A lump formed at the back of her throat. Because he really meant that, didn’t he? He’d shown her as much with every kiss and every touch, had told her in a dozen silent ways, and this wasn’t the first time he’d said it out loud.
“I mean it.” His voice grew in its fervency. “You deserve someone who makes you feel amazing.”
It was the deserve part that hit her like a punch to the chest. She shook her head without even meaning to, this automatic denial.
He squeezed her hand tighter. “You are beautiful and sweet and so fucking talented. You deserve—” He cut off, a flash of bitterness flitting across his face, but it was there and gone in a second. “You deserve someone who can give you everything.”
Someone like you? The question pressed at her tongue, but she swallowed it whole. Nearly choked on it. Because he had. He’d given her this unreserved support, had shown this faith in her. And here in this bed, he’d taken care of her in a way that no one ever had before.
Because he thought she was worth it.
Her lip wobbled, her breath coming harder as the realization crashed over her, and she tried to tug her hands back, to get herself under control. She’d already accepted that she’d fallen for him, but what he was saying here, this kindness in the face of her sad history—it just made it hurt even worse. Her face crumpled, and his eyes went wide.
“Kate?”
She shook her head, but her voice wouldn’t work. “I just—”
An impossible, unbearable warmth wrapped itself around her heart. She closed her eyes against it, but in the next breath, he was shifting across the bed, pulling her bodily into his arms, and the heat inside her went supernova. It burned through her, changing her.
Something that wasn’t quite a sob broke past her lips, and he held her tighter. She swabbed at her eyes, but it didn’t help. God, this was awful, breaking down on him, and because what? He’d been nice to her?
Muttering quiet assurances into her hair, he rocked her back and forth. “You’re okay, baby.”
But she wasn’t. She was extraordinary.
A new kind of light seeped into her heart.
He treated her this way, gave her his time and his body, opened her up with such patient, tender care, because he thought she deserved it.
“I just—” she tried again. She opened her eyes, and the world was still upright, the ceiling and the floor still exactly where they were supposed to be. It was her that was floating. The tear that escaped her felt like it glowed. “I didn’t realize how badly I needed to hear that.”
He practically forced the breath from her, his arms squeezed around her so hard. “I’ll tell you every day,” he said, and he didn’t even bother to correct himself. To put a time limit on it. “You deserve the entire fucking world, Kate.”
She didn’t have to ask him if he meant it.
And that was it. The whole rest of the story came rushing out.
Burying her face against his chest, she said, “It wasn’t just the sex with Aaron.” He hadn’t been outright abusive or anything. It hadn’t ever gotten that far. But . . . “He started out so nice, but he put me down in all these subtle little ways.” The shame of it all crept up on her again, that she’d tolerated it for so long. Had fallen into the same damn trap. “Like these offhanded remarks about how I dressed or the classes I took or what I was going to do after I finished college.”
When you’re still waiting tables and I’m on Wall Street . . .
“And it just got worse and worse, until I was believing it.” She’d always believed it. “That he was better than I was and I was lucky to have him.” That she didn’t have any right to expect more of him. More affection or more time. More patience with her body.
Rylan’s voice was murderous. “He’s lucky I don’t know where he lives.”
“I could tell you,” she said weakly. If it would get Rylan to come to New York, he could beat up as many asshole ex-boyfriends as he pleased.
“Don’t tempt me.”
She bit her lip. “When I found out he was cheating on me . . .”
Rylan’s huffed-out breath was almost a growl.
And it was that—his fury on her behalf—that gave her the strength to tell him the rest. “There was this part of me that was ready to forgive him, because it was probably my fault.” She’d been bad in bed, not attentive enough. Not good enough for him. “Until I remembered, until I realized . . .”
It was all hitting her again. A dizzying kind of pain and a stab of regret.
Rylan stroked her hair, patient. He was always so patient with her.
“It was the same damn thing that had happened to my mom.”
Her crazy, wonderful, amazing mother, who had given up her own dreams to put her husband through school. To raise a daughter who’d come too young, and she’d never complained. Not until . . .
“My dad did the same thing, only it was so much worse.” He was so much worse.
The tiny insults and the idea he’d given them both that they’d be lost without him. Scatterbrained creative types who always messed things up. Who made him so angry sometimes . . .
But they’d stood strong. He’d gone on to some other woman, and they’d been just fine all on their own.
Kate hadn’t learned her lesson, though.
“After I found out about Aaron, I called my mom, crying, and she reminded me how guys just . . . change sometimes. They start out great and then there’s this whole dark ugly other side to them.”
It had been like turning on a light. She could suddenly see all the little ways she’d been broken down over the year she and Aaron had spent together. She’d dumped him the very next day, swearing she’d never let the wool be pulled over her eyes again. Her self-esteem might have taken another beating, but she’d promised herself it was the last time she ever accepted so little from a man.
And then Rylan had come along. He’d shown her what she’d been missing.
“My dad did it to my mother, and Aaron did it to me. They started out so nice and then they turned into these assholes, and I . . .” She could say this out loud. Thanks to Rylan, she could. “I deserve better.”
She’d found it. Right here.
But Rylan’s throat bobbed, and his hands went still, the little caressing motions he’d been making against her spine suddenly stopping. For a long moment he said nothing, and she sat there.
Bare for him the way that he had been for her that afternoon. And waiting. Waiting . . .
He sucked in a long breath, then let her go, his gaze burning as he took her face between his hands and kissed her. Her cheeks and her brow and her eyes and finally, finally her mouth. Drawing back he swore, “You do. You deserve the best.” He hugged her again, and it was the warmest embrace she’d ever known.
For what felt like forever, she shook in his arms, letting him soak up the old, lingering hurt that had been weighing her down for so long. He murmured vague apologies into her hair, and she let him.
She felt more warm—more loved, sitting there, naked and held by a veritable stranger than she had in her entire time with Aaron. Maybe her entire life.
“You know what?” she said, once she’d gotten her breath back.
“What?”
“I wish it had been you.” Christ, she did. “That you’d been my first. That you’d shown me how—how incredible it could be.”
How differently would things have gone with Aaron, with that random one-night stand, if she had known? Would there even have been anyone else? If she could’ve had Rylan first? If he’d pushed away all the damage her father had done with careful hands and kind words.
If she could have kept him?