Page 38 of Mack

She didn’t answer that. Didn’t trust herself to. Instead, she pressed her palm flat against his chest and felt his heartbeat, still unsteady, settling back into its rhythm the same way hers was.

Outside the world was doing whatever it did. In here time had gone soft and slow, and she wasn’t ready to let it sharpen back up yet.

She must have dozed, because when she opened her eyes, the room was darker the only light coming from the hallway through the gap in the door. Mack was still there. She’d half expected him not to be.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said.

“I know.”

“I mean it, Mack.”

“I know that too.” He didn’t look away from the ceiling. “Does it change anything?”

She wanted to say no. The word was right there, easy, and clean and safe. She opened her mouth and what came out was nothing at all.

He watched her struggle with it and didn’t push, which was somehow worse than if he had.

“I need to think,” she finally managed.

“Okay.” No argument, no wounded pride. Just okay.

She didn’t know why that made her want to cry.

Sitting up, she reached for her robe, pulling it on more for something to do with her hands than because she was cold. Mack didn’t stop her. He just watched, patient in that steady way of his that she still hadn’t learned how to read.

“You should know,” she said, not looking at him, “that I’m not good at this.”

“At what?”

She gestured vaguely at the space between them as she sat on the bed. “This. Any of it.”

He was quiet for a moment. “You seemed pretty good at it to me.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She pulled her knees to her chest. “I mean the rest of it. The part that comes after.”

Mack sat up slowly, resting his forearms on his knees, giving her space without leaving it.

“You want to tell me about it now?”

She almost said no. Almost deflected with something sharp and funny that would close the door before he could get any closer. It was what she did. It was what she was good at.

But he was sitting there looking at her like she was worth waiting for, and something about that cracked her open just enough.

“We were together five years,” she said. “I put up with his abuse for four years. Some people don’t get why a woman stays. It’s fear. You know what he’s capable of and will do anything not to bring that anger out. You convince yourself he didn’t mean it and things would get better. They don’t.”

Mack didn’t say anything. He just listened.

“He wasn’t like that the first year we were together. They never are.” She laughed, but there was nothing behind it. “By the time I figured out who he actually was, I’d already forgotten who I was.”

She looked at her hands. “I got out. Eventually. But getting out doesn’t mean you stop carrying it. I wake up some mornings, and my first thought is still whether I said the wrong thing the night before. Whether I’m about to pay for it.” She shook her head. “Almost four years out and I still do that. He exploded when I told him I was pregnant. He blamed me and told me to get rid of it. He’d been clear from the start, he said. No kids. I refused. That baby was my heart before I even held him. So, I walked out while Troy was away on the circuit. He’s a bull rider, doing what he called work but was mostly an excuse to chase buckle bunnies across the states. I filed for divorce and never looked back, even knowing his anger hadn’t gone anywhere. It never did with men like him. It just waited.”

“Mallory.”

“I’m not telling you this, so you’ll feel sorry for me. I’m telling you because you asked, and because you deserve to know what you’re dealing with.” She finally looked at him. “I don’t know how to trust a man. I don’t know if I remember how. And I think you’re a good person, Mack, I genuinely do, but I thought that once before and I was so wrong it almost broke me.”

He held her gaze and didn’t flinch from any of it.

“I’m not him,” he said quietly.