Game of Love (21 page)

“But I told you I wouldn’t leave.” Even as she said it, she knew it wouldn’t hold enough weight. She’d left last time, and she knew how hard it had been for them both to get over that hurt. She saw it in his eyes, and if she was honest with herself, even as he loved her in the shower, on the bed, every moment he was with her, she felt the worry and mistrust hovering behind all that emotion. Lurking. Waiting to come forward like a ghost and slip in like a barrier between them, whispering,
I knew you couldn’t stay.

He reached in his pocket and threw a wad of cash on the table; then he took her hand and pushed her gently out of the booth. “Come on.” He crossed the floor to Regina and Mitch. “Hey, I paid, but we’re gonna take off.”

Mitch nodded. “You guys okay?”

He looked at Ellie, and her first inclination was to run. Sprint out the front door as fast as she could and jump on a train to anywhere just to outrun the pain of her life falling apart—again. In the next second, she gripped Dex’s hand tighter, and she knew she never wanted to let go.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

Ellie wondered why he lied. They headed for the door, and Regina reached out and grabbed hold of Ellie’s arm, tugging her away from Dex, and for a split second, Ellie wanted to fall into her arms and cry.

Regina held on to her so tightly Ellie worried she was upset that she’d hurt Dex. Regina lowered her head so only Ellie would hear her whisper.

“You deserve to be loved. Do you hear me?”

Ellie didn’t answer. She couldn’t push anything past the lump that formed thick and resistant in her throat.

Regina yanked her closer. “Did you hear me, Ellie? You are not a product of the fucking system. You deserve to be loved, and if you have to fight for it, then that’s what you do. Fight for this with everything you’ve got.” She tugged her against her bony chest and hugged her.

Ellie felt the beating of Regina’s heart against her chest. She shot a glance in the mirror behind the bar and caught a glimpse of the wicked stare Regina was giving Dex. It had been a long time since Ellie had an ally, and now the lump in her throat anchored her feet to the ground as tears of thankfulness pressed against her lids. She gripped Regina’s wiry waist, hoping her eyes would convey the thank-you that wouldn’t push past the goddamn lump.

I deserve to be loved. I deserve Dex
.

Dex reached for her hand and yanked her away from Regina. He narrowed his dark eyes and glared at Regina as he dragged Ellie out the door.

FRUSTRATION BUBBLED WITHIN Dex’s chest and gut. He stifled the desire to release years of suppressed frustration and tell Ellie exactly how she was driving a knife through his heart. Ellie clung to his hand like a lifeline as he pulled her to the street and flagged down a cab. They climbed in, and she looked at him with her beautiful blue eyes, sadness and worry fighting for top billing. Damn it. He needed a shield to protect himself from the love he had for her. He looked away, feeling his nostrils flare and his chest constrict. He gave the driver his parents’ address.

“Why are we going there?” Ellie asked.

“Because. That’s where this all started, and that’s where we’re gonna figure this out.” He stared straight ahead, the muscles in his neck twitching with the need to look at her. Dex had always been in control of everything in his life—except his feelings for Ellie and their relationship. In every other aspect of his life, he knew where he was going and he knew how he was going to get there. Now he was completely, one hundred percent fucked. He knew what he wanted, but he was not even remotely in control of how to get there—or what it would take to remain there with Ellie. Always with Ellie.

They drove in silence for a long time. Forty minutes, maybe fifty with traffic, he wasn’t sure, but it felt like forever, and it gave him time to think. People had always come in and out of Dex’s life. Friends from college, colleagues in the gaming industry, girlfriends, buddies, but very few had remained on the fringe of his every thought like Ellie always had. As they drove toward his parents’ neighborhood, he wondered if she was on his mind because she was unobtainable. The whole wanting-what-you-can’t-have thing, but then his mind revisited the last few days. Ellie was here. Present. With him.
She is trying
. She got a job and was putting down roots. With him. She wasn’t running away. No, he decided. She wasn’t unobtainable. At least not anymore.

“Dex?”

