Burn for You: Outback Skies, Book 2 by Lexxie Couper Read Free Book Online

put Franco and me where we shouldn’t have been. My ego killed him. And my inability to forgive myself for that, along with the way I now look, drove my wife to end our marriage.”
    He didn’t say Tracey had been sickened by the look and feel of the scars on his body. He understood his ex-wife’s repulsion. He felt the same.
    “Evan…” Jenna’s soft whisper danced on the night’s shadows. “Oh God, Evan, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
    He returned his cap to his head and let out a ragged sigh. He had to distance himself from her. He had to put a barrier between them. Because the longer she was here, the longer he could see her, the more he remembered how amazing it was to kiss her. And the more he remembered that , the more he realized just how unheroic he was. He’d desired Jenna while he was in a relationship with another woman. Not only had he caused his partner’s death and the end of his marriage, he’d also been unfaithful deep in his soul. What kind of man was he? Truly?
    “I don’t deserve your sympathy, Jenna. Nor do I deserve your attention. Now if you’ll excuse me—” He began to swing the door shut.
    The sharp slap of her hand against the closing door jarred up through his arm. “Tracey was sexting with my boyfriend when you two were still married.”
    Icy shock ribboned through Evan’s self-disgust. He stared at her, his blood roaring in his ears. “What?”
    “Tracy and Richard were sexting each other. That’s why I stopped being her friend. I caught them…it was before the Blue Mountains fire. I should have told you but…”
    He stared at her. In his chest, his heart pounded like a canon, each beat bashing with punishing force. “They were sending text images to each other? Naked images?”
    She dipped her head in a single, shallow nod.
    “Did they…?” He stopped. He couldn’t ask the question. It stuck in his throat, a hot, sour lump.
    Jenna chewed her lip again. “I don’t know. Richard swears they were just flirting. Harmless, he called it. But it…it destroyed me. Destroyed my trust in him.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I didn’t…I don’t know. Tracey told me you guys had a more adult relationship. And you were always so…so relaxed about the fawning and carrying on other guys did over Tracey when we were out. Like you were proud of it.”
    Another invisible blow punched into Evan’s gut. A cold band of steel wrapped his chest. A dull roaring filled his head.
    He ground his teeth, biting back a muttered curse. Jesus, he’d been such a wanker.
    “I’m sorry, Evan.” Jenna reached through the open door and touched his jaw—the right side of his jaw—with gentle fingers. “I should have told you, even if you might have laughed at me. I should have told you. But instead, I took the chicken-shit way out and just ran away.”
    He stared at her. Found her gaze in the darkness of his foyer. Saw grief shining in her eyes. Grief and regret and compassion.
    And something else.
    Something he couldn’t fight.
    Not right now.
    He would. When no longer reeling from her statement. But not now. Not right at this very second.
    For at this very second, he needed the connection she offered. He needed the fantasy of the desire he saw in her gaze.
    For this very second. If only this second.
    Closing his eyes, he turned his head and pressed his lips to the centre of her palm, and in doing so, presented her an uninterrupted view of the left side of his face. Allowed her to see his mangled ear, the lobe fused to the side of his head, the outer shell barely discernable from the knotted flesh on his scalp. The mess of flesh that stretched over his jaw. The white and pink scars—so dense and thick they still seemed new and raw—wrapping the side of his neck.
    He stood that way for four pounding beats of his heart—a lifetime. Jenna didn’t move her hand away. Nor did she say a word.
    He stood there with his lips pressed to her palm and allowed himself the moment.
    Allowed