“No, it’s not that. It’s just . . . I’m not . . . I’m not that to you.”
“Not what? My baby girl?”
“Yes. I’m not that. I’m not your baby girl.”
“Would you like to be?”
Did he know? How could he know? Fuck.
Okay, what was with this guy?
How did he keep managing to shock her into silence? He made her head spin. She simply couldn’t keep up with him.
There was no way he knew about her . . . about her desires, right? About the stories she liked to read? The fantasies she had at night, when Carl had gone to sleep, because she could never tell him.
Because he’d have ridiculed her.
Or even worse, have tried to give her what she wanted. Which he couldn’t do because he was the furthest thing from . . . from what she wanted.
But she’d never written it anywhere or told anyone.
“Did I say something while I was sedated? Or while I was asleep?” she asked.
“You mostly snored while you were sleeping. And drooled.”
“Oh God.”
“It was cute.”
“It was not cute,” she snapped back. “I’m not cute.”
“Yeah, baby girl, you are.”
“I said, don’t call me that. I’m not your baby girl and I don’t want to be.”
Inside, she was breaking. Shattering and it was all she could do to keep standing, breathing.
Get it together, Keira.
There was too much in her past to have hope for the future. All she wanted to do was help her sister escape her nightmare, then find somewhere she could live where no one knew who she was.
Where she wasn’t someone’s daughter or girlfriend. Where people didn’t look at her and see trash. Where she could start fresh.
That was the most she could hope for. Not that this gorgeous, amazing man would want her. That wasn’t something she could ever wish for.
“Really? That’s not what you said before.”
“I was drugged. You can’t take anything I said seriously.”
“Is that so?” he drawled. “Because I think it’s almost the opposite. I think that your barriers were lowered and I got to see the real Keira, the one you try to hide. That your real thoughts and needs and desires came out.”
“Well, more fool you because that’s not true.”
Liar, liar.
“Look at me, Keira.”
She kept her blurred gaze fixed on the floor, hoping he couldn’t see the tears dripping down her face. She’d done some terrible things in her life, but pushing him away had to be one of the worst.