Down to My Soul (Soul Series Book 2)(102)

“Do you remember the first time we made love?” he asks softly.

The question is like an arrow from overhead in the middle of a picnic. It ambushes me. It goes straight to the center of my heart. I can’t keep up, my poor, half-asleep brain struggling to process this unexpected conversation. It’s not the test I thought I’d be taking, but I think I have all the answers.

“Of course, I do.” I don’t sit up, but instead burrow deeper under the covers, searching his face. “On your pool table.”

Half a smile crooks his lips.

“I’d never felt anything like that.” He gives into the rest of that smile briefly. “I mean, the sex, yeah. But the closeness. I’d never felt that close to anyone in my life.”

“Neither had I.”

I hold my breath, not wanting to disturb this memory with anything from the present. That night went beyond flesh. I recognized him in my soul. In that deep place of which my father spoke, when that other person’s soul is merely an echo of your own.

“Every wall I’d ever raised, every defense I had, you got past them all,” Rhyson says. “You went deeper than anyone ever had. You peeled away every layer of skin, sunk through the flesh, and I felt you right next to my bones. For the first time in my life I felt fully . . . known.”

Rhyson’s smile fades, and his eyes drop to the hand in his lap.

“I wanted to give you everything that night. Money, houses, jewelry—you could have asked me for anything. I wanted to give it all to you.”

I don’t know what to say because I didn’t want anything from him that night other than what he gave me. And more of it.

“Mostly I just wanted to give you all of me,” he says. “But you ran from it.”

Tears burn my eyes. I’d never thought of it that way. I’d been freaked out by my feelings. Afraid to trust him. Scared we’d ruin our friendship and that what we’d felt couldn’t last because I’d seen love not last. I didn’t want things to end that way for us.

“I was so scared, Rhys. I didn’t know if I could trust you. If I could trust myself, but I got past that.”

“Did you?” He frowns. “’Cause it feels like you still don’t trust me. When you said we hit reset, I believed you. We said no more secrets, no more lies, but then you—”

“Lied.” My voice barely slips through my lips. “And kept things from you, I know. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t know how much it hurts. I didn’t realize what I was asking of you,” he says. “To forgive me after I’d betrayed your trust until I had to do the same. It’s not easy.”

“No, it’s not easy.” I shake my head, stealing a look at him. “But it’s worth it. I think we’re worth it, Rhyson.”

He looks back at me for a moment as if weighing his next words.

“I want to be known, Pep, and I want to know you. Fully. I need to believe there isn’t any dark part of me I can’t trust you with, and I need you to believe the same.”

He finally touches me. Thank God, he touches me. Even though it’s just a brush of his fingers across my hair.

“Nothing will make me walk away from you.” He shakes his head, the heat in his eyes smelting this moment down to something precious and raw. “Today I realized that I made you believe what happened between you and Drex might make me run. I don’t want us to live like your father did, hoarding his secrets. Being known too late and by the wrong person.”

“I don’t want that either.” I lean into his gentle fingers, wanting him to touch every part of me, seen and unseen. “God, Rhyson, you’re all I want. That’s what I know. Everything else can go to hell, but please forgive me, because you’re all I want.”

Everything in my body pauses, waiting for his response. Waiting to see if my words are enough to convince him.

“Somewhere along the way I failed you.” He sinks his fingers deeper into my hair and sighs. “Somehow, I wasn’t clear. I haven’t made it abundantly clear that this—what I feel for you—goes nowhere. Maybe it was your good-for-nothing father that planted this insecurity inside of you. This sense that I might walk away, might leave, might love you less.”

The look he gives me reaches in and squeezes my heart.

“Aunt Ruthie said it’s dangerous to love the way we do because people die and aren’t perfect.” He smiles a little. “She promised me that you would make mistakes, and that the real test would be to love you through them. It’s a test you already passed when you loved me through mine.”

Aunt Ruthie has done an awful lot for me over the course of my life, but she may have just given me the greatest gift. One I didn’t even know to ask for.

“You once told me there are at least two categories of forgiveness,” he continues.

I nod into his hand, closing my eyes like a sinner waiting for atonement.

“My Daddy said that, believe it or not.” I breathe something close to a laugh into the pillow that smells faintly of Rhyson. “In one of his sermons, and I still can’t forgive him, so I’m not sure how much weight it should carry.”

His fingers still in my hair for a few seconds, before moving again, lightly massaging my scalp and pushing the thick strands when they fall forward.