CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DAY FOLLOWS NIGHT, follows day, follows night, and I bear witness to it all. I’m aware of the rotation of the earth around the sun but I am weary.
I see Eliza and Cassie and I hate it that they are worried about me. Again. I see the concern etched on their faces and try to smile, but I have forgotten how. I am learning the hardest lesson of all.
Good intentions be damned.
You cannot immunise yourself against some things, and all-consuming love appears to be one of them. How stupid I was to believe I could control it. How awful the pain at realising my mistake.
Did he sleep with her?
I dismiss the idea instantly. Of course he didn’t.
Ethan isn’t Jeremy. He wouldn’t do that.
Would he?
That’s the problem. Just like I said to him over a week ago, when we argued. I’ve forgotten how to trust, and that includes my instincts. I don’t know if I believe him to be good because I want to or because I should. I cannot see clearly any longer.
Jeremy took that away from me.
I’m not ignoring Ethan because I believe him to be a cheat. I’m ignoring him because I believe he is a pathway to unimaginable pain. I know that I’m not strong enough to weather the demise of what we are. It is almost killing me now, and we have only been sleeping together for two weeks. What if I let myself admit how much I love him? What if I let him into my life? And after six months...two years...five years...two kids? What if it ends then?
I see the future and I see those paths before me, just like on that first night, and every single path leads to hurt and lost hope.
Unless I stay right where I am, pretending that I’m glad we’ve ended it.
I stare at the images on my screen and rouse myself. Ethan’s brownstone. The proposal is complete. I have arranged two options for him, and yet I know which he will choose. I have selected pieces that inherently reflect the essence of who he is. On that score I have no doubts.
I have chickened out of presenting them to him, though. Natasha can do that. I can’t see him again. I can’t see him in the house that I have come to love. I can’t see him there and imagine him living in those rooms, only a few blocks away from me. I can’t.
‘Your four o’clock is here.’
Lesley’s voice comes through the intercom, about a thousand degrees too cheery for my current mood.
‘Great,’ I say through gritted teeth, clicking into my calendar to see just what appointment I’ve got. I can’t see an entry but I stand, a perplexed look on my face.
The door swings open and there he is.
Ethan tormenting-my-dreams Ash—all sexy, dishevelled, good-enough-to-eat handsome, watching me as though I’m a bomb that might detonate.
I have no time to gather my wits. He moves into the room and shuts the door behind himself and then he comes right up to me, so close that I can feel his warmth and smell his adrenaline and I want to kiss him. I want to kiss him all over.
The knowledge of that makes me push back. I’m not that woman. I have a brain and I have a decision-making process and, damn it, I’m going to use both.
‘What are you doing here?’
The question comes out in a rush, but I am pleased with how defiant I sound. How pissed off, when actually I’m part-way to melting.
‘Well, you haven’t been returning my calls or responding to my texts, so what choice did I have?’
I glare at him, all the angrier at the effect his accent has on me. At the way my body is sensitised, my stomach churns and my mind almost goes blank.
‘You had the choice to take the hint,’ I snap, moving away from him, seeking sanity in the distance. ‘You had the choice to let me go.’
‘No.’
His eyes glint as they meet mine and I feel like I’ve slammed into a brick wall. His determination is mighty.
‘No?’ I repeat sarcastically, even as my heart is shredding me from the inside out.
‘No.’
He crosses his arms over his broad, muscular chest. He’s wearing a leather jacket over a grey T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. They’re low on his hips and I know that if I lifted his shirt an inch I’d see his hipbone. I remember running my tongue over the blade of his waist, but it’s wrong to remember something so personal.
I take another step back, swallowing. ‘We had a deal.’
His lips flick with amusement.
‘Don’t you dare laugh at me.’
‘Believe me, I’m not laughing.’ He drags a hand through his hair, his eyes probing me thoughtfully.
‘So?’ My breath hitches in my throat. I almost choke on it. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m here to broker a new deal.’
Danger, danger.
My eyes narrow; my heart races. ‘Because our last one was such a success?’
‘Yeah, actually, I think it was.’
I make a snort of derision. Yes. I snort—in front of Ethan sex-god Ash. For Christ’s sake. I think I’ve reached pretty much the lowest ebb of my life.
‘It was a spectacular failure?’
