Sparks Fly

Chapter Twenty-Three: A Deal with the Devil and a Graveyard

"I didn't need you to defend me back there. Especially not in front of so many people."

"I know you would have preferred to remain silent, maybe walk away." His warm fingers traced the veins on the inside of her wrist, sending little shivers up her spine which only served to shake her already flimsy hold on control. "But someone like Crue needs to have the truth spelled out for her to ensure she gets it."

"If I thought she needed to know, I would have told her myself," Rain snapped.

A normal person would have probably said thank you.

Teagan didn't get defensive which would have been completely understandable given the fact she was being so ungrateful. So difficult was the word her father preferred.

A nod, simple yet so unexpected, Rain could do nothing but grow frustrated that she was never sure what to prepare for with him.

He didn't follow the rules everyone else ritually adhered to.

"That's the problem. You don't think anyone needs to hear it, but you're wrong. It's not so much who you finally decide to open up to, it's the fact that you set yourself free of whatever guilt and pain you think you deserve just by letting go of the past."

Teagan used his hold on her wrist to pull her just a little bit closer. Close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body as only a breath kept her from his sculpted chest. Close enough to make her heart speed up for no reason other than that he was looking at her as if she was a woman worth looking at.

As if, at least to him, she wasn't ever going to be invisible.

"I would really like it if you trusted me enough to be the person you confide in, but I won't push you into it."

Rain fought the unnatural urge she felt to spill her secrets, bare her soul. Those were words she hadn't known she wanted to hear from anyone. "You really don't have to bother trying to know it all," she whispered, closing her eyes so she wouldn't drown in the intensity of his gaze. "No one wants to know the truth, not about me. No one has the right to know it but me."

Teagan's surprisingly warm hands framed the sides of her face, jolting her out of the misery she always crawled back to. Amusement, gentleness, kindness. A little bit of all of that swirled in his eyes.

"While that may be true, you shouldn't have to carry all that weight by yourself. No one has to live with the fear of letting go and letting others in."

Everything out of his gorgeous mouth made sense. Which was why she so desperately tried to fight him. "You don't know what you're asking for."

"And you don't know how you're hurting yourself by building up the walls," he returned. "I see that pain, Rainy Day. I've felt my own share of it, too. But I've learned that when you try to keep it all locked inside the way you have, you lose a vital piece of who you are."

No. How long had she been hoping for just a little of that understanding from her father? Too long.

"When all you focus on is the bad, you miss out on all the good in life that would have helped you move on. Helped you heal."

Rain was shaking inside, wanting to let some of the hurt out so she could breathe. Because he was right. She's spent so many years trying to hold onto the past so she wouldn't be in danger of exposing herself, that she hadn't allowed herself to just be for so long.

"What about you?" Rain questioned in an attempt to turn his attention away from her.

"What about me?"