Revealing Us (Inside Out #3)(11)

Chris is putting on airs, pretending to be ine when he is not. He needs me. He needed me when Dylan died, and he’s not shutting me out again.

Opening the door, I don’t think twice about interrupting his call. The new day is cool, not cold, but my chest is burning.

Chris turns at the sound of my steps, a dim overhead light illuminating the surprise on his face, the Eifel Tower his backdrop.

No, that’s wrong. His pain is his eternal backdrop.

“I need to go, Stephen,” Chris says. “Call me when you have news.” He ends the connection and slides his phone into his jean pocket. “I thought you were taking a bath?”

I close the distance between us and wrap my arms around him, holding him tightly. His arms close around me and his hand slides down my hair. “What is this, Sara? What’s wrong, baby? The attorney said—”

“I don’t care right now,” I say, tilting my face up to look at him. “I don’t care about the detective or Ava or anything but you. Please tell me you aren’t blaming yourself for Rebecca’s death. Ava did this. Not you. Not Mark.”

Surprise lickers in his face before the shutters come down and I can no longer read his reaction, but the way his muscles tense beneath my hands tell me I’ve hit a nerve. “I know Ava did this.”

I shake my head, sensing the guilt in him he won’t admit.

“You don’t know—you think you should have done more to get Rebecca out of the club. But you did everything you could, Chris. You did more than most would have done.”



He stares down at me, his gaze hooded. We’re adrift in a sea of silence and his reaction is impossible to read, and I’m not sure what to do next. Chris is a light switch away from dark and light, pain and pleasure, and I’m far from knowing how to navigate the bumpy waters of his darker side.

But I want to master it. I want to be what he needs, not some damn whip tearing him apart. I’m not yet, though. Should I push him to deal with what he’s feeling, refuse to let him bottle it inside, where it can later explode? Or let it go for now?

He takes my face in his hands and searches my eyes. I have the impression he’s looking for an answer to a question he hasn’t asked, and I’ve never in my life wanted to be the answer to a question, the way I do when Chris is seeking one.

“What I don’t know,” he inally confesses, “is how I’ll ever sleep again, after watching you almost die last night.”

No one but my mother has ever loved me enough to worry this much, but with Chris that worry is complicated. I’m smart enough to see the writing on the wall, and I don’t like what it reveals. While I was thinking about what comes next in Paris on the light, Chris was rethinking it with Rebecca’s tragedy as his guide.

“We aren’t them,” I tell him. “We aren’t Rebecca and Mark.

And I’m not going anywhere, so you might as well just let me come inside.” I’m not talking about our house and we both know it.

I barely get the words out before his mouth comes down on mine, his tongue stroking against mine, awakening my senses, the taste of him pouring through me. Hungry for him, I want his passion, I want his pain. I want it all.

I tug at his shirt, running my hands under the material, absorbing the feel of his naked, hard body beneath my palms.

Finally. I’ve waited hours that felt like a lifetime to be this close to him, and I moan, part relief, part pleasure.

Chris tears his mouth from mine, tunneling ingers in my hair to hold me away from him, a struggle etched on his handsome face. “You passed out, Sara. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I didn’t come to Paris with Mr. Nice, Chris, so don’t bring him out to play now. And I won’t rest until we do this.” I try to lean in to kiss him again.

He tightens his ingers in my hair and sends an erotic thrill up and down my spine. Oh, yes. Good-bye, Mr. Nice Guy.

Hello, Chris.

“Gentle isn’t how I’ll deal with the kind of things going on in my head right now,” he warns. “Why do you think I walked away in the bathroom?”

“I don’t want gentle.” I don’t like what I see on his face, a battle between the burn to take me and what he thinks I’m ready to handle, and I won’t let him decide for me. “I understand what it means to need more than that. I need more, Chris.”

In a blink he’s maneuvered me against a giant white pillar separating the iron gates, his hands framing my waist. “I used to think you didn’t understand. But you do. Too well. And I blame myself for that, Sara. I didn’t want this for you.”

His guilt over Rebecca could so easily bleed into our relationship, like his fears over who he is and who he will make me become. “I told you. I’m not Rebecca, so stop going there, Chris. I read those journals. She changed who she was to be with Mark.



“You didn’t turn me into who I am now. All you did was to help me to stop hiding from who I am, and I’m glad. Don’t make me feel like I have to start again.”

Seconds tick by as he studies me, before he asks, “Who are you, Sara?”

I lift my chin. “If you don’t know that by now, I suggest you ind out before it’s too late to turn back.”

I blink and Chris has turned me to face the banister, and I catch my weight on my hands to steady myself. His hand lattens between my shoulder blades and he steps close, framing my hips with his, his erection nestled against my backside.