‘Why? Because we exceeded expectations?’ He arches a brow. ‘I wanted to fuck you and instead I fell in love. You don’t think that’s commendable?’
‘Commendable?’ I repeat, my jaw dropping. ‘This isn’t a grade school assignment, for God’s sake, Ethan!’
‘Yeah, well, obviously... I think the school board would have a thing or two to say about it.’
Again he smiles, and I feel like he’s laughing at me.
I square my shoulders, staring at him with what I hope comes over as distaste. ‘I want you to get out. This is bordering on stalking, you know.’
‘Not until you’ve heard what I came here to say.’
He’s not joking now. His expression is hardened by intent and his eyes dare me to challenge him.
I don’t.
But mentally I brace myself for the inevitable. I will walk away from him. I will draw new boundaries. I will run from this as fast as I can.
Panic fills me.
‘Fine. Say what you want and then leave me alone.’
* * *
She’s still pissed off. Any hope I had that she might have mellowed over the last week has evaporated. Everything I planned to say, the arguments I wanted to level, the jokes I wanted to make about planting a peach orchard at my home disappear. I stare at her and I am lost. I am lost in the sea of what we were, and what we could be, and everything I am hinges on how I do this.
‘You’re scared of how much you love me. I understand that.’
She makes a scoffing sound of disbelief. ‘You’re so arrogant! I walked away from you, remember? And you’re standing there telling me I’m in love with you?’
‘Damn straight.’
She glares at me.
‘Tell me you’re not,’ I challenge. ‘Say that you don’t love me and I’ll go. Right now. If that’s what you want, say it and I’ll walk out that door.’
Her eyes sparkle and then drop lower, mutiny in every line of her body. I hold my breath without realising it, but then I relax. Because she does love me. And she’s not a liar.
‘It was two weeks,’ she says angrily, as though the shortness of time we’ve known each other makes a damned bit of difference.
‘So?’
‘So you hardly know me!’
My temper rises and I want to shake her. No—scratch that. I want to kiss her and I want to fuck her. I want to rip that dress up around her waist and push her against her desk and do the only thing I can do to make her understand how perfect we are.
‘You think I don’t know you?’
Again she doesn’t meet my eyes.
Challenge accepted, Miss Douglas.
I pace towards her, so close that we are almost but not quite touching.
‘I know that you love to go running in a way that I will never understand but will try to come to terms with. I know that you love Neil deGrasse Tyson. I know that you drink gin and tonic and live with Eliza and Cassie and that you think of them as sisters.’
I’ve got her attention—if only because I’m moving infinitesimally closer with each sentence, closing what little gap remains between us.
‘I know that your parents are conservative and that you don’t want to disappoint them. I know that you feel about art the way I do about music. I know that you are brilliant and respected and intelligent, and as rare as any of my favourite Impressionist masterpieces.’
She sucks in a breath and my eyes drop to her lips, to the way they’re parted, revealing her white teeth and warm mouth. But I cannot be derailed from my argument. Not yet.
‘I know that you always eat your burger before you touch your fries—that you never eat them both at the same time—and I know that you like coffee first thing in the morning, even before I’ve spoken to you. I know that watching you eat a peach is the sexiest damn thing in the world. I know that you sing in the shower and, I’m sorry to say it, that you have one of the worst singing voices I’ve ever heard. Seriously...you couldn’t find the right key even if it landed on your head.’
‘Insulting me probably isn’t what you want to do right now,’ she mutters belligerently.
Her eyes jerk to mine angrily and I lift a hand to calm her, press it lightly to her arm. ‘I know that, regardless of that, hearing you sing is still one of the things that makes me the happiest man in the world.’
Her eyes scrunch closed and I recognise the anguish on her features.
‘Yellow tulips are your favourite flower and you love New York. I know that the first words I spoke to you were a pop bloody song, and I remember everything about you from that night—what you were wearing, what we talked about—everything. Because that was the night that changed my life.’
She makes a strangled noise of pain...or recognition. Something I take as encouragement.
‘I know that you’re a homebody, and that I’m asking you to sacrifice that to be with me—because I’m going to want you with me all the time.’
Her brows draw together and I rush on.
‘But I’ll do anything to make you happy—which means cutting back on my commitments.’
Her eyes widen with surprise.
