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There’s this urgency in my chest that I don’t fucking know what to do with. I need to talk to her, tell her some things and make sure she understands that not taking our relationship public earlier had zero to do with protecting my image.
Fuck, the more I think about her asking me that, the worse it feels.
I park and take the elevator up to our floor. Let myself in and drop my stuff, leaving it by the front door for the first time since Lara moved in. She’s just coming out of the kitchen, Zamboni circling her heels.
Talk about a nice sight.
She smiles up at me, and I wrap my arms around her, pinning hers to her sides as I lift her off her feet.
“What’s this?” She laughs softly as I carry her back to our room and set her carefully on the bed.
Then dumping my tie, jacket, and shoes, I climb in so we’re facing each other, sharing a pillow.
“From the first picture that cropped up of us, I’ve been freaking out about what it would mean for you. What people would think. The assumptions they’d make about you based on the choices I’ve made in my past.”
“Seriously? Ben, you didn’t?—”
I shake my head. “I’ve never cared much what people think of me. There are a million opinions out there. There are pictures. Stories. Some are true, some aren’t. A lot are true.”
“I know.”
“But the idea that someone might judge you for being with me makes me fucking sick to my stomach.”
She brushes her fingertips over my jaw. “That’s the only reason?”
I hesitate and her brow lifts.
Time to own it.
“At first, no. But now, yes. I swear.”
“Tell me about the no part?”
“I think… I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. Yeah, the minute you said ‘more,’ I wanted to go shouting it from the rooftops. I had some deeply possessive feelings. And I wanted like everyone to know we were together. Except I knew it was new. That it was a little more complicated than your run-of-the-mill romance.”
“So you wanted to give us a chance to breathe,” she says softly, those fingertips drifting down to my chest.
Nice.
“That and… the first time we were together, I think maybe we weren’t quite on the same page.”
Lara goes still beside me. Then quietly, “You knew?”
“Yeah, I knew. I mean, we said it in the plainest terms. We were just having some fun. I knew it going in… and then… we kissed. And it was—” I swallow, hard. Hold her eyes, because after learning she had doubts, I fucking owe it to her to let her know exactly where she fits in my heart.
“A rebound,” she supplies, a stiffness in her tone that has my brows drawing down.
“A revelation.” And then I huff a laugh, because I must sound like the biggest wuss of all time. “For me. That’s what it was. That’s what you were. And even though it wasn’t what we agreed to, I fell so damn hard.”
She’s staring into my eyes, searching them. And then?—
“Hey, Lara, don’t cry,” I croon, pulling her into my chest and holding her against me. “We were kids. But I just— I guess, back then, I thought maybe there was a chance you were feeling what I was feeling too. And then when it turned out you weren’t…” I laugh again. “Okay, it sucked. For real.”
“Ben,” she whispers, her palm over my heart as she blinks back tears.
“All I’m saying is that I got ahead of myself before. Thought things were one way when they were another. And this time, it feels like there’s so much more at stake. I didn’t want to rush, and I really didn’t want to be wrong. And most of all, I didn’t want to lose you again.”
There. It needed to be said, so I said it. And hopefully, that’s it for the doubts.
