The Not-Outcast(97)

She looked to me, her voice calm. “Hunter’s mom Natalie.”

“What’d she have to say?”

Her tone got low. “She apologized to me.”

My hands tightened over the steering wheel.

That was a good thing. Wasn’t it?

“I’m okay. I am. This will pass. I’m just off my cycle because I missed so many days, and I didn’t do my cardio this morning.”

“You’re sounding clearer.”

She nodded, but her eyes were still closed. “I’m so sick of this.”

I liked that she texted that she needed me. I really liked that I was so close, since I did a late lunch with my agent downtown. And her anxiety, I could handle it. Her other stuff, I could handle that, too. But this, with what I was starting to hear from her, I wasn’t getting a good feeling and that, I didn’t like.

“Sick of what?”

“This.” She was pointing to her head. “I have to be fucking perfect to maintain. That’s it. I’m just trying to maintain. Then someone walks into my office and says nice things to me and looks at me. I had to text you to come and get me. Fucking pathetic.”

“Hey! Don’t ever say that. Ever.”

She quieted, but her voice came out gravelly. “It’s the truth. It’s selfish of me to put you through this. You want to team up with me? Having to come and get me at a moment’s notice? That’s not a relationship. That’s a caretaker. I can’t fix what’s up here, and trust me, I’ve tried. I have to be perfect just to keep my head quiet at times, and that’s not fair to you. You could be with someone normal, someone who can take care of you—”

“Stop talking.”

“—and what else? I mean, what if you want to marry me? God forbid. You want this for a whole lifetime? I’ll wear you out within the first two years. Children? You want kids? I can’t have kids. I can’t bring someone into this world and give them what I have. Put someone through the suffering that I endure daily. That would be selfish of me. It’s unbelievably selfish of me not to walk away from you—”

“Stop it!”

A fast food parking lot was on our right, and fuck it. I hit the turn signal and made a sharp turn, parking in the first slot I saw.

I cut the engine and turned on her. “I don’t want to ever hear you say that shit about yourself. And you don’t get to decide for me. I do. I choose. I choose who I want to be with, who I don’t, and I choose you. You. Got it?”

A tear fell from her eye, tracking down her cheek to her chin.

Her eyes held mine. I didn’t think she knew it was there, and cursing, I reached over to wipe it away.

“I love you.” I was holding her face in my hand.

Her eyes kept glued to mine, and she asked, “Why? Again. Why?”

I’d never felt this before.

I felt fury. I felt like I wanted to rip an opponent’s head off. I felt all those emotions when I hit the rink, but off the ice, I wasn’t emotional. Easygoing. Go with the flow. That was me, but not with her. Since that first party, and I just fell harder and harder each time she stripped herself down for me.

“Why?” I repeated her question. Had I heard that right?

A second tear fell and she bit her lip before nodding, her head still in my hand.

“I love you because you have every reason to be angry at the world, and you’re not. You wake up smiling, and you stay smiling. You’d choose laughter over anything, all day and every day.”

“Except for sex with you. I’d always choose that first.”

I grinned, moving closer to her. “Right.”

“Six times.”

“What?”

“You’re an alien sex god.”

“We’re getting off topic.”

“Just saying,” she said against my thumb.

I leaned closer and closer. She was almost looking up at me.

“You just proved all three of my reasons.”

“Those were good reasons. I’ll give that to you.”

Jesus. Everything in me was softening for this girl.

I said, my head angling more over hers, “I love you because you’re the strongest person I know. All the shit you’ve had to endure, and you keep going. You will keep going, no matter what happens. Your reasons for not marrying me or having children with me, they’re bullshit. Ask me how I know they’re bullshit.”

I waited.

Pain flared in her gaze, and she tried to look away from me.

“Ask me.”

“I can’t.” Her lip started trembling.

I moved so my forehead was resting against hers. “Because if something happened to Natalie and Deek, you’d be the first in line to take Hunter in. If you got a call that someone’s mother died from an overdose and they needed a place to stay, you’d offer yours in a heartbeat.”

More tears fell. Her eyes were closed, and her entire body was shaking.

I kept on. “You’d take that child in, and you’d love that child with everything in you. You would deal, because that’s what you do. You deal and you keep moving forward, and you try to love everyone on the way. Because that’s how you are, and if you really want to know, I’d be fucking lucky to have you as a wife, and I’d be the wealthiest man in the world if you ever decide to give me a child. I’m not talking money. I’m talking life. You would be giving me life. So, when I see you and I hear you say that shit about yourself, it kills me inside because it’s the opposite of how I see you. The opposite, Cheyenne. I love you because you’re you. You open your arms, your heart, and you let people see you. So many people hide, but you don’t. You’re you, and I respect the fuck out of that.”