Pain exploded inside her but she refused to let it show. She forced her knees to lock so she could stay on her feet and not drop to the couch. “You can’t be serious. She convinced you not to trust me after a few minutes of questions?”

“I didn’t say that.”

The room spun on her but she blinked a few times to bring it back into focus. She fell back on denial. Tried to push the conversation there to keep it from going anywhere else. “It feels like it. The judging. The questions.”

“For the record, you’re a bit too defensive. You might want to bring it down a bit if you hope to sell this act.”

A shocked sound escaped her. But the truth was bigger. He saw through her and she hated that. Being able to trick people, convince them, served her for so long. With him those old standards didn’t work.

The realization made her retreat even further behind her emotional safety wall. “I don’t—”

“Listen to me.” He straightened up and walked over to her. “I don’t care what happened back then. I know you now and what I see is a survivor. That appeals to me.”

He said that but there was always a but. Those were the right words. The ones you said when you didn’t want the sex to end. “I didn’t scam anyone.”

“Never thought you did.”

The closer he got, the harder it became for her to mentally retreat. Her breath came in pants now. She couldn’t wrestle it back under control no matter how many times she counted to ten in her head. “Then what are you saying?”

“You can tell me anything. If you need to say it, I’ll listen.”

His soothing voice had a hypnotic quality. The kind that could lull a person into divulging things they shouldn’t. She felt his inner strength pull and tug at her, enticing her to let the last wall fall.

Her mind rebelled and she came out verbally swinging. “You haven’t dealt with your sister’s death and you think you can handle my past?”

She tensed, waiting for him to fight back. That’s what she hoped for. A reaction that would shift the conversation in a way that made it impossible for them to double back to it without remembering the carnage.

But his anger didn’t rise. He didn’t give one hint that the blow landed.

He shook his head. “Trying to piss me off won’t work.”

Full-scale flailing started inside of her. Anxiety welled and formed this hard ball that bounced around in her stomach. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I. Whatever this is, whatever is eating away at you that you’ve buried and hope will never see the light again, it won’t change anything.” He didn’t touch her. Didn’t move to close the gap between them.