Page 16 of Bound By Love
She planted her hands against his chest. “Put me down!”
“You’re exhausted,” Saber said.
“That’s nothing new.Put.Me.Down.”
“Caro—”
“I meant it, Saber. You don’t get to take off on me like that…againand then come back here like everything is all roses and candy. It isnotroses and candy. It’s more like a steaming pile of dog shit.”
He was startled by the amount of distress her words created. “That’s not how you really see what this is between us, is it?”
“I’m not sure what this is between us, Saber, other than sex. We don’t talk—”
“We talk.”
“Not about anything of worth. Not about anything substantial.”
“I shouldn’t have told you to fuck off.”
“I don’t care about that!”
“Then why are you so upset?”
Caro rolled her eyes as she resisted hitting his chest. She wouldn’t give this exasperating, obtuse man the satisfaction of watching her lose control..
“Because you keep walking away from any conversation you don’t like,” she said. “I’m tired of talking to thin air.”
“There are some things I don’t wish to discuss.”
Caro sighed as she tried to keep her patience under wraps. She knew this, and she’d known not to push him; she’d done this to herself, but, like an idiot, she kept battering herself against his wall in the hopes it would one day crack.
“I shouldn’t have talked to you like that and walked away afterward,” he said.
Caro crossed her arms over her chest as she glowered at him. “And?”
“And what?”
“That’s not much of an apology.”
“I’m not apologizing.”
“Then I’ll start. I shouldn’t have talked to you about your sister. I knew it was a touchy subject and shouldn’t have pushed it. Now you.”
Saber made it to the top of the stairs and stopped walking. He was almost amused by how she stared at him with her chin raised and turquoise eyes burning with indignation, but hurt also shone in them, and he didn’t find that amusing.
For the first time, some of his walls crumbled. “I don’t know how to be the man youneedme to be… the one… the one you deserve.”
His voice was so low and ragged that it tore at Caro’s heart and melted the last of her anger. When she rested her hand against his chest, the rapid beat of his heart pulsed against her palm.
“You’re already the man I deserve,” she assured him. “I just… you have to stop walking away from me. I understand you can’t talk to me about some things, even if it’s difficult for me not to press you about it. I want to know more about you; I’llalwayswant that, but if you can’t give it to me, I’ll live with it.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to know these things? Why do you want me to talk to Brie?”
Caro blinked away the tears burning her eyes. He really didn’t understand and couldn’t see how much she’d come to care for him or how much his sister loved him.
