Chapter Twenty-three
Twenty minutes later, Grace was standing in front of the minibar in her room, contemplating scarfing down a king-sized Snickers bar and chasing it down with a little bottle of vodka, when Nick knocked on the door separating their rooms. Her heart leapt up in excitement (Let him in! Let him in!) while her brain immediately went into self-defense mode (He’s an ass! Ignore him!).
With one last look at the minibar—maybe she’d chase that Snickers bar down with two little bottles of vodka. Hadn’t she earned the right after the day she’d just had?—she walked over and leaned against the door, crossing her arms over her chest.
“What do you want, Nick?” she asked, putting as much “suck it, asshole” into her tone as possible.
“Can we talk, Grace? Please?”
The “please” was a nice touch, but it wasn’t enough to take the chill off what he’d said to her earlier. “Sure. Talk.”
“Will you open the door so I can see you?”
“No.”
She heard him sigh. “I deserve that. I’m so sorry for what I said earlier, Grace. I didn’t even mean it. I was just so…jealous and fucked-up about the thought of you being with that asshat. I wanted to tear him apart for even thinking he deserved to breathe the same air as you, and all I ended up doing was treating you like shit. Do you think you could ever forgive me?”
She wanted to tell him he was forgiven, because what he’d just said was probably the best apology she’d ever heard. Hell, Brad had cheated on her and hadn’t delivered half the apology Nick just had—and all he’d wrong done was talk out his ass for a minute! Who hadn’t been guilty of that at some point?
But while her heart wanted to immediately forgive him, her brain cautioned against it. That very apology—and her gut reaction to it—was proof that Nick was dangerous. Brad’s betrayal had hurt. But if this thing she had with Nick went further, when he left her (because let’s face it, everyone left eventually), she’d be destroyed.
How could she knowingly hand that kind of power over to anyone?
Grace let out a sigh of her own. “I’d like to forgive you, Nick. But…maybe this all happened for a reason. What you said was true. I did get involved with you really quickly. Too quickly. Maybe it’s time we step back and re-evaluate this thing.”
He was quiet for so long Grace started to wonder if he’d walked away or if he even planned to respond at all. Then he said, “Are you telling me that you want some space? Are you giving me an it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech?”
Grace blinked. Wow, he was right. That’s exactly what she was doing. She’d been on the receiving end a time or two, but hadn’t ever delivered one herself. And if she had to guess? She’d be willing to bet Nick never had a speech like that aimed at him, either.
Well, there was a first time for everything, she supposed.
With a nod that was entirely useless because he couldn’t see it, she said, “Yes. I suppose I am.”
She was pretty sure her heart face-palmed, all while her brain patted her on the back and offered platitudes about how there were plenty of other fish in the sea.
Grace flinched as there was a thunk on the door. It was a fairly distinct thunk, too. The thunk of a forehead dropping to the wood in defeat.
“Grace,” he said in that low, gravelly tone that never failed to reduce her knees to mush. “Don’t do this. Please let me in.”
There was more to that request than the obvious. He wasn’t just asking her to open her door. He was asking her to open her heart to him. To take a chance. To let her heart do the thinking for once.
And, God, how she wanted to. It’d be so easy to let Nick in. To lose herself in him. It’d be good, too. For a while, at least. But then…
“I’m sorry, Nick,” she choked out past the lump of emotion that had settled in her throat. “I can’t. I’m done talking about this. Please just go.”
Grace didn’t even wait for a reply. Instead, she shut off her light and threw herself down on the bed, wrapping her arms around her middle in an attempt to ward off the chill that had settled into her bones.
She’d done the right thing. Nick was too…everything for her. They didn’t belong together. It didn’t matter that he turned her on and made her laugh and had a huge heart. Letting him go now, before she got too attached, was the right thing to do.
But you already are attached, dumbass.
Jesus, had that come from her heart or her brain?
Okay, stay calm, she told herself, sucking in a deep breath. Think this through logically. Look at the pros and cons.
Pro number one for letting Nick go before things got any more complicated between them: Nick lived in Chicago and she lived in LA. Even if everything worked out between them (and that was a giant, massive, life-sized if) the best they could hope for was a long-distance relationship, because she couldn’t leave her practice in LA to follow him to Chicago (she was on track to be the youngest partner in the firm’s history, for God’s sake), and she wouldn’t ask him to uproot his life to follow her to LA.
Con for letting Nick go now: No more long talks about nothing and everything. The kind of talks that made her laugh until she nearly cried. The kind of talks that made her feel more alive and connected to another human being than she’d ever felt with anyone else. Those talks were so…intimate, and going back to a life without that kind of intimacy—the kind she was pretty sure she’d never had with another anyone else—was truly terrifying.
Pro for letting Nick go now before they got too involved: The chances of her ending up an emotionally crippled shell of her former self, drowning in mint mocha chip ice cream and vodka to dull the pain of losing him at some point in her not-so-distant future were all but nil. Suffer a little bit now, save herself infinitely greater pain later. It seemed like a reasonable trade-off.
But then, of course, there was the other con for letting Nick go now: Not ever getting to have sex with him. Never getting to know what it felt like to be with him, skin-to-skin, surrounded by him, losing herself to him as he drove her to the edge of sanity and beyond…
I’m not looking for a relationship.
Yeah, but what would you do if you found one?
Images of the past few days with Nick raced through her mind like montage clips from a cheesy romantic comedy. Nick smirking at her across the table in that airport holding room, Nick paying for a stranger’s dinner and blushing when she saw evidence of what a nice guy he was, Nick protecting her from Cletus the creepy motel night manager, Nick holding her and taking care of her when she was too sick to move, Nick kissing the holy hell out of her in that elevator…
“Damn,” Grace muttered. “I’ve found a relationship.”
And that was pretty much when her heart told her brain, with all its logic and pro/con lists, to go screw itself. How could she possibly let him go now? She’d been a fool to even consider it.
A cocktail of dread and panic coursed through her veins as she considered the possibility that he might not want her anymore. She had stiff-armed him away from her pretty hard. What if he was in the hotel bar right now, picking up some hot, willing woman who wasn’t all fifty shades of fucked-up like Grace was?
Driven by panic, Grace shot up off the bed and raced to the door separating their rooms. Without giving any thought to what she might see if he wasn’t alone in that room, Grace yanked the door open and…
Let out a shocked gasp when she found Nick standing right there, head down, arms braced on the doorframe above his head.
He hadn’t moved when she told him to go away.
Nick lifted his head slowly, and when his eyes met hers, Grace knew there was no turning back. The hurt, the longing, the confusion, the need…everything she was feeling was looking right back at her from the depths of his fathomless blue eyes.
She opened her mouth, but whatever she was going to say was lost forever when he grabbed her, yanked her into his arms and kissed the ever-lovin’ hell out of her.