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“Why won’t you just go?” I’m a heartbeat away from begging.
He walks into the kitchen, putting himself in front of me. “I didn’t come all the way down here fighting traffic and enormous rats to give up on us.”
“What us?”
“Stop. Saying shit like that. I get that you’re not feeling your best, but now you’re pissing me off.”
With him close enough to touch, my hand strikes out—fumbling for any part of him I can grab, and it lands on his belt, my knuckles brushing his abs. I shudder again, and my eyes burn. “I don’t think I can’t do this,” I whisper.
He’s closer now because I’m pulling him closer. His arms wrap around me, and I guess he’s got his reasons. I think he’s trying to hold me together, but I end up falling apart.
“You’re killing me,” he whispers into my neck, just below my ear.
“I’m not okay,” I say, stating the abundantly obvious. Again.
“You need to let me help you. It’s not just about you anymore, Drew. It doesn’t have to be, and it isn’t.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Well, you said it yourself—it’s not my money, is it?”
I don’t know why, but that does make it better. That some champagne importer would be footing the bill to pay the rent for a run-down apartment in the Village.
It doesn’t mean I understand how I let this happen to me. It doesn’t change that Olivier is probably a symptom and not a solution. I doubt everything about us. I wonder if I had been happier when I met him whether any of this would have happened. I wonder if he’s a rabbit hole I fell down. If he’s been one more way for me to blow up my life—pushing me toward the inevitable conclusion that I don’t belong here.
Nothing about us should work. We shouldn’t have happened in the first place. But that doesn’t stop me from leaning into his touch as he strokes my face.
“Do you actually love me?” he asks.
I nod. It feels like a complete surrender. It feels like giving up.
“Then don’t leave me.”
Tears spill. I gulp back the sound that wants to come with them, but it still rips my chest apart. I’m completely at his mercy, and while I might hate the concept of that, the way it feels to let him hold me together is hard to resist. I’ve never let anyone take care of me before.
It’s been impossible for me to admit I need help at all. And maybe someone like Jericho would have jumped at the chance if I’d told her I needed it, and maybe that would have made a difference for us, but here and now, I know she couldn’t have given me what Olivier is offering. And I don’t even mean the money.
My feelings for him make no sense, but maybe I need to stop trying to make sense of them. It’s only making me more depressed. In my head it’s all wrong. But in his arms, everything is right.
“Don’t marry her,” I whisper, pleading. The fact that I’m crying is more than obvious in my voice.
“Stop worrying about that,” he says, drawing his face back to look at me. “Marrying Elodie is a strategy. I understand the game now, and I’ll play it to get you to stay. But you have to give me time to figure out the right moves. Please tell me you understand that, Drew.”
Whatever he’s saying is new. So is the determination in his eyes. I want to believe him enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s maybe the weakest moment of my life, so any hope I can cling to, I’ll reach for. “You’re catching me at a really low point,” I say.
He smirks. “Believe me, I know. That’s why I’m taking full advantage.”
“That’s not cool.”
“Don’t get me started on which one of us is more uncool right now,” he says. “So will you stay or what?”
“I can’t answer that today.”
“When can you answer it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Drew…please.” He runs his hand back through my hair, getting a good grip on the roots. “Don’t fuck with me anymore. I need you with me. And you need me, too. You’re so deep in your head when all you need to know is we should be together. That’s the only thing that makes the last few weeks make sense. This was supposed to happen, you and me. Even if you don’t want to have sex with me anymore because you’re over it, we’re more than that now. I know we are.”
