Page 79 of Fierce-Baker

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I refuse to believe you’d do that.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I did. I treated her the same way she did me. I gave her a lot of freedoms, but when I pushed her to grow up some, she’d find excuses and I’d back away. I wasn’t her parent, I didn’t want to parent her, but I didn’t expect her to just say we were at different places in our lives.”

“That’s what it was?”

“That’s what she said. I had no reason to not believe her. We didn’t even talk it over. She said she didn’t want to. She’d decided and was moving in with a friend. Someone I knew who was single also. I’d heard nothing of Alexa dating anyone for a good year.”

“You can’t hide that if someone was cheating.”

“Exactly. That’s where the trust issue came from. She wasn’t honest with me. Not enough. She knew where I wanted to go with our lives. I never made a secret of it and she never said once it wasn’t what she wanted or was planning on. I’m not bending over backwards for anyone again. I’m not letting them call all the shots or not talk about something because it’s not comfortable for them. I can’t do that.”

He couldn’t let a little bit of himself die in the process.

That was what a relationship like that entailed.

“I’ve never been that way,” she said. “I’ll tackle the hard things. Or I try to. You might not think it because you don’t know everything. But I’ve felt you and I have talked through a lot of things already.”

“We have. And as I said, being here right now with you is huge. Being part of Micah’s life is too. You couldn’t have done it if you didn’t feel the same way my mind was going. I wouldn’t have told you what I had right now, if I didn’t feel we might get to the same page. Or am I wrong?”

Did he just open up the biggest wound in his chest for no reason at all?

“You’re not wrong.” She grabbed his cheeks with her hands and laid her lips to his. “Not in the least. And that means I have to tell you something my parents don’t even know and it could change how you feel about me.”

23

A REAL PARTNERSHIP

“Idon’t know that you could tell me anything that would change the way I feel,” he said, his voice low but steady.

Tasha slid off his lap, needing the distance, needing the air. She crossed back to her chair with her heart pounding. She couldn’t tell him about Shane with his hands on her or with his warmth clouding her judgment. She needed to see his face. His eyes.

His judgment. Or… hopefully, the lack of it.

Because if his expression evenhintedat seeing her differently, she didn’t want Micah anywhere near that.

She shouldn’t have invited him over tonight if this could blow up in her face. But then again, if she truly believed he’d react badly, she wouldn’t be willing to tell him at all.

“Make this easy,”they’d said.

There was nothing easy about any of it.

Not what he’d shared with her and not what she was about to hand back to him.

He tried to lighten his own confession, but she’d felt the stiffness in his shoulders, heard the strain hiding behind everyword. A man who spent his whole life refusing to be like the one who raised him, only to wind up lonely anyway.

She cleared her throat. “You don’t know until you hear it. I told you… I rarely involve my parents in my dating life early. I’ve clearly had terrible taste in men.”

He studied her. “Have you had any long-term relationships?”

“Yes.” She smoothed the hem of her shorts, her nerves twisting tight. “There was one. A little over a year, maybe less. His name was James. Margo was my roommate then. He was… scholarly. Smart. Predictable. Not a lot of fun. But we got along, and I convinced myself maybe that was enough. That being an adult meant settling for steady instead of exciting.”

“That’s crazy,” he said. “You can enjoy life and still be responsible.”

“Exactly.” She gave a humorless laugh. “But it took me watching Margo and Liam to realize it. And maybe I was jealous, maybe not. But seeing them showed me what a real partnership looked like. And James wasn’t it. I didn’t feel enough. I was too young to settle for safe.”

Her parents had thought she’d lost her mind when she ended it. But that was the moment she’d started keeping her dating life quiet. Closing the doors meant fewer opinions, fewer criticisms, and fewer reminders that she didn’t choose well.

Tonight, all of that was catching up to her.