The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass by Maisey Yates

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WHEN IRISWOKEthe next morning, she was drained, both physically and emotionally. Griffin had turned to her two more times in the night. And she had opened herself to him willingly.

This morning, she felt tangled in him. Because of what they had done with their bodies. Because of the things he had told her.

She had known that he was a man in pain, but she had no idea. Not really. He’d lost everything.

Everything.

The two people he loved most in the world, his sense of himself as a man. Any sense of control that he had in the whole world. And she could relate to it. To pieces of it. But it hadn’t been her job to protect her parents, and as much as she had grieved them, she hadn’t suffered the kind of regret that she knew he did. The fear that he had failed them so profoundly. She knew that he carried that in a deep and real way.

But she didn’t know where that left them. And she didn’t know if it was even fair to try and figure out where she fit in the equation.

Of all the things to have entangled herself in.

Pansy had talked about having a fling.

It had been pretty obvious since she’d met him that he was a man grappling with something heavy, something intense. And she’d told herself before she ever set out to seduce him that there was no way she could get too emotionally involved.

But now she felt...even more convinced of that.

She could help him. She’d been through grief. It might not be the same as his, but she knew what it was like. To experience loss. To experience the way people treated you as a result of that loss.

But she wanted a new life. And this was too perilously close to what she was trying to escape.

It would be fine. She just had to...not fall for him. If she fell in love with him she would want him to love her. And he loved his wife.

Her stomach went tight.

A lifetime of trying to live up to someone else. Of being second. Trying to earn first place...

She just couldn’t.

She extricated herself from his hold, slipped her clothes back on and walked herself over to the outhouse. And on the walk back, tried to make some decisions.

Mostly, she thought she might need a little bit of distance. Because she was overwhelmed. Not just with his revelations, but with the one she was having about herself.

And she didn’t quite know how to fit all those pieces together.

Because she wanted to... She wanted to be there for him, but she needed to figure out how to be there for herself too. Because aside from all of the sharp and painful things she had learned about him last night, she’d had sex for the first time.

She stopped right there, in the middle of the woods, feeling awed by that realization.

She was finally not a thirty-one-year-old virgin.

That seemed revelatory. More than a little bit incredible. But somehow, she had managed to attach herself to the most complicated man in the general area. Maybe Rose was right. Maybe she would have been better off with khakis. Khakis and water filtration, and no deep, emotional scarring that tested her own.

Maybe that was why some people opted for easy partners.

He’s not your partner. Settle down. He’s a guy that you slept with. And he couldn’t have made it more clear that he’s not ready for more.

It was true. He’d tried to warn her off, in basically every way, and she hadn’t listened. Because she had been so certain that she knew, absolutely, what she was doing and what she wanted.

And on the one hand, she had. On the one hand, it had been amazing. On the other hand... Complicated. Painful.

She paused in front of the cabin door. She just didn’t quite know what she was going to get, not with Griffin. Not really ever. But there was no turning coward now. The thing was, she had done the brave thing, and so had he. Now there was just the fallout. And she wondered what the fallout would be. If he would regret telling her. If he would regret touching her. Well, she’d been ripping the Band-Aid off a lot the last couple of weeks. Might as well do it again.

She pushed the cabin door open, and saw that Griffin was already up. He was at the woodstove, wearing only jeans, cooking something in a skillet. Bacon.

“I... Didn’t know you cooked.”

“Of course I cook. I mean, minimally, but bacon is not beyond my reach.”

She stood there, awkward. “Good morning,” she said.

“Morning,” he said.

“I don’t really know what the protocol is for this. I mean, virgin. Until recently.”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. But there’s bacon. So I figure, we can have some of that.”

“Yeah. That sounds like a plan.” In the absence of clarity, she would take bacon. Well, truth be told, she rationalized to herself as she watched Griffin, muscular and compelling, standing at that woodstove and cooking. As she watched his skin, his muscles, his movements. She did have some clarity. She didn’t regret last night. Not even a little bit. She had wanted it, and she had wanted him. And what had happened had been more than she’d bargained for, sure. But if she was truly honest with herself...

She had known. She had known that he was a man with unspeakable pain at his core. He hadn’t been dishonest about that, not in any of their interactions. He practically bled grief. He had also been a brilliant, desperate lover, who had woven fantasies around her that felt like they’d always been there. He created desires and satisfied them just as quickly. And standing there even now, she was filled with the strangest sense of satisfaction combined with a hollow, aching need for more.

What was clear was that she cared about him. Was that she had enjoyed last night. Was that his body matched hers in a very specific way.

What was clear was that she wanted to be standing here, watching him cooking bacon. She wanted it more than anything in the world.

“It’s so unusual that someone cooked breakfast for me.”

And some of that was that she tended to jump in and help, even if breakfast was already going by the time she got into the kitchen. But she wasn’t going to. Not now. Instead, she took herself to his bed and curled up at the center of the mattress, waiting for him to finish. And when he did, there was stove top coffee, eggs and bacon. And he brought them to her.

“There’s no call for you to wear clothes while you’re inside,” he said.

“I’m not sure about eating naked.”

A smile lit his face up, and she realized that she had never seen that. Not really. It seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised her. “Why does eating make it a problem?”

“It just is,” she said. “I mean, the risk of bacon grease burns alone...”

“I would never let that happen.”

“You can’t protect me.”

The words hovered between them, and suddenly felt leaden.

He cleared his throat. “I mean, suit yourself.”

“You still have your jeans on.”

“What’s good for the goose,” he said. “If you’re wearing clothes, so am I.”

She weighed that, but lay out on her stomach, still fully clothed, holding a piece of bacon. It was the strangest thing, but she felt younger. And it wasn’t that she felt light or unburdened, because there had been some pretty hefty weight shared last night. It was just that her world felt freer. Her world felt like it was this room. This moment.

“What are your plans for the day?”

“Well,” she said slowly. “There are things I could do back at the apartment. I need to talk to my brother about the fact that I’m moving out. I basically need to tie up some loose ends at the bakery. But I don’t think I need to do any of that today.”

“Really?”

“No. I think... I think that I would rather stay here. And I think that we should just forget everything.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do for the last few years.”

“But you’ve been alone. Today you won’t be.”