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“Eloise…”
“What we just, you know, did.” I take another shaky breath and drag my gaze back to his. “You’re the only person I’ve ever slept with.”
He blinks. “I—” he frowns. “Come on, Eloise?—”
“I’m serious.”
He stares at me as my heart pounds.
“Our night in the elevator,” he murmurs quietly.
“Was my first time.” My lips twist as I blush. “Well, times.”
Alistair’s brows furrow. “But since then…”
I shake my head.
“That was ten years?—”
“There hasn’t been anyone since,” I whisper. “I was…” I look away. “Scared, because of what happened in the hospital. And just…”
“Hurt,” he finishes. “Fuck…because I hurt you.”
I wipe a tear away, cupping his face in my hands as I press my forehead to his. “We hurt each other.”
“Yeah… Let’s not do that anymore.”
I choke a laugh through my tears as I kiss him softly.
“Maybe you could just love me?”
“That I can do.”
25
ALISTAIR
The “L” word.
I smile to myself as I lean back in my chair. I drum my fingers on the desk in front of me, shaking my head in grinning disbelief.
I’ve never said that to a woman before. It’s also more than slightly out of character for me to act on impulse and just blurt things out as they hit my mind. I’ve spent my career honing my ability to craft my words, think them over, and deliver them in the perfect wrapping.
…Or bullet casing, depending.
But with Eloise, there’s no “crafting” of my words.
With her, I’m brutally honest, to a dangerous, unprecedented degree. Which should scare me, or at the very least concern me.
It doesn’t.
Probably because everything I said to her last night is completely true. I did spend the last ten years telling myself I hated Eloise. Convincing myself of that was the only way to get past the brutal truth—that when I walked into that dorm room that day and thought it was her, and assumed it was a supremely fucked up, cruel way for her to mess with me, it broke me more than I wanted to admit.
If Eloise had been just some random college hookup, I’d have gotten over it without blinking. I’d have shaken my head, gone to the dance anyway, and picked up the first girl who even smiled at me to fuck all the Eloise out of my system.
But she was never random. Or casual, or meaningless.
She was the everything.
