Page 72 of Worth the Fall

Yep, I knew she’d call me on how I broke that rule in a heartbeat. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Oh, so it was more like he sexed you up so good you fell into a sex-blissed coma and then he left you—a woman he doesn’t really know—alone in his house when he went to work? Was that how it was?”

“You missed the part where he kissed me on the top of the head in the dark and told me to stay as long as I like.”

She makes a show of shaking her head in mock disgust of my breaking my own rules, but I know she’s secretly fist pumping beneath the surface. “Yeah, just minor details. Like sweet and endearing details.”

I can’t help the uncharacteristic smile on my lips or the warmth that spreads within me. I don’t do tender or intimate. Hell, I don’t do anything near the sort, but then again . . . this is Grant we’re talking about. There is some level of comfort with him that I’m not used to.

It’s only one night, Em.

“He obviously trusts you,” she muses.

“Well,” I laugh the word out, “it doesn’t go both ways.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“Drop it, Des.”

She angles me a look that says she’s confused, and it matches how I feel inside.

It’s amazing that no matter how many strides I take forward—how normal my life is—a simple thing like the word “trust” can force my past to come back and slap me.

Grant doesn’t deserve it.

Then again, neither did I.