In The Darkness (Project Artemis #1)(36)

She stopped talking for a moment before she admitted the raw truth she couldn’t escape. “I’ve stopped telling her how I feel when it comes to you because I don’t want to hear her say what I feel for you isn’t real or good. It just hurts too much to think that you and she think the same thing.”

The room around her fell completely silent, except for the sound of her heartbeat slamming in her ears. Never before in her life had she been so terrified of saying anything, and now that Nick seemed to have no response to her confession, every fear she’d had that the therapist was right threatened to overwhelm her.

“Persephone…”

Oh, God! She knew the sound of pity when she heard it. She’d had a lifetime’s worth of it since she returned home, and she hated it.

Spinning around, she saw Nick staring down at her. She looked into his eyes and there it was. Pity. He didn’t care about her.

“Don’t look at me like that! I’m not some pathetic thing who deserves pity! I know what I feel, so don’t try to tell me I don’t feel that way about you. I don’t need your permission or anyone’s permission to care about you, although at this moment, I think I must be as crazy as that therapist of mine thinks I am to feel anything for you.”

He said nothing, and as she waited in vain for even a single word, all the humiliation she’d dreaded washed over her. The therapist had been right. He didn’t care for her like she cared for him.

Pushing past him, she hurried toward the door as the room began to close in around her. As she reached for the doorknob, Nick touched her softly on the shoulder, making all the need for him come rushing back.

“Persephone…”

“Please stop saying my name if you have nothing else to say.”

She stared at the grey front door in front of her waiting for him to continue, to put her out of her misery or to let her go. Either one would be better than being stuck in this emotional limbo he held her in.

“Don’t go.”

Had he asked her not to leave? She questioned the ability of her ears to hear two simple words, sure they’d been mistaken.

Slowly, she turned around to see him looking down at her with anticipation in his eyes. Unsure of everything but how much she missed seeing kindness from him, she swallowed hard and repeated what he’d said to her.

“Don’t go?”

He shook his head and smiled. “No. Don’t.”

She waited for him to say something else, but he fell silent. Unlike that night at the gazebo, though, he didn’t push her away with his silence. She saw the man who had protected her all those times in that room at that horrible place once again standing in front of her.

“I don’t want to. I want to stay here. With you.”

Her voice trembled as she admitted why she’d come there. Yes, she did want his help with her plans for the future, but even more, she wanted him to be a part of her future.

She wanted him.

“Tell me you didn’t believe what that therapist said about me, Persephone,” he said in a low voice.

Full of anguish, the words sounded like someone was pulling each one from his throat. She knew the pain he felt at the thought that what existed between them wasn’t real. She’d felt it every time Dr. Wilson practically dismissed her feelings as this syndrome or that complex.

She bit her lip before telling him what he needed to know. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks. They don’t know what we went through. I can’t explain why I feel the way I do, but it isn’t in spite of what you did. I need you to know that.”

He bowed his head when she referred to the single event that threatened to push them apart. “I can’t forgive myself, so I can’t understand how you could forgive me.”

Reaching out, she took his hand in hers and brought it to her mouth in a kiss, loving the feel of his strong knuckles against her lips. The strength she’d relied on all those days and nights lived in those hands of his. She’d watched them as he lifted the spoon and tried to feed her with those hands, gentle enough to care but powerful enough to defend her. She’d felt the tenderness in them as he wiped away her tears with his fingertips.

She closed her eyes as she pressed his palm to her cheek. “You could have done anything else to show your claim to those men. You could have hurt me with your hands like they wanted to. You didn’t, though.”

“Don’t defend me. I don’t deserve it,” he said quietly.

Looking up, she shook her head in amazement. What did she have to say to convince him to forgive himself? Then the reality of what needed to be said between them came over her.

“Say it, Nick. Say it and then never say or think it again.”

“Say what?”

The time had come for that one horrible event to be put into the past. She would never have anything real with him if he couldn’t forgive himself.

“Say what you did to me. Say it so you and I both can see that whatever it needs to be called, you saved me and protected me by doing that. So say it and then let it go forever.”

His eyes filled with pain, and his eyebrows drew in toward the center of his face in a look of agony. “No. I won’t say it out loud. It’s bad enough that word will live in my mind forever. I won’t say it and demean you again.”

Clutching his hand, she pressed it over her heart. “You have to or you’ll never be able to be with me. Is that you want?”