CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SABRINA RAN FROM THE DINER. She left her guitar, and Mal picked it up with a curse while simultaneously yanking a few bills from his pocket and dropping them on the table. He ran out the door after her, calling for her to stop.
He could see her with her head down a few feet up ahead, stumbling along, weaving in and out of the crowd of people on the sidewalk. She bumped into someone and fell against a parked car. Mal caught up to her, his heart pounding as he prayed she wasn’t hurt.
“Sabrina.”
There were tears in her eyes as she straightened. “Leave me alone, Mal. Please leave me alone.”
Her words tore at him, but he didn’t back away. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, her shoulders drooping.
“Why did you run?”
His heart was a wounded organ in his chest. She didn’t want him. Hadn’t thought about him the way he’d thought about her. Endlessly. Longingly.
He’d fought the specter of her until he couldn’t fight anymore. There was something about Sabrina, something that got beneath his skin and made him need her in his life. Was it love? Hell, he didn’t know, but he knew it was crucial to his happiness.
She was crucial to his happiness.
She sucked in a breath. The tears on her cheeks were killing him. “I don’t have a good experience with impulsive decisions. I nearly married an asshole, and then I let myself get involved with you—”
She didn’t say anything more, and he felt like his heart was breaking in two.
“Was that a bad thing?”
She looked everywhere except at him. “I don’t know. Maybe. I missed you so much… but you were gone, and I was alone again. And maybe that’s where I needed to be, because we don’t really know each other, and it’s ridiculous to think two people can want to be together after a few days of sex—”
“It was more than sex and you know it.”
Her head snapped up and her eyes glittered. “Was it? You told your mother I was no one, and you were right. We hooked up because we were lonely and upset.” She shrugged. “There are worse reasons, I suppose.”
He set her guitar down and moved toward her. She didn’t back away, and he took that as an encouraging sign. He didn’t reach for her though. He stopped a few inches away, when he could smell her lemon and vanilla scent and feel the heat rolling off her body.
“You aren’t no one. Not to me. I’m sorry I said that. I wasn’t prepared to deal with my family then, not after everything with Chris. My head wasn’t on straight. I don’t think yours was either. But it is now, Sabrina. I can say with conviction that I need you in my life. I’ve thought of nothing except you for two months, and now that I’m here… well, I’ll take no for an answer if it’s what you want. It’s not what I want. And I won’t stop trying to convince you we’re right for each other.”
She laughed, the sound broken. “You can’t know that. Hell, I thought Brian was right for me, and look how that turned out. Do you have a wife tucked away somewhere, Mal? What happens when you get bored with me? I’m plain Sabrina Miller, a girl who wants to be a country star. I’m not a model. I’m not rich. I wait tables. I have nothing to give you but me. What happens when that’s no longer enough for you?”
He was getting mad now. He didn’t care if it upset her, he reached out and grabbed her shoulders, forced her to stand and look at him. “That’s fear, sugar. And cowardice. You aren’t a coward. The woman who marched away from her own wedding with a storm bearing down on her wasn’t a coward. The woman who sat with me when I broke down over my brother wasn’t a coward. Neither was the woman who told me I made people happy with what I did, who told me I had the power to make a difference in people’s lives.”
She trembled in his grip. “I am a coward, Mal. When it comes to you, I discovered I only have so much strength. And I’m afraid of what will happen to me if I give in to everything I feel for you.”
He stroked her cheek with shaking fingers. “What do you feel for me, Sabrina?”
Her lashes dropped, fanned her cheeks. A tear slipped free, and he caught it with his thumb.
“Everything I shouldn’t,” she whispered. “It makes no sense, but I do.”
Heat and wonder spread inside his belly, his bones. The rightness of this filled him. She couldn’t take it back now. And he wasn’t letting her go. Not ever.
Because he understood something he hadn’t before. He’d made all these plans to come to Nashville, to be with her, yet he’d never stopped to think she might not want him. When she’d run out of the restaurant, he’d felt as if his world were crumbling beneath his feet. He’d experienced heartbreak when he’d lost his brother—and he’d nearly experienced it again tonight when Sabrina ran out on him.
You didn’t have to be a genius to know what that meant. It was love. He loved her, as crazy as that sounded. He loved her.
He tilted her chin up and met those beautiful chocolate eyes of hers with a smile he could feel shaking at the corners.
“I love you, Sabrina. Does that make a difference?”
Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious. We don’t know each other well enough—”
“Fuck that,” he said. “We know what’s important.” He dropped his hand until it covered her heart. Then he took one of her hands and put it over his heart. Both beat fast and strong. “This is what’s important, Sabrina. Our hearts beat for each other. You feel it the same as I do. It’s been that way from the beginning.”
He could feel the tension melting from her. And then she smiled. It was a genuine smile this time, not a frightened one. “You’re crazy, Malcolm Hughes.”
“Crazy for you.” He pulled her into his arms. “I had to throw away the playbook with you. Nothing about us made sense from the beginning. Every single play has been out of bounds.”
“That means it doesn’t count.”
She was looking at him with one eyebrow arched, and he laughed.
“Look at you, figuring out the rules of football.” He put both his hands on her cheeks, just held her there so he could gaze into her eyes. “It counts, Sabrina. With you, it all counts.”
She gripped his wrists lightly. And then she sighed. “I love you too. In case you were wondering.”
“Then you’ll date me? Unless I can talk you into moving in, and then let’s skip the whole dating thing and go right to cohabitating.”
“Wow, you do move fast, don’t you?”
“I can move faster. I figured this was a good start.”
Sabrina laughed. “I think we’re already moving at light speed.”
“Then marry me.”
Her jaw dropped. He closed it for her with a kiss. She melted into him, and his body tightened with desire and longing. He kissed her thoroughly, completely, until the dim cheering of a crowd penetrated his brain. He finally looked up to see the waitress from the restaurant standing on the street, watching them. She was surrounded by others, and they were all cheering.
“Say yes, say yes, say yes…” rolled through the crowd.
Sabrina laughed as she clung to him. She tried to hide her face against his chest. He knew she was scared. And he knew that he loved her.
“It can be a long engagement,” he murmured for her ears only. “Or a short one. Whatever makes you happy.”
She tilted her head back and met his gaze. What he saw there made his chest ache.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Absolutely yes.”