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“It was a good one,” she said breathlessly.
“I never thought I could feel this way. Not in a million years.” He ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “The way you make me feel, like I’ve been lost all these years and only now found myself because of you, is something I didn’t think existed. But it does. It’s real.”
That wasn’t an admission of love, but the way he looked at her, like she was his world, was enough for her. If she wasn’t brave enough to reach out and grab what she wanted, without assurances from him that he felt the same, then she didn’t deserve it. She wanted Eric Hamilton. Wanted to grab him and never let go. It was time to tell him.
“I don’t want to go,” she blurted out.
“Okay,” he murmured, his fingers skimming down her thigh and behind her knee, clearly mistaking her meaning. “We don’t have to. I can make love to you right here on the—”
“No, I don’t want to go to Texas anymore.” She rested her hands on his shoulders and smiled. Though it had taken her a while to accept this was what she wanted, now that she had, she felt free. “I think that’s why I didn’t tell you yet, because deep down, I knew that I didn’t want to leave you. That I wanted to stay here. I just had to think it over for a bit.”
He stared at her, not moving. “You want to stay.”
“I want to be with you, and see what happens. I want to hold on to the way you make me feel, and not be scared. I don’t want to just stand there on the edge of that cliff anymore. I want to jump off, and let you catch me. I…I…” She let out a nervous laugh, pushing her hair behind her ear and ducking her head down shyly before lifting it with determination. “I love you, Eric Hamilton, and I know we promised not to do that, not to love each other, and I know I’m breaking our number one rule, but I can’t help it. I couldn’t help but fall in love with you, and I’m not sorry. You showed me I was living in fear, in a shell, and I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to be scared. I want to be with you.”
He stared.
Then he stared some more.
And even more.
It was unnerving.
The silence stretched on for so long, with no end in sight, that she was beginning to wish this was a TV show, and she could rewind back to the time before she blurted out her feelings like that. He’d told her he didn’t do love, or relationships, so what made her think he would change his mind for her? Why would he? God, she was stupid.
So frigging stupid.
She swallowed hard, wishing he’d say something, anything, that didn’t make her feel like she’d just flung herself off a cliff without a bungee cord. “Eric…?”
Her voice seemed to snap him out of it.
“I…” He shook himself and stepped back, running his hand through his hair. “Jesus, Shel. I…I don’t know what to say.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, remaining on the countertop where he’d put her before she opened her stupid mouth. “Just say what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking…” He hesitated. “I’m thinking if you stay you’ll hate me, and yourself, and I can’t let that happen. No way in hell.”
“I won’t. This is what I want.” She caught his shoulders and locked eyes with him. His were troubled. Stormy. Dark gray. “Listen to me. I want this. I want you. I love you.”
“You can’t stay,” he said, locking eyes with her. “You’re not staying.”
She bit down hard on her lip. “Listen, this isn’t what I was talking about when I asked you to make sure I didn’t fall for you. This is different. I thought this city was making me miserable, that I couldn’t be happy here. But I was wrong. It isn’t the city’s fault that I wasn’t happy, it was mine. I was running from the wrong things.”
He let out a harsh laugh. “No, you were running from something you didn’t like, toward something you did. You got it. You got the job. You need to go do it. We can still talk after you go, if you want. We can even try taking what we have into a long-distance thing, and see how it goes.”
She held her hand out, her heart wrenching. “I don’t want to try things out long-distance. I don’t want to be separated from you. I thought I had to leave the city to be happy, but I don’t. I just…I just needed you.”
“Shit.” He let out a shaky breath. “Shel—”
“Do you want to be with me, Eric?”
&n
bsp; He made an angry sound. “You know I do.”
She grabbed his hands, squeezing. “Look. Neither of us asked for this, but we got it. You like me. I like you. We want to be together, so we might as well be together now, without any games, just the way we like it, right?”
“Shel…” He turned his hands in hers, entwining their fingers. “Let’s try long-distance instead. We can be together, and FaceTime every night. I can come visit you, and you can come see me, and we can see where this goes.”
