Salvation by Noelle Adams Page B

but a project? And, what, once I thought it was done, I would just label you as complete and move on?”
    He sounded strangely betrayed, but I knew for a fact that this was exactly what would happen. Naturally, he wouldn’t all of a sudden stop calling or coming by, but eventually the visits would taper off until there was nothing.
    A man like Gideon—as good and attractive and remarkable as he was—didn’t pour himself into a broken shell like me. Not when he was getting nothing in return. Not for long, anyway.
    “Can we please just let it go? I shouldn’t have said anything.” My voice sounded slightly shrill as the demons started rising inside me, roused by too many emotions I couldn’t control.
    “No, we’re not going to let it go. We’re going to talk about this.” He was angry. I could see it in his eyes and in the set of his shoulders.
    As angry as I was scared.
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped, trying to block out the panic, the memories, the remembered pain, that was starting to rip through me. “You’re blowing one little comment way out of proportion, and I don’t want to have this stupid conversation.”
    “I don’t care if you don’t want to have it. It’s important, and we’re having it anyway.”
    “No, we’re not.” I was definitely shrill now. “You don’t get to decide things for both of us. I don’t want to talk about it. I want you to just leave.”
    There was something blazing in him with his anger and intensity—something I hadn’t seen in him before. I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t understand it, but it was too much, too intense, too blinding. “I’m not going to leave until we talk about it.”
    I could tell he meant it. He’d planted himself in the middle of the room, and he wasn’t going to be moved.
    I knew first-hand how strong his will was. I’d seen it at work on the first night we’d met, when he’d planted himself in front of me in that terrible room, in the face of three armed gangsters. It had taken even more than the three of them that night to move him. To break him.
    But he had been broken that night, and then I’d been broken too.
    I was still trying to live in the wake of it, and Gideon had, at this moment, become a threat to the way I was surviving it.
    So I used the only weapon left I could think of, however unfair it was. “You are going to leave. You’re going to leave right now. This is my home—my family owns it—and it’s private property. I’m telling you right now to leave. I’ll call the police on you for trespassing if you don’t get out of this house right now.”
    His face changed as he realized what I was doing. “Diana,” he began.
    “No! I want you out!”
    He stared at me for a long moment with an aching expression that wounded me so much I had to look away. He didn’t really have a choice though. He went to pick up his phone from where he’d set it earlier on a side table, and then he walked to the front door.
    “I’ll call you later,” he said, glancing back at me once more.
    I didn’t answer, and he closed the door behind him quietly with a click.
    I heard his engine start and then the sound of his tires crunching on the gravel where he always parked.
    I doubled over suddenly, hugging my arms to my stomach, trying to hold it all in.
    I gasped a few times and then ran to the stereo to turn on music, turning the knob until the familiar strains of Carmen filled the room, the whole house. I turned it even louder than normal so I couldn’t even hear myself think. Or feel. Or anything.
    Then I put on my shoes and climbed onto my elliptical.
    I pushed myself harder than normal, so hard my legs were almost numb after an hour. I turned my ankle painfully at one point but didn’t let that stop me. I just pushed through the pain, trying to feel nothing except the pulse of the music and the numb ache of my body.
    I don’t even know how long it was. At least a couple of hours. I was sweating so