Kissing Under the Mistletoe

"What else did you need to be sure about?" she asked in a soft voice. "Just my business decisions...or me, too?"

He reached for her. "Brooke—"

She took one step away from him, and then another. "I get that you don’t trust people. I even mostly understand your reasons. That’s why I said you could ask me anything. Anything. But instead of asking me what you wanted to know about my past—" She worked to stay strong enough, steady enough, but she had to ask. "Did you do a background check on me?"

Unfortunately, she could read the answer on his face even before he said, "I swear I haven’t read it and I’m not going to."

Suddenly, she could hardly breathe. But it wasn’t the wonderful kind of breathlessness that took her over when he was kissing her. No, this was a horrible, terrible pain that resonated deep in her chest.

"It was one thing for you to investigate Cord, and I can almost forgive you for thinking that being overprotective means you’re taking care of me. But how could you possibly justify running a background check on me? Don’t you know me at all after the past week? Or how about after we practically grew up together?" He’d just told her he loved her for the first time hours ago. But how could he love her if he’d done this? "You told me you would never forgive yourself if we slept together in the heat of the moment and I woke up the next morning and decided it was a mistake. But I knew that would never happen. Because you could never be a mistake." The pain beneath her breastbone intensified as she said, "I can’t believe I was wrong."

"You’re not wrong, Brooke. I’m not a mistake. We’re not a mistake." He started to reach for her again, but when she flinched, he dropped his hand. "I’m sure about loving you. Absolutely, one hundred percent sure. I think I always was, right from the start, but with everything moving so fast it was easier to tell myself that I didn’t know where my head was than to admit that I had fallen in love with you this fast. This hard. This deep." His breath came fast, as if he’d been running a race. "I know I screwed up big time with this report—"

"I want to see it." It would be so easy to let herself listen only to his words of love, of how deeply he claimed to feel it. She forced herself to focus on what he’d done, instead. "I want to see what you found out about me in your background check."

"Brooke—"

"Show it to me, Rafe."

His eyes were wary as he reluctantly handed her his phone. "Ben told me it’s on page ten so that I could skip it."

As she scrolled through the report and quickly read through the list of all of her old addresses, her previous jobs, information about her parents and their jobs, one stupid tear fell onto the screen, and she dashed it away with the back of her hand.

"You missed the candy bar I slipped into my bag at the corner store when I was five because my parents wouldn’t buy it for me."

"Brooke—"

She scowled at the man who had made her cry out with pleasure mere minutes before...and who now was just making her cry. "And there’s the math test where I copied an answer from the girl sitting next to me when I was ten because I ran out of time and panicked about not bringing home an A. You should make sure you have your staff add that to the reports for the next guy who decides he has to do a background check before he can decide whether he’s sure enough to let himself love me."

"I was an idiot for not trusting you," he said in a voice made raw with emotion, and something that sounded like fear. "I was a fool for thinking you might have skeletons in your closet like everyone else."

"But I do have them, Rafe. I’m not perfect. Nobody is. And if you’d asked me about my past instead of running this stupid report, I would have told you that my parents told me over and over my whole life to be careful, to watch out, to make sure I didn’t get hurt. I would have told you that my grandparents taught me to believe in myself, and in others, no matter what, but that no matter how hard I try I hadn’t been able to completely shake away the fear my parents instilled in me. Not until you. I would have told you that I knew I would be safe being wild with you because you would never let anything happen to me." She didn’t bother to wipe her tears away this time, not when she knew more would just fall. "And I would have told you that finding out you’d bought the house next door felt like my birthday and Christmas all wrapped up into one, because you hadn’t just come back to the lake. You’d come back to me. I saw that you were darker, more cynical, but I thought I could help erase your pain with fun and laughter. And love. But now—" Her breath shook, along with her limbs. "Now I don’t know what to think."

* * *

"You did help." Didn’t she see? "You showed me I could love when I didn’t think it was possible." Rafe wanted to reach for her so badly that his fingers were actually cramping from holding them in check. But she hadn’t offered him another touch, and he sure as hell hadn’t earned it yet. "I can change. I swear I can, for you." Feeling as if he was grasping at straws, he told her, "I just told Ben that we’re not going to take infidelity cases anymore. I don’t want to see anymore relationships fall apart, and I don’t want any of my employees to have to deal with seeing it, either."

"I’m glad to hear that," Brooke said softly, but she was too pale and looked terribly fragile. "But I don’t know if that changes the fact that I always trust, even when I shouldn’t. And you always doubt, even when you shouldn’t. I wanted to believe we could make this work, that we could love each other through the rough patches, but—"