Hard.
He had said the words.
The question was, had he meant them? Maybe that was something people just said in the heat of the moment. There was no way he could have meant it. I had nothing to offer the man. He was beautiful and kind and smart and strong and good and generous. And I was… none of those things. I was a mess. I could barely keep my shit together. I'd made so many mistakes in my lifetime.
How could he want that?
How could he love someone like that?
Easy—he didn't. They were just words. Hell, he probably hadn't even said them. I’d probably imagined them.
“Where did you go just now?” Con asked. I looked at him in surprise. He’d shifted some of his weight off of me, but only so he could look at me better. Our lower halves were still joined.
“Nowhere,” I automatically said with a shake of my head.
Con's fingers came out to toy with my cheek.
“What scares you more? The fact that I said those words or the fact that I meant them?”
I dragged in a breath, then another.
Oh God, were we really going to talk about this?
I found myself sitting up. Con allowed me to push his weight off me, but he stayed right next to me as I leaned forward and wrapped my arm around my waist. It still felt strange to no longer feel the heavy cast against my skin anymore. We'd been to the doctor’s office just that day to have it removed.
“You didn't mean it. It's just something people say—”
Con's hand came up to my cheek so he could force me to look at him.
“I'm not people,” he said firmly. “I don't just say those words to anyone. I've never said those words to anyone.”
I shook my head in disbelief. I began tapping my fingers along the edge of the comforter just to give the digits something to do. If I didn't, I’d grab for him and demand that he not toy with me. My heart felt like it was going to pound right out of my chest.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Why do I love you?” Con asked.
I shook my head, because that hadn't been what I’d meant, but that didn't stop Con.
He dropped his mouth to my ear and said, “Because you're perfect, Micah. You're brave and strong and you have the biggest heart of anyone I know. The way you love those kids… Anybody, man or woman, would be so fucking lucky to earn even a fraction of that love. The fact that you can be so giving after everything that was taken from you… I'm in awe of you, Micah. I'm in awe of you and I don't want to waste even another second pretending that what I feel for you is anything but what it is. I love you. I will always love you.”
My throat felt so tight that I couldn't breathe. I could feel Con's hand running up and down my spine in a soothing manner, so he could obviously tell how overwhelmed I was.
I wanted to say the words back. I really did.
But I just couldn't.
I couldn't say them. Not if I didn't understand what they meant.
My father had claimed to love my mother and yet he’d beaten her to within an inch of her life more times than I could count. Brady had claimed to love me and yet that love had turned to hate by the end. Clara had loved Brady but not enough to devote herself to the child that had been a product of that so-called love. And then there'd been the men who’d told me they loved me even as they hurt me.
“Breathe baby, just breathe,” I heard Con say, though I wasn't sure why he was saying it. But I wanted to please him so I took a breath only to realize I'd been holding it. Con leaned into me so that his chin was resting on my shoulder and his arm was around my back. “I'm sorry, Micah. I'm sorry.”
I knew what he was apologizing for. He was apologizing for those beautiful words, not because he hadn't meant them, but because they'd upset me. What kind of guy apologized for telling the truth?
An amazing guy.
An amazing human being who put others before himself.
Always.
That amazing guy loved me. The real me. Con wasn't a liar. In the past month, he'd seen me at my worst. And yet he’d seen something in me worth loving. How could that be wrong on any level? And how could I minimize what he felt? Just because it scared me didn’t make it any less real for him.
I might not have been one hundred percent sure what love was, but I knew what it wasn't. It wasn't what those men had done to me. It wasn't my father's fists raining down on my body and it wasn't Brady blaming me for decisions he’d made.