Fifty-four

Henley

“You want to shower?” I say it like I have noidea what he’s talking about. Like I don’t even know what a shower is. “Here?”

“Yeah,” he says, giving me one of his smart-ass smirks. “Unless you have some sort of objection to allowing the hired help to use your facilities.”

The hired help.

Because that’s how I make him feel.

Because it’s how I’ve treated him since the moment I slid onto that barstool.

I retrieve his bag. Carrying it to him, I hold it out, and he takes it with a carefully guarded expression like he’s sure I’m going to tell him to get the hell out. Like he expects me to reject him. Maybe even wants me to.

“Guest bathroom is through there,” I say, indicating the hallway that splits off the kitchen in the opposite direction. “Towels are under the sink.”

 

Thirty minutes later I hear the guest room door open and the soft slap of bare feet on my hardwood floor. I concentrate on incorporating my dry ingredients into my wet, counting every turn of my whisk rather than risk a look at him.

As soon as he disappeared into the bathroom, I ransacked my kitchen, gathering ingredients. When I called my concierge for flour and maple syrup, I think I actually heard him squeal with excitement.

“When I said I wanted pancakes—” Conner leans in over my shoulder, so close I can feel his breath, warm and minty, on my neck. “I didn’t mean I wanted you to make them.”

Under the clean scent of soap, I can smell him. Warm leather and axle grease. My nipples go tight under my sweater. A rush of warm pools between my legs. One deep breath of him and I’m ready to rip his clothes off.

It’s as nerve-racking as it is embarrassing.

“Then you should have been more specific,” I inform him, folding whipped egg whites into my batter. A few days ago, he had me pinned to his kitchen floor with his mouth between my legs after somehow persuading me to masturbate in front of him, and I’m nervous because he breathed on me.

I need professional help.

Yeah, you do.

Isn’t that why you came back to Boston in the first place?

“You alright, Daisy?” He slides into the space next to me, turning to lean his back against the counter, bringing our faces to within inches of each other. His proximity makes it impossible for me to look at him. “You look a little flushed.”

He’s laughing at me. I can hear it in his voice. He knows what having him this close is doing to me. What it makes me think about.

Makes me want.

“I’m fine.” Scowling at my pancake batter, I slide my bowl down the counter a bit, closer to the stove. Away from him.

I follow it, and he follows me.

I scoot over again. So does he.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you running from me?”

“I’m not running from you, I’m making you your goddamned pancakes,” I snipe back because I am running from him and he’s an asshole for pointing it out.

“Careful.” He reaches out and lifts the tail end of my braid off my shoulder to weave it between his fingers. “You keep talking to me like that, I’m going to end up giving you an encore kitchen performance,” he says, giving my braid a playful tug.

“Not after you tracked mud all over my floor, you won’t.” I reach up to slap his hand away, and he catches it, pulling me against him, bringing us even closer. The air between us thickens and heats the moment we make contact.

“I want you to look at me.” He says it softly, so quiet I’m not sure he even knows he said it out loud.

My irritation bleeds away, leaving behind the sort of mindless need that scares me. Makes me wonder how I’m going to walk away from him when this is all over. How I’m going to go back to a life, I never wanted and pretend it never happened.

Like he never happened.

I try to pull my hand away because I can’t.

I can’t do any of those things.

Not if I look at him.

Still, I force myself to raise my gaze, finding his temple, letting it settle there. Trying to give him what he wants without exposing myself completely.

He doesn’t say anything else. He just presses my hand flat against his chest, over his heart. I can feel the fast, heavy thump of it against my palm, letting me know he’s just as terrified as I am.

“Conner…” my voice is shaking. The hand pressed to his heart, trembling under his.

“It’s all I ever wanted, you know.” He lifts his other hand, his fingers wrapping around the back of my neck, his thumb skimming along the curve of my cheekbone. “For you to look at me. See me.”

“I look at you.” Even though it’s true, I know what he means.

“No, you don’t. You look through me.” The resignation in his voice is like a knife in my gut. The understanding that I’ll never be able to make myself vulnerable. I’ll never be able to bend. Not the way he wants me to.

Needs me to.

He’s always been braver than me.

I just want to be with you. Why won’t you just let me be with you?

Shifting my gaze, I find his.

“Why are you here?” I don’t yell. I don’t demand. But I need to know. “You made it pretty clear this afternoon that you—”

“That wasn’t about you.” It comes out too fast. Too sure. It was about me, at least in part, but I let it slide. “It was about Declan. I wasn’t angry that you were there. I was angry that you came with him.”

“I wasn’t with him.”

His face goes still. The heart under my hand stops cold. That was the wrong thing to say. “So you were with Patrick, then?”

“What?” I shake my head. “No. I wasn’t with anyone.” I try to pull my hand away, but he doesn’t let me. Instead of struggling, I force myself to relax. Explain. “I woke up early and couldn’t go back to sleep this morning, so I went for a walk. Got some coffee. Ate enough pastries to stuff a horse and walked. And walked. And walked until I realized I was across the street from the park where we used to play baseball. I saw a team on the field, and I got curious. It turned out to be Patrick and your brother.” I shrug. It all sounds so ridiculous. Like something out of a movie.

“Anyway, Patrick and I started talking, and he asked me if I wanted to help coach the game.” I leave out the part where I called my concierge and had him bring me a pair of size seven tennis shoes. Having sneakers delivered by your butler in a town car is even more ridiculous than the rest of my story.

“After the game, Declan invited me to dinner.” I feel my fingers curl under his, hooking into the front of his T-shirt. “I knew it was a bad idea but he insisted that it would be fine. That you’d want to see me… so, I let him talk me into it.” I can feel my brow crumple and I shake my head. “I didn’t mean to ambush you. I didn’t mean to corner you. I know I keep doing that but—” I stop. I’m over explaining, edging toward groveling. “That was never my intention and I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

Ladies never beg.

“Why are you here?” I ask it again.

His face is a mess. The sharp, lean lines of his jaw are distorted, swollen from where his brother caught him with a well-aimed fist. What looks to be the beginning of a spectacular black eye blooms across his cheekbone to radiate across his temple. The bridge of his nose. His free hand comes up again, catching the end of my braid before letting it slide between his fingers. “Because I’m sorry and I want to make up.” No cocky grin. No smartass smirk. No careless, casual tone.

Conner.

My Conner.

Something inside me unravels.

Lets go.

Eight years later, Conner Gilroy is still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

And I’m still in love with him.