Thankfully, the drive home is short. Ten minutes and I pull us into the garage and kill the engine. I’m out before it even dies, walking around the car to get Faith. She’s out of the Audi by the time I’m there, facing off with me. “I should go back to Sonoma.”
She just burned me all right, scorched me inside and out. I’m pissed. One hundred percent certifiably pissed. I don’t say a word. I walk toward her, pick her up and throw her over my shoulder, just like I did the last time she tried to leave. “Damn it, Nick,” she hisses. “You can’t throw me over your shoulder every time I want to leave.”
I don’t respond. I’m already walking, opening the garage door and stepping inside the house, my hand on her pretty little ass, my path straight through the living room and up the stairs. “Nick, damn it.”
“You already said that,” I say, entering our bedroom and walking through the bathroom to the closet that used to feel too big and is now just right with Faith in the house. I flip on the light and then set her down in the center of the room. “What do you see, Faith?” I don’t give her time to respond. “Look around. Your clothes and my clothes. This is two people sharing a life and when you share a life, you don’t just leave because you’re upset.” Realization slices through me. “And if you really want to leave, then maybe you aren’t in this the way I am in this.”
“That’s not true.”
“Words versus actions, Faith. I can’t keep picking you up every time you want to leave? Stop trying to fucking leave. Or don’t. I told you. In or out. You said you were in.”
“Youshouldhave told me, Nick.”
“I took a nearly four hundred thousand dollar hit to give that damn place away, Faith. For you. I did it for you. Because after I heard what a club and Macom equaled for you, I wanted you to know the minute I told you that buying it was afavor, not some defining piece of my character. Not an indication of who I am or who we are. I waited to tell you. That was a judgment call, but I did it for the right reasons.”
“Yougaveit away?” I confirm in disbelief.
I close the space between us and cup her face. “Yes. I did. Because you mean that much to me.”
“Please tell me you have a way to get the money back.”
“I don’t care about the money, Faith. I care about you.” My mouth closes down on hers, and I kiss her, deeply, passionately, drinking her in, so damn in need of her right now, and that need claws at me. “Get undressed,” I order. “We need to be naked together.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “We do. I do.”
I brush my lips over hers and shrug out of my jacket, and we watch each other undress, the anger between us shifting to something just as dark, just as intense and demanding. Lust. Love. Need. And when we are naked, both of us, we stand there in the fucking closet, but neither of us are looking at the other’s body. Our eyes connect, that mask she’d had on and that I’d stuck in my pocket is in my hand, and to her it was a weapon against me and us. A way she made the sex nameless, faceless. To me, it’s a way to show her that that will never be possible. Not for us.
“Do you trust me?”
“I trust you.”
I walk to her, stopping a lean away from touching her. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes. I trust you.”
“You didn’t react like you trust me.”
“I obviously have triggers. I realize that now. It’s about me, not you.”
“It’s about us, Faith. Everything is us now.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t, but I decide right then, that I just have to accept the challenge. I’m not a patient man, but I am in love with this woman, and I will help her, not force her, to see how devoted I am to her. I snag the fingers of her hand and walk her into the dressing room connecting to the closet—a small room with one oversize blue and brown plaid chair, a dresser, a standing mirror, and a full wall that is all windows, the view the ocean, the city.
I lead Faith to the chair in front of the ottoman, which is large enough that it might as well be another chair. I then hold up the mask. “Trust,” I say softly.
She reaches for it and in the process presses to her toes, leaning into me, her hand on my shoulder, her nipples brushing my chest. Her lips are a breath from mine. “Because it’s different here.”
“Is that a question or a statement.”
“A statement. It feels different. I’m glad you made me leave.”
I cup her head and kiss her, savoring the sweetness of those words on my tongue, before I say, “Me too. But I’m glad we went, Faith. You needed to know. I just don’t want us in a place like that.”
“I felt that. I needed to feel that.” She pushes away from me just enough to slip that mask on her face.
My hands settle at her waist, my lips near her ear. “You know I like control.”