and tenderness for me. Never feel protected and needed in the way only he ever made me feel. Never smell him or connect with him or sit in perfect silence with him.
The hole in my chest cracked wide open, and Aria rushed for me, pulling me into her arms as I sobbed against her shoulder like the love of my life had just goddamn died.