“You don’t love me,” I said, still shaking from the pleasure and panting from the exertion. “It’s with a ‘d’, Max. A ‘d’.”
“There is no ‘d’, Ash. I love you. I’m in love with you. I’ve always been in love with you. You are all I’ve ever wanted. It’s alwaysonlybeen you.”
“Only been me . . .” I scoffed, and tried to climb off him, but he held me in place. “That’s a lie and we both know it.” He pulled me back down towards him, and despite wanting to fight it, I didn’t. I let him pull my face towards his, let him put his lips to my ear and whisper.
“Everything I’ve done for the last thirteen years has been to try and get over you. But I never did. And now I can never go back to any of that again, because you’ve changed me. Loving you again has changed me. And I know what I want.”
I pulled away and started to climb off him again. “No, that is not what we agreed to, Max. We saidnofeelings.”
“Yousaid no feelings.” He sat up on the table.
“Youagreedto no feelings.” I pointed an accusatory finger at him.
“Well, then, I lied.”
“Oh my God.” I walked round in a small circle. “You are not allowed to love me, Max. That was not part of the deal.”
“It was a crappy deal, Ash. And let’s face it, it wasn’t exactly a deal either of us could stick to.”
“I could stick to it!” I said.
He looked me up and down. “If you could stick to it, you would not be standing in my office late at night, your dress on the floor because we just made love on my desk!”
“Made lo—” I choked on the words. His use of that phrase had me stumbling backwards. “We didn’t . . . That’s not—” I shook my head quickly. He stood up, his perfect cock and muscular chest on full display. He was gorgeous and sweaty and the king of dishing orgasms out and we couldnothave “made love”.
I stepped away from him, scared that if I didn’t, I might just fall towards him. “You can’t do this. You can’t come into my life like this after so many years, have endless sex with me and then tell me you love me.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . because . . .” I glared at him angrily, but when he smiled softly at me, my entire body softened, and worst of all, my heart softened too. “Because I think I love you and I totally hate that I think I love you,” I said. My shoulders slumped. I felt absolutely defeated by this realization. I’d been fighting it since I’d seen him in the restaurant and I was now officially exhausted. I hated that I had said it out loud too, because saying it out loud had just made it very real, and there was no taking it back. I turned and started walking towards the door.
“Ash, wait. Please don’t go.” He walked up to me, put his hand over mine and stopped me from opening the door. “We love each other,” he said with a smile that was too easy to want back in my life. He looked at me with his huge puppy-dog eyes, full of love and care, and again, they were way too easy to want back in my life. But I had gone down this road with him before, and it had ended, and it had nearly broken me. I had loved him so hard it had hurt, and I could feel myself on the brink of that all-consuming love once again and it terrified me.
“Ash, let’s do this.”
“No,” I said softly.
“Let’s give this another chance. We’re meant to be together.”
“How do you even know that?”
“It’s obvious, Ash. I never stopped loving you and it’s clear that you never stopped loving me too.”
“I did stop loving you!” But the second I said it, I knew it was a lie. And I also knew that this was the final puzzle piece I’d been looking for. The thought that had been just out of reach. I’d never stopped loving him; that’s why nothing had ever worked with anyone else.
The curse was never about the sex. Therealcurse was that I loved him too damn much, and always had. That’s why all the dates and the sex had been so terrible.Because it wasn’t him.Max was what I had wanted the entire time—I just hadn’t realized it until now. He had cursed me, but it wasn’t in the way I thought he had.
“We never stopped loving each other,” he said with so much self-assuredness that it pissed me off. I hated the fact that he was right. And I hated him for making me love him so much. “It’s meant to be us, Ash.”
“Max, you and I are never getting back together!” It flew out of my mouth.
He chuckled. “Isn’t that a Taylor Swift song?”
“This isn’t a joke,” I insisted.
“I know.”
“So why are you trying to turn it into one, then?” I asked, frustration building.
