CHAPTER NINETEEN

Mia

“What am I doing right now?” I demand, still on the barstool with Grayson holding onto my arm. “Giving myself room to fight. I don’t want to be trapped in my seat right now.”

He studies me for several unreadable seconds and then lets me go, but there’s something in the way he does it, in the way he withdraws beyond the physical that keeps me in my seat. “I’m not even thinking about leaving. I wish I never had. I wish I could turn back the clock and get back our lost time.”

He doesn’t immediately respond. He doesn’t agree. He doesn’t offer me the forgiveness I don’t deserve for leaving, and some part of me really needs to be forgiven, perhaps because I feel he never really will. Which makes the fact that he’s the one who stands up now and walks away, appropriate. He offers me his back and presses his hands onto the counter opposite the island by the sink. I’ve hurt him again, and in turn, I’ve pushed him away when I want him close. I stand up and quickly slide between him and the sink, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t touch me. “Is that how it is, Mia?” he asks. “I suffocate you? I make you feel trapped?”

My hand settles on his chest. “No. God no. You always made me feel safe in too many ways to name. In us. In the rest of the world. In my desire to go bigger and further. You made me feel so many things, good things, that I have missed. I just—”

“You just what?” he demands, his voice low, taut, and still he doesn’t touch me.

“I felt like that safe feeling was a lie. I was so hurt when I left that I think it’s hard to let down my guard again.”

“I didn’t cheat on you, Mia. I don’t deserve to have you put up that kind of guard again.”

“I know, but I pulled up a guard to protect myself and now I have to pull that wall down. I am pulling it down. The problem is that when I pull it down, what’s left is me leaving you over a lie that wasn’t yours. That makes us unsteady.”

“To me, unsteady was when we were apart. Steady is here, now. Together.”

“It is, but you own your world in a way that most do not. You own my world and me when I’m with you. With my heart on the line, that’s more than scary. It’s terrifying.”

“And you own mine, Mia. You are my world.”

He says the words with deep, guttural passion, but he still doesn’t touch me. “I think it’s hard to feel like your equal,” I admit, just wanting to say it, to get it all out once and for all.

“When have I ever made you feel less than me?” He pushes off the counter, his hands settling at his hips, withdrawing even further. “I talked to you about everything. I trusted you with everything. I needed you with me through it all.”

“But you have to know that there are few human beings on this planet that can stand next to you and not compare themselves and judge themselves unworthy. I always wanted to deserve to be by your side. I wanted to have more depth to what I offer when you do ask my opinion.”

“And you thought you didn’t? Aside from being beautiful and intelligent, Mia, you, like my father, have a moral compass that keeps mine in line. He loved that about you just like I do. You keep me solid.”

“You don’t need me for that. Your father carved right and wrong into your very being. I want to be more than that for you and for me. That was something I was working toward when we broke up and it felt good. I need my own successes, so when you pulled me from that case without talking to me, I felt—owned, in the wrong way.”

“Mia—”

I hold up a hand. “Before you respond, I need to say a little more. You handled pulling me from that account wrong, but I had insecurities that probably made me handle it just as wrong. Had Becky not pressed her damn naked breasts against you that day, I would have talked it out with you. That’s what I’m doing now. I’m talking it out with you. Not running.”

“I was protecting you,” he says. “That is what the man who loves you should do.”

“If I was at risk of your father firing me to set an example, I should be making the decision about taking that risk.”

“It was more than that. I get that you were next in line, but we pulled the lead counsel because he was in bed with the mob. That’s how we ended up defending a dirty mobster we thought wasn’t dirty. You didn’t see all of the facts and when I did, I pulled a favor with the judge. I asked to have the opportunity to pull you. He made me do it on the spot. It was then or never and I didn’t want you on the feds’ or the mob’s radar. The end. That wasn’t happening. I love you too damn much for that.”

“You should have told me you were making the call. I don’t know a woman who would be upset that her man was trying to protect her. I just don’t get why you didn’t talk to me. That isn’t us. Not the us I knew.”

“I had to make a snap decision and I know you, Mia. You would’ve said you could take the heat off with the feds.”

“I could have. I’m squeaky clean. I would have if it protected you and the firm.”

“That’s what I mean. You would have tried to protect me. I would have pulled you, and the fact that I ignored your pleas would have made it worse.”

“No. It would not have because I wouldn’t have felt betrayed. Just pissed.” I step to him again and press my hand to his chest. “Don’t do that to me again because we will need a weekend and a rubber room for the war that will ensue.”

“If I ever have to make a snap decision to protect you, Mia, I’ll make it and I’d expect you to do the same in reverse.” He shackles my arm and pulls me to him. “Like you came here to protect me. That’s what we do. We protect each other. That’s what you would have tried to do.”

I reach up and brush my fingers over his jaw. “Yes. We protect each other, but next time, you don’t get to go around me.”

“You’re right, but just know this, baby. When I look into your eyes and you ask for something, it’s hard as hell to deny you.” The buzzer on the oven goes off.

“Even pizza? Because I’m really hungry.”

He cups my face, and he’s not focused on pizza. “If you hold back, if you get ready for me to leave you, then you’ve already left me again. Or just never came back. All in, Mia, or all out.”

“All in,” I say, despite the fact that I am unreasonably afraid of being hurt. He didn’t betray me. I betrayed him. I hurt him. I need to be vulnerable. I owe him that. And I have to trust him not to hurt me, the way I should have trusted him a year ago.

“How about that pizza?” Grayson asks, kissing me. “It’s been far too long since we shared one together.”

“Pizza with you sounds like everything.”

Tension eases from his body, and the hard lines of his handsome face soften. He’s back. He’s here with me and relief washes over me. I need him. I need him in ways I tried to deny and failed every time.

He walks to the oven and pulls out the pizza and I turn to watch him return. He sets it on the island counter. “How’s your dad?” he asks, flipping open the lid.

My eyes go wide. “Going out of town this weekend and I don’t have my phone. What if he calls?” I dart away toward the bedroom and hunt down my purse and my phone. Once I’ve located it, I check my missed calls and go cold. Ri has called not once but three times.

I glance at my text messages and there’s one there from him as well: Mia. We should talk. Immediately. Call me.