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I put my hand on her cheek, my thumb clasping her jaw. “I don’t want to diminish your feelings, ever. Please, forgive me for making you feel that way. We’renotnothing. Not even close, trust me. All night I’ve been trying to show you how much you mean to me… not make you feel like you don’t matter.”
“I don’t want anyone else,” she says, looking up at me, her lower lip trembling.
“For now, you don’t. But you might, and I want you to know it’s okay. You have your whole life ahead of you, and you’ll want to get married one day, have kids of your own, not be with an old cynic like me?—”
She pulls away, and my hand drops. She wipes her face, and her expression closes off.
“I’d like to take a shower now, and then maybe we can find some food?” she says. “If you’d like to explore a little bit, I can call my parents and see if they want to meet up.”
“Would you rather I find something else to do while you see your parents?”
“I’d rather us still be in that bed, but we don’t always get what we want,” she says, her eyes firing up for a second.
I tug on her hand. “Well, come get back to bed then. That’s easy.” I try to make her smile, and she almost softens, but not all the way.
“Sutton?”
“Yeah?”
She grips the top of her towel with her free hand and moves a little closer to me.
“Don’t tell me how I should feel. It’s condescending. And I don’t like it when you call yourself old or when you act like I’m too young to know what I’m feeling. I do know, and if you don’t feel the same, it’s okay and I’ll deal with it, but stop putting what we have down because of our age.”
Her hands are shaking a little when she takes a deep breath and tugs her towel up again.
“Do you…see marriage in your future again? More kids?”
There’s tension in her eyes and mouth. I can see the risk this question cost her, and I want to applaud her for having the courage.
“I haven’t believed I’d have that again, no. But not because I don’t want it.” It takes something out of me to admit that too, and she breathes out a sigh that rings of relief.
“Just promise me that if you start feeling more for me, you won’t push me away, thinking you’re doing what’s right for me…okay?” Her gaze is old-soul weary, like she’s just been exposed to the secrets of life and it hurt too much to learn the brutal truth.
“Okay, I promise.” My voice echoes in the bathroom and she shivers.
I pull her against me and she sighs and stays there for a few beats before lifting her head again.
“Because I make up my own mind, and you don’t need to try to do it for me.”
“Got it.” I press a kiss on the tip of her nose and smile at her.
She smiles back and I can breathe again.
I want to tell her I already do feel more for her. That I’ve already wondered if I should push her away. And I’ve thought I probablydoknow what’s right for her.
But I don’t do any of those things.
I pick her up and carry her back to bed and just hold her for a while, my fingers tracing circles over her back.
Eventually, we fall asleep, and when we wake up a couple hours later, we get up and get ready. The spell from last night is broken, but the hurt from this morning is gone, and there’s a new tentativeness in its place.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
UNREACHABLE
FELICITY
I try to shake off the mood from earlier, my conversation with Sutton wreaking havoc on my emotions, and by late afternoon when we’re arriving at the stadium suite, I’ve almost succeeded.