He looked down at their hands. How many nights had he held her hand? How many nights had he been afraid to move for fear of waking her and having her crawl out the window? Dex loved Ellie’s small, feminine hands. He loved the way the curve of her palm felt against his, the way her fingers were so slim he could barely tell they were laced between his. He loved when they touched his chest and roamed lower, loving him in ways that could only come from her heart.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“How did we come to this? Over a text? I don’t understand what’s going on, and I need to.”

“So do I,” he answered solemnly. He still couldn’t look at her, though he felt her eyes boring into him, trying to read his expression, which he hoped was unreadable. He’d always thought he was as good at caging off his emotions as Ellie was, but the truth was, she read him like a book. She knew when he needed her, and she knew when he loved her.

Do you feel both now, Ellie?

The driver’s deep voice broke the silence. “Where would you like me to drop you off?”

“The corner of Carlisle and Marlboro, please.” The tension brewed in his stomach and filled his limbs with heat. He didn’t know what led him here tonight, but he assumed he’d figure it out.

That’s how Dex handled everything in life. He acknowledged the issue, studied it, then calculated possible solutions. When there was an impediment, he found its weakness and worked past it. Ellie’s weaknesses were his undoing: honesty and staying power, or lack thereof. To work past those weaknesses, they needed to acknowledge them and understand where they stemmed from. On nothing more than a hope and a prayer, Dex paid the driver and stepped from the cab.

“You want me to wait for you?” the driver asked.

Dex glanced at Ellie as she stepped from the car and shivered against the night air. “No, thank you. We’re good.”

He watched the cab drive away. Ellie wrapped her arms around herself.

“Why do you keep saying we’re good when we’re obviously anything but good?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. He reached for her hand, and she slid her hand under the back of his shirt and pressed her palm against his skin. His heart ached for her. He’d give anything to turn back, go home with Ellie and climb into bed, then love every inch of her and pretend tonight never happened. Forget they needed to fix anything and just be happy loving her. But Dex’s mind never forgot, and he needed more. He wanted more—of Ellie. He wanted all of her. Forever. He would never have that until her past became
their
past.

They walked up Marlboro Street, and he tucked her under his arm to keep her warm. They walked to the top of the hill, and Ellie stopped three doors from her old foster home.

Dex waited. It was almost midnight, and the houses were dark. He looked down the street and wondered what Ellie must have felt walking alone at night to his bedroom window. Funny, he hadn’t thought about it back then. He’d just been glad she’d come. Now he wondered how he could have let her brave the streets alone at night to be with him. She had courage even then.

She’d always been brave.

Braver than him.

It took courage for her to risk what they had by keeping the fact that she’d seen her ex, and that she’d received the text from him, a secret. He knew she loved him. He could feel it through to his bones, but there was something there, tethering that love, keeping it just out of reach.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the text?” he asked.

“I told you—”

“I’m not buying it. You could have told me and asked me not to act on it. I would have listened. What is it, Ellie? What makes you keep secrets?” He felt her hand fall away from his back, then heard it slip into her pocket.
Fuck
.

“Come on.” He began walking toward her old house. Ellie didn’t follow. He turned back. “Come on, El.”

She shook her head.

Without getting upset, and with no frustration in his pace, he returned to her. He always came back to her. He held his hand out. She looked at him, then at his hand. He nodded and reached farther. She reached toward his hand, hesitated, looked up the street, then took his hand in hers.

“I’m right here. Be sure of me,” he said.

“But you’re scaring me. I don’t know if I should be sure of you or not.” Her voice held a thin thread of doubt, and her honesty sliced through his heart.

Dex couldn’t find the right words to heal the hurt that filled the space between them like an open wound. Instead, he brought her to his chest, hoping that somehow the love he felt for her would come through. She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.

“Be sure of me, Ellie. I’m not a leaver. I won’t leave you.”

“But you’re afraid I will,” she said just above a whisper.

Her body trembled, and he felt his resolve slipping away. He drew back again. The leaves on the trees shuffled as a breeze swept up the hill.

“I am,” he admitted. “Terrified.”

