Page 66 of The Encore Effect

“Looks like it.”

“Looks worse than it is.”

“I’ll get you some ice,” she said, moving to go, but he held her feet firmly, preventing her from standing.

“Later.”

He could see her debating with herself, considering ignoring his request and calling down to the kitchen for ice anyway, but then she settled back against the couch. He squeezed her foot, an offering of gratitude.

Something fragile blossomed behind his sternum, a delicate understanding that something new was growing between them, something woven with the frayed fibers of before but also the silken strands of whatever they were now. Something he wanted to shelter, carve a nest for in his chest, and coax into being. Something soft and breakable that could break him in return.

“Are you ready to talk now?” he asked, keeping his eyes on her feet.

She chuckled, more air than sound. “I don’t know where to start.”

He thought for a moment as he kneaded the muscles of her calves through her jeans. “The bookstore. You were angry with me.”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“You read my books.”

He glanced at her. “I did.”

“All of them.” He nodded. “Why?”

His forehead furrowed in confusion. Had she really thought he wouldn’t read her books? Did she really have no idea how much they meant to him? “Because you wrote them.”

“Not for you.”

His hands stilled, and he breathed through the lick of hurt that flared in his gut. “Just about me.”

She blew out a breath. “Inspired by you. And you’re the only one who knew that.”

“But I didn’t know. Not until I read them.” Frustration warred with his need to stay calm, to get through this conversation once and for all. “You told the world our story. Over and over.”

“I was telling it to myself.”

He turned to face her more fully, searching her face. “I don’t understand.”

“I wanted to remember how it was. That it was real.” She closed her eyes. “I wanted to rewrite the ending.”

“You’re the one who left,” he said, the words ash in his mouth.

She opened her eyes slowly, pain slashed across her face. “You left me long before I walked out the door.”

“I never—”

“You shut me out. You shut down. I couldn’t get to you, and I couldn’t keep pretending it wasn’t killing me. Someone had to put us out of our misery.”

Her words sliced through his skin, leaving behind jagged wounds as deep as the scars on his knee. “You were miserable?”

“I was lonely,” she said. “Missing you while you were right there was so much harder than missing you when you were gone.”

“You being gone was worse.” He swallowed around the knot in his throat, the tangle of things he still wasn’t sure how to say. Things like I loved you and I still love you and I’m pretty sure I’ll always love you.

She studied him, curious green eyes that saw right through him. They always had. There was no hiding from her when she looked at him like that—which was maybe why he’d hid from her in other ways for so long.