Maybe she did.
“I fell in love with you, Indy,” he told her, almost hoarsely. “And I don’t want to change you. I don’t want to tie you down. I threw out my entire world so that I might try to deserve an angel in an alleyway. How could I pluck off your wings?”
An angel in alleyway. It sounded like a poem, and even though Indy still felt as if she might cry, there was something laced through it. Something so beautiful it hurt.
“It doesn’t take much to deserve me,” she told him, though her voice was thick. “I think you’ve already cracked the code.”
But Stefan shook his head again, looking down at where he had his hands braced on the counter. “You have spoken a great deal about how you want to find your passion. I want this for you. And I know who you are, Indy. I know you are not a girl who stays put.”
“Stefan—”
He ignored her, lifting that blue gaze to hers. “But I will. I want you to understand that I’m not afraid of anything you might find out there, or anything you might do. I have never been a patient man, but for you, I will wait.” He managed to indicate the house with one of those shrugs of his. “I will be here. And I know you’ll come back. Maybe more than once. And maybe one day, you will stay.”
Indy stared at him, stricken. That look on his face was doing odd things inside of her. He looked so stoic. So resigned. And yet here he was, making this sacrifice, when she knew there was not one inch of this man who was at all good with either waiting, letting go, or sacrificing himself in any way.
She knew it.
She knew him.
Maybe what she knew most of all was the two of them, together.
“This is what you think will happen?” she asked softly. “You think the passion I want to find involves going back out there and continuing to do what I’ve always done?”
That muscle in his jaw twitched, but his gaze remained steady. “If that is what you want, I won’t be the one to stop you.”
Indy wanted to throw something at him. She wanted to throw herself at him. Hug him a little and maybe shake him while she was at it.
But she didn’t do any of those things.
“Well,” she said. And maybe made a little meal out of the word. “Look at that. You don’t know everything.”
Whatever response he’d expected, that clearly wasn’t it.
Stefan blinked. His head tilted slightly to one side. And she watched those impossible blue eyes change once more.
Taking on a shade she recognized.
Danger, not sacrifice.
Which was to say, him.
“I woke up this morning and everything made sense.” It was her turn to look at him steadily. To hide nothing. “Yesterday was so intense it’s like it was a key in a lock. You wouldn’t let me speak and so I couldn’t make excuses. Not even in my own head.”
“You don’t need to draw this out. You can simply leave. I told you this already.”
“And in the middle of all that intensity, the whole world boiled down to this,” Indy said, ignoring him. “I didn’t think that I was searching for anything, but then I found you. I think you know I’ve had a lot of steamy nights. I don’t normally pay them any attention. They fade away as soon as the sun comes up, and I go on to the next. It was different with you.”
“Maybe it was the gun,” he suggested, with a glimmer of that dry humor she loved.
She smiled at him, and even she knew that it was a real smile. Because it was for him.
“It was you, Stefan. I thought of nothing else for two years, and then I came here to find that you’re everything I had imagined and so much more.” Her heart was thundering at her. She felt almost shaky standing still. But she looked at him and none of that mattered. “You were right—there was part of this that terrified me. I walked away, but really, I think I only did it to see if I could. To see if you’d let me. And you did.”
“I’m doing the same thing now,” Stefan gritted out. “But I should tell you, I was never much of a martyr. The longer you stand here, not leaving, the less I can remember why I’m not convincing you to stay.”
“You can’t convince me to stay,” Indy said softly. “No one could ever convince me to stay. Because a long time ago, I decided that I needed to be a rolling stone. That I could never stay in one place too long. That it would take something from me if I did. Do you know what I think that was?”
Another hint of dryness. “Not daddy issues, I understand.”
“Because I thought I had to be different from how I started. Just like I decided I couldn’t do well in school because my sister did. I had to distinguish myself.” She pulled in a breath. “I took something that might have cut a different girl off at the knees, a dumb older boy taking private things and making them public, and I owned it. And do you know what, Stefan? It felt good. Powerful.”
“As it should.”
“I tasted that at fourteen and all I wanted was more. So I had whatever sex I felt like having. I was a stripper because why not? I liked taking off my clothes, and more than that, I liked people’s reactions when they found out that’s what I did.” Indy had never talked about these things like this. She had never laid out her life, not like this. But it didn’t feel like her life any longer, did it? She focused on him. “And ever since then, I’ve done exactly as I pleased. I’ve gone wherever I wanted, taken lovers and friends as I liked and left them, too, without
