Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)(50)

It wasn't rejection—it was protection.

"So it was like, an experiment or something? Kissing me?" I asked quietly. Please, let it be an experiment.

His jaw flexed as he stared at me. "No."

I shook my head.

"You don't believe me?" he asked, voice raising a touch. Frustration was clear in his tone, the set of his eyes, and the way he held his hands. "You think I'd lie to you about this? When have I ever lied to you, Joss?"

"I don't know, Levi. That's my point. You keep saying I know you best of everyone, but that's obviously not true!"

"Give me a break. That doesn't mean you were some game to win or challenge to conquer. It just means that I have feelings and have had feelings that go a hell of a lot further than the desire to kiss you. And because I'm being honest with you at a time that finally feels right, you think I'm a liar."

And that had my voice raising, the little hairs lifting on the back of my neck as they did when I felt an irrational need to defend myself. "I think you can't possibly have wanted to date me this entire time, Levi. I think maybe everything in your life has come so easily to you that I've felt like some weird challenge you had to overcome because there's no freaking way you want to take all this on in your life. Not really."

His mouth dropped open, and he leaned forward. "Take on all of this …" he repeated slowly, head shaking.

I shifted in my seat, face hot and heart pounding, hands shaking and the desire to flee so strong that I almost unlocked my chair just to back away from the way he was looking at me. "You know what I mean. You can date anybody, and you have. All the single women in Green Valley under the age of forty would fall prostrate if you looked in their direction."

"Good for them," he said. "I'm not interested. You tell me one person I've dated seriously in the past five years. One."

"I—" My mouth snapped shut, and I looked over his shoulder at the wall. Because I couldn't.

"Exactly. You can't name anyone beyond a couple of dates because I didn't want to date anyone other than you, but you weren't ready. You never saw me that way, and the moment I felt something change …" He leaned in again, staring down at my lips when he did. "The exact moment I knew you were feeling something different, I knew it was time to redefine."

"Redefine?"

"Us," he said simply. "Redefine the way we spend all our time together. Redefine being best friends who can now make out whenever the hell we feel like it. That I can hold your hand. Take you out. Feed you grapes or Twizzlers or cupcakes or whatever the hell you want to be fed. Sleep in a bed with you."

The flames under my skin roared to a dangerous level. It felt too big for my skin, too much for my mortal flesh and bones to contain, to withstand any longer.

"And you're going to turn me at night? Make sure I have blankets between my knees so I don't get sores? Deal with the fact I haven't gotten a solid night’s sleep in seven years? You're going to stand by when people look at me the way they do? Be rude when they meet me? Assume I'm helpless?"

His face was implacable. "Hell yes, I'll deal with it. It's not about dealing with it, Joss, it's your truth, and I know what the reality of your life looks like."

I laughed under my breath, and it helped cool the flames, inch by inch, beat by beat, until I felt like I could breathe again.

"No, you don't," I told him. "You know parts of it. And you know the parts that you've seen. But you're not ready for this. This isn't what you want."

Even as the words came out, I knew how unfair they were. Everything I'd heard from him, and everything he hadn't said yet, but what I could see in his eyes, I wanted to hide from. In my head, the words were a bulletproof vest, unbreakable and unyielding.

Levi breathed in and out, his eyes trained firmly on my face. He then ripped that vest apart like it was cardboard.

"Bullshit," he whispered.

"What?"

He slid forward on the couch and grabbed the wheels on my chair so I couldn't move, his face inches away from mine. Air slid harsh and fast from my nose as I struggled to breathe.

"I call bullshit. My best friend is not a coward, and right now, you're acting like one. You're using this flimsy piece of metal and rubber as an excuse, and it's bullshit."

There were no words that I could spit at him, nothing that I could hide behind, because he knew, and I knew he was right. But there were no words falling off my tongue to tell him that. They were stuck down my throat, in my stomach, somewhere hidden and coated in sticky, thorny pride.

Levi nodded slowly because, damn him, he saw it.

"I hate you right now," I whispered unevenly, tears burning hot in my throat and nose and eyes.

"You don't hate me." He matched my tone. "You may not like me right now, but you don't hate me, Jocelyn Abernathy. It scares the hell out of you that your wheelchair doesn’t bother me, that I don't care that you're the prickliest woman I've ever met in my life, and that I’m not running off because your legs don't work the way you want them to."

One tear fell over the edge of my lashes, and he swept it away with his thumb. There was no lingering this time, nothing romantic in the way he touched my cheek.