Descent (Black Heart Romance presents Heaven & Hell)

I’m not one of those easy breezy people capable of effortlessly letting go. Even Jackson, I never
loved him, but he was still able to… lure me into that situation,” I say, looking down, since it’s too
sordid to look at his face when I’m talking about that night.
Calvin grabs my jaw and forces me to look back at him. “You have a good heart. That’s nothing
to be ashamed of.”
“It makes me dumb sometimes,” I say lightly, turning my head to break his grip.
He allows it, but I still feel his gaze on me when I look away. “What worse things happened?”
My blood freezes, and my stomach does a somersault. “Hm?”
“You said worse things happened when you tried to distract yourself from the heartbreak. You
went to darker places.”
“I’d rather not talk about it,” I say honestly. “I’m tired, aren’t you?”
His lips tug up faintly. “All right, you obviously don’t want to talk about that.”
“I’m just tired,” I state, pulling away from him since he’s a human space heater. Or maybe it was
the memory, I don’t know.
He allows me to move over into the spot next to his, but I don’t move far. I stay closer to the
middle of the king sized bed than over on my own side. “What do you want?”
I roll on my side and slide my arm up under the cool underside of the pillow so I can get ready
for sleep. “In general, or…?”
“When you were talking about the first boyfriend, you said you haven’t found what you’re
looking for yet. What are you looking for?”
It’s a hard question. I know the answer, but I don’t want to read off unchecked boxes from some
imaginary list. “I want to be loved, completely. I want someone as committed to me as I am to them. I
want a man who truly knows who he is, what he wants. I don’t want to build a life that’s going to fall
apart, so I need someone who knows what he’s doing, who will build along with me and be just as
invested in the success of our joint venture as I am.”
He regards me with a look I might consider fondness if I didn’t know the story of our
relationship. “That seems pretty reasonable.”
“You’d think. Everyone wants to fuck around and have easy, shallow relationships that they bail
out of as soon as the excitement fades. Nobody wants to dig deep and really invest in a single
person.”
“That’s not true,” he says. “Look how much I’ve invested in you already, and I intend to invest
much more.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m sorry, I should have been more specific. I want all that from a man who isn’t
a rapey blackmailer who is effectively holding me prisoner.”