The night hadn’t gone as she’d hoped, but it was about what she’d expected. He’d shut down the emotional side of her right after he made that declaration at the prison. For a few seconds she caught a peek of who he was underneath. Before Alexis died. It had been mixed in with the terror of the moment when she’d been so sure and stunned by the idea that Evan might kill Connor.

She rested her palms against the marble countertop and stared at her reflection in the mirror. She could only hold it for a few seconds before her gaze dropped. She was naked but no part of her felt exposed. He closed down rather than opened up. When the communication ceased, they fell back on sex. Good sex but sex with a piece missing. She never knew how important it was until they lost it.

She looked at him and saw a future. It was too early for love declarations but the words hung there. So close. All of that shut down when he pushed her away. Not physically but with every other part of him.

Again.

She wanted all the pieces. Every last one, ugly or not. She hoped to help him carefully step through the emotional battlefield left by Alexis’s death. Let him grieve and grow and realize they had something precious. Something they would need to cultivate and feed.

It was a grown-up conversation, and he wasn’t ready to have it.

She wanted all of him and he wanted a bed partner.

That reality filled her with a dragging sadness she couldn’t kick. It leaked over into the bedroom. Now it would kill everything else.

Chapter 35

The next night Maddie skipped their usual dinner together. She decided to go out with Sylvia and spend more time getting to know Jenna. The three of them had taken off for a Girls’ Night that left Connor alone.

He liked that she was learning to reach out and make friends. That gift had been stolen from her for so long. The first bit of excitement he’d seen in her all day spiked as she rooted through her closet looking for the right thing to wear.

Connor felt like a spy watching the going-out ritual happen. When she twisted her hair up in an intricate knot he almost asked her to take it down and do it again. The way her hands moved and her fingers slipped through the strands. It was such an intimate peek into who she was and the part of her that she’d buried in favor of safety.

But now he was by himself and looking for food. That led him to the Lodge. Sylvia, Jenna, and Maddie might not be there, but he could go in. That wasn’t weird. Men ate alone. He’d done that plenty of times before he found her.