“Me too,” she admitted. “I don’t ever want to leave you, but I’m terrified to walk up the street. I’m terrified that no matter how much I want to stay, uncovering these ghosts will send my legs running in the opposite direction and I won’t be able to stop myself.”

“I’ll stop you.”

“Oh, Dexy.” Her eyes burned with tears. “I’m terrified to ruin your life. I’m terrified that you’ll decide I’m not the woman you think I am.”

He closed his eyes against the sadness that welled there. Then, under the guise of a deep breath, he pushed away the sorrow and brought her hand to his lips. He kissed each of her delicate fingers, then took her face between his palms and said, “I know the woman you are, and I love the woman you are. But if we’re gonna ever be a real couple, a forever couple, we have to deal with this shit head-on. I’m not giving up, but I’m not setting myself up to be hurt again either. I can’t do this alone, Ellie. You’re either all in or all out.”
Christ. I sound like my father
.
Maybe he wasn’t just being a prick after all.
“No matter how much it hurts for either of us, we have to deal with whatever keeps dragging us backward so we can move past it.”

She took one step, and that was enough for him to know she wanted the same thing as he did.

In the driveway of her foster home, her mild trembling turned to full-on shaking. He took off his jacket and wrapped it around her, tensing his muscles against the cold air. Then he took her hand and walked her around the back of the rambler to the window that had led to her bedroom. She looked down, to the left, behind her, but not at the window.

Dex led her to the hill beside the house, where they sat in the grass facing the window. He put his arm around her and held her in the silence. “What happened in there, Ellie?”

“You already know.”

“No. I know there was yelling, but what made you sneak out and come to me?”

“You did.” She looked at him with trust, and love, and sincerity, but none of it helped him to understand what had really driven her down the dark street and to his window.

“I don’t understand. We barely spoke back then.”

“I saw in you the same sadness I felt. You had buried secrets that you didn’t want the world to see, just like I did.” She snuggled closer to him, and he buried his nose in her hair, inhaling the now-familiar scent of her shampoo.

“Tell me, Ellie. I want to move past this. I need to understand. We can’t have anything without trust, and if you have to keep secrets, then we’ll never amount to anything.”

The silence stretched between them, contorting to tension. His muscles tightened. He opened his mouth to ask her again, and she stopped him with a hand on his thigh. She squeezed his leg as she spoke.

“He used to tell her that she was shit. He said she was like her mother, that all women were like their mothers.”

“Who, Ellie? You?”

She shook her head. “Margie. My foster mother. She used to cry at night. He’d yell; then she’d cry. All night long she’d cry, and in the morning she’d have these big red circles under her eyes and her nose would look swollen, but she was cheerful, like she was the happiest woman in the world. Then he’d come into the kitchen and kiss her cheek.
How are my girls?
he’d say to us. It was like they had an on-off switch that they flicked at night and then again in the morning.”

“And did he say those things to you?” Dex asked.

“He didn’t have to. It’s not hard to figure out how I’d end up with someone hollering that all women were like their mothers every night. But the worst part was her. Can you imagine what a mess she must have been? And she tried so hard not to let on.”

“That must have been awful, but why would that cause you to keep secrets? Why are you afraid to really let me in?”

She ran her finger in circles on his thigh. Doodling without a pen. He felt the difficulty in the simple movement. Just when the silence stretched to the point of discomfort, she said, “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to go this far, which is why I led with the fights.” She blinked up at him. “They fought because of me.”

He pulled her closer.

“He used to come into my room at night.”

Dex held his breath. In the back of his mind, he’d always wondered if there was more to her distrust. He’d kill the bastard.

“I think she knew. He never touched me, but he’d come in and…” Her hand stilled, and Dex covered it with his own. “He’d touch himself when he thought I was asleep.”

Tears sprang to Dex’s eyes. He tightened his grip on her to keep himself from hauling the bastard’s body out of bed and slamming his head into the brick wall. He clenched his eyes shut, not wanting to upset Ellie any more than she already was.

“And then you’d come to me?” His voice cracked.