‘I know every single thing about your body—your birthmarks, your freckles, and the ways I can touch you that drive you wild. I know that you’ve been hurt and that you’re scared out of your mind by what you feel for me.’
She drops her eyes to the ground, and in that moment I am so angry at what that bastard did to her.
But she doesn’t deny it now. Her shoulders slump as she accepts everything I’m saying. It’s a silent admission and it means everything to me. I begin to breathe again.
I speak more quietly, like I’m taming a skittish horse. ‘I know you’re worried that I’m on the rebound, and that I’m going to wake up one morning and realise I’m still in love with my ex. And I know that I’m not. I know this because I know everything about you and I still want to know more. I know this because I was asleep my whole life until meeting you. I love you—I love you in the way that all those songs have been written about. I love you in the I-want-to-get-married-and-have-babies-and-be-with-you-for-ever-and-ever kind of way.’
I can’t read her face. I don’t know what she’s thinking. All I know is that I hurt her and I have to fix it. I have to make her understand that I’m not Jeremy and that Sienna’s not a problem for us.
I’m afraid again—afraid that she’s going to reject me and that this really will be it. I can’t keep forcing her to face up to what we are. If she doesn’t want this then I have to let her go.
The future looks unimaginably odd without Ally in it. I can’t even contemplate that I might fail here.
I try again, with desperation and need, and I lean closer, my lips almost buzzing hers.
‘I write songs about love and I still can’t find the right way to say this. To do this. Because it matters too much. There’s no euphemism or comparison I can make that does justice to how you make me feel. You give all my songs meaning.’
Still she looks at me without giving anything away, so I move closer and link my fingers with hers, squeezing them.
‘I spent six years with Sienna and I never knew her like I know you. Time doesn’t matter. Nothing really does except the way we feel. I know this is it. The real deal. The thing you wait for and hope you’re going to be lucky enough to find. I love you.’
She sobs and shakes her head, and her eyes look at me accusingly.
‘How dare you?’
It’s not what I expect. Panic surges through me. But then she lifts up on tiptoe and mashes her lips against mine, anger in every movement of her mouth.
‘How dare you come here and be so perfect when all I want is to forget about you?’
Hope flares.
‘Don’t forget about me.’
‘I can’t,’ she says.
‘Because you love me.’
I know it, but more than I’ve ever needed anything I need to hear her say it.
She lifts her hands and pushes at my chest. I think she’s going to shout at me, or push me away, but then she runs at me and takes me with her, back to the wall. She is kissing me and pushing at my jacket so that I laugh into her mouth.
I want this. I want to fuck her.
But it’s just another form of hiding.
Fighting this with the sex thing is pointless. We know that works.
I hold her at arm’s length.
‘You love me, right?’
‘Yeah. I love you.’
She sounds so angry I can’t help but laugh.
‘Good.’ I nod. ‘Prove it.’
She moves closer to kiss me, but I shake my head. ‘No.’ My eyes are determined. But every single nerve inside me is groaning and protesting my honourable intentions. ‘First we have dinner. We date.’
‘I don’t want to date,’ she says in disbelief—a disbelief I completely understand.
‘Yeah, well, we’re going to.’ I lean in and kiss her lightly. ‘I’m never going to give you a reason to doubt what you mean to me. That’s our new deal. Okay by you?’
She stares at me, her eyes huge, her lips parted, her breath audible. A pulse point is jerking in the base of her throat and, damn it, good intentions or not, I want to reach over and run my teeth over it.
She moves forward, pressing her hips to me so that I’m sure she can feel my rock-hard cock through the fabric of our clothes.
I am desperate to drag her into my bed, but if I play my cards right I’ll have the rest of my life for that. Now is for sealing the deal. Now is for making sure she knows how much I love her and how much she loves me back, so that she can forget about that asswipe Jeremy and begin to see herself like I do.
Brave. Smart. Kind. Good. One of a kind.
‘Deal,’ she purrs. ‘But don’t think I’m going to make it easy for you...’
I relax. I smile at her and she smiles at me and we understand one another. Love is a gamble, but so is life, and my life has new meaning because I have found—unexpectedly, unquestionably—never-ending love.
* * * * *
If you loved this book, check out this other great read by Clare Connelly
OFF LIMITS
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