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“I hate to break it to you, baby, you’re in way over your head. We both are. We stopped pretending a while ago.”
“Speak for yourself.” I retort.
“Okay. I will.” He slips his arm around my waist, pulling my back into his chest. “I chose you because I knew you valued your independence, that you didn’t want a relationship, and wouldn’t form any attachment to me. What I didn’t anticipate was how much I’d come to need you. Now the thought of returning to my life before you gives me hives. I want you to stay.”
I feel my resolve melting with his heated confession, but still, I dig my heels in. “So, it’s all about what you want then?”
“Stella Marie Fairchild,” he says, my full name grounding his confusion and plea. “You wanted my honesty, and I just gave it to you. Now tell me what’s bothering you because I know for a fact you don’t want to leave either.”
“That’s what you think. I warned you I don’t do threesomes.”
Shock slackens the arm around me so I pull away and head out of the walk-in closet and into my room. He follows me. “What on earth are you talking about, Stella?”
I take a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “I’m talking about Ivy. Ivy League.”
He rears back at the mention of her name, his face paling slightly. “Did my mother say something to you?”
“It wasn’t Mom, it was Gina but none of that matters since you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t think our past relationships were relevant.”
“No, you’re right, they shouldn’t be,” I concede bitterly. “Except this wasn’t just any past relationship. We’re talking about a marriage here, Ryan. To a woman you’re clearly still in love with!”
“Why would you think that?” He asked, his tone soft.
I scoff. “You need me to spell it out? Isn’t she the reason you don’t do intimacy? The reason you’d risk upsetting a two-hundred-year-old tradition? You fucking roared at me just for looking at her painting!”
He only shakes his head.
I fold my arms, “You want to tell me I’m wrong?”
“I’m not in love with Ivy. Yes, I loved her until she drew her last breath. I loved her with everything in me and losing her broke me. For years I wasn’t functioning properly.”
His words are like shards of glass slicing at my heart. You still aren’t functioning properly, and it’s been ten years.
“I never ever wanted to be hurt like that again.”
I throw my arms up. “Exactly. And you have put everything in place to see that you don’t.”
Suddenly needing space away from him, I try to move past him, but he stops me again. “Baby, why do you think it was so hard to look at you?”
That stops me. “I thought it was women in general you didn’t look at.”
He scoffs, “No, that was just you.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know what you do to me, do you? Everything about you rips me apart and draws me in, Stella. Stirs something in me I thought was long dead.”
“What’s that?”
“Fear. Fear of how much it would hurt if I let myself care. But you’ve also become my safe place. Now I’m done being afraid. I want everything with you.”
“Ryan—”
He doesn’t let me finish. Pulling me close, he claims my lips in a hard kiss. I resist for a total of two seconds until my body betrays me and I cling to him with a hunger that shocks me.
Eager to feel his skin against mine, I push his jacket off his shoulders, then work on his shirt buttons. Just as desperate as I am, he bats my hands away and yanks open his shirt, sending buttons flying everywhere. He shrugs off his jacket and shirt, then his hands return to fist my nightshirt, and we break apart just enough to pull it over my head.
