Free Fade Into You by Kate Dawes Page A

shook his head. “It’s not important right now. What is important is that now you know why I didn’t let you get too close to me. Do you see this like I do? What we did was amazing. Mind-blowing, actually. But there’s something more to having someone stay in your bed overnight.”
    “I do see it like that. But—”
    “Wait. I know what you’re going to say. You’re not like the girls I just described. I know that now. Hell, I knew it then. But it’s almost a reflex now. I shouldn’t have done that. And I’m sorry I handled it like that with you.”
    We were silent for a moment. I wanted to kiss him, but more than that, I wanted him to kiss me. He didn’t.
    “Now,” he said. “Unload your baggage. We had a deal.”
    “I know.” I took a breath. “I had a relationship with a guy for three years, back in Ohio. I was headed down the same road as my mom and my sister—find a guy, get married, have kids. I found the guy, but it turned out he found other girls, too.”
    Max frowned.
    “Three of them, to be exact,” I said. “I found out about the first two at the same time. Before I got up the nerve to confront him, I found out about the third. That’s when I told him I was done, it was over, so long, all that.”
    “It didn’t go well,” Max said, as if he already knew, but there was no way he could know. He just guessed there was a lot more.
    I let out a deep sigh. “Not well at all. I’d never seen him so angry. I wasn’t scared of him, but I didn’t want to see him ever again. I stopped going out with my friends because I thought I’d run into him. I’d go to the mall and be nervous that he’d be there and we’d have an argument. He was calling me all the time, leaving messages, texting, pretty much begging me to forgive him. He came to our house one night—I was living at home—and my father had to call the police to get rid of him. It was getting that bad.”
    “Stalker.”
    “Yep. So, anyway, he shows up at my house one day when my parents aren’t there. I’m at the kitchen table getting resumes and cover letters together. Regular day. And then he just walks in. Right into the kitchen, through the door that leads to the backyard.”
    Max sat forward, closer to me. “Jesus, Olivia.”
    I got a little choked up talking about it again. Max put his hand on my leg and gave it a light, comforting squeeze.
    “So,” I said, battling back the tears, “he’s saying he just wants to talk and I’m telling him to leave. He refuses. I stand up and yell at him to leave, telling him I’m going to call the police. That’s when he moved around the table before I could even process what was happening. He backed me up against the wall and said—I’ll never forget these words—he said, ‘I’ll never let you love anyone else.’ And I said, ‘I don’t love you.’”
    Max’s eyebrows rose. For a split second, I thought how surprising that was. Here was a writer, a story-teller, successful maker of movies, riveted by my story.
    I needed to get the story over with. I hated thinking about it, much less talking about it. “That’s when he raised his fist and cocked his arm back, like he was about to punch me in the face. God, the anger I saw in his eyes…it was terrifying. I’d never seen that in him before. I’d never seen that in anyone .”
    “Did he hit you, Olivia?”
    I shook my head. “No. I just crumbled right there in front of him. Fell right to the floor, hysterically crying. I don’t know if that’s what stopped him or what. I just stayed on the floor and after a minute or so, I saw his shoes turn the other way and he left. Just walked out. Didn’t say anything.”
    Max moved closer and put his arm around me.
    I said, “You’re only the second person I’ve told.”
    He lowered his head to my shoulder and kissed it. Then he looked up, put a finger under my chin and turned my face toward his. “I’m sorry, Olivia.”
    “It’s not your fault.”
    “No, about how I