Found (Not Quite a Billionaire Book 3) by Rosalind James Page A

did the same thing. You did it then for the same reason you did it last night. You did it because you loved me, even though you didn’t know it then. When I’m in your arms, I feel safe. I feel your love surrounding me. But can’t you see, Hemi . . . I don’t need to feel safe every minute. I don’t need to be in the circle of your protection all the time. I know it’s there, and that’s enough. I need to be in the world as me, and to know you’re proud of me for doing that, just like I’m so proud of you. After that, I need you to come back to when I need to rest, and I want to be that for you, too. I want to be your resting place. I want to be your safe spot, where you can open your heart and know you’re loved for exactly who you are. How can needing somebody like that be weak, if we’re giving it to each other? How can that not be strength?”
    I could hardly breathe. I could hardly speak. “You are that,” I finally said. “You’re my prize.” She started back, and I said urgently, “Wait. You’re my . . . I don’t know. What you said. My shelter, maybe. I’m out in the storm, and then I come back to you. Like a sailor. Or a Maori.”
    “That’s beautiful,” she said. “And I love to hear it. But if you have to be under control all the time, if you’re controlling me, how can I see you? How can I help you? Especially if the only time you show yourself to me is in bed?”
    I didn’t answer, and she hurried on. “I hear myself saying all this, and I cringe. I feel like all I’m doing is complaining, when you’ve given me so much, and that’s part of the problem. I don’t want to nag, and I don’t want to fight. And I love having sex with you. I want to have it almost every night, and I love that you want me so much. But I want to know you better than that, and I want you to know me. I want you to love me not just for my weakness, not just because you can take care of me, but for my strength, too. I want you to see that I’m not so different from you. I need to get somewhere, the same way you’ve always burned to. I want you to love the fighter in me, just like I love the fighter in you.”
    “If I didn’t,” I said, “I wouldn’t love you much right now. You say you don’t know how to fight. You’re making a pretty good fist of it all the same.”
    “I don’t think this is fighting,” she said. “This is discussing. This is sharing. This is risking it all, saying it’s too important to give up. This is what I need. You listening to me, and you talking to me.”
    I laughed. “You don’t ask much, do you?”
    She smiled, then. “Only to change. They say people don’t change, but I think they can. I think I can learn to put my hand on you and tell you I need your time, I need your attention. And I think you can learn to give it to me. I think I can learn to tell you no, and that you can learn to win in a new way. I think we can both try, if it matters enough.”
    “Oh, sweetheart,” I said, my heart right there in my throat, “it matters enough.”
    “Then,” she said, “maybe we should talk about where to go from here.”

 
    Hope

    I’d been expecting storms. I’d been expecting to be shut down. I’d been thinking we were at “do or die,” and part of me, the part that had never dared to believe my life could really work out this way, had whispered that it would be “die.” I couldn’t live under a man’s control, not even a man I loved as much as Hemi.
    The thought that he could be flexible? Yes, you could say that was a new concept. But to help him become less rigid, I was going to have to become much stronger. I’d said we’d both have to change, and I’d meant it.
    I was still turning it over in my mind when he said, “Let’s sit a bit, eh.” He led me over to our tree, the one where he’d given me my ring, and I looked at him suspiciously and said, “You planned this.”
    That barely-there smile touched his mouth. “I plan most of what I do. Want