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I could feel his stare on me. It was a small restaurant, echoing with the low hum of other couples, but all I could hear was the silence between us. Roman had made it very clear on more than one occasion that if he didn’t want to talk about something, he wouldn’t.
Since visiting his parents last week, he’d gone back to his method of minimal interaction, which was fine. I needed to put in a good week at work before I left for Indiana this weekend.
“I’ve missed you,” he said. I glanced up at him.
“I’ve missed you too.” He didn’t move, not even his gaze from my face. “You realize this isn’t normal, right?” I said.
“What isn’t?”
“You and me. This.” I motioned between us.
He crossed his arms over his chest and sat back in his chair. “Explain.”
I wanted to laugh. One quick word, as though he were talking to one of his staff and expected this issue to be resolved as quickly as it had been brought to his attention. Too bad this wasn’t a quick fix.
“We have these amazing moments together,” I started.
“I agree,” he said, those dark eyes running from my mouth to my breasts and back up. I stifled the rising tingles and forced myself to continue.
“Then something happens—like those amazing moments lead to a closeness, but that closeness ends up shutting us down. We don’t see much of each other for a few days, and all the progress we’ve made gets wiped away. And we’re back at square one.”
And by that point, I was aching for Roman too badly to think straight. The rest of it, like trying to figure out the feelings between us, was pushed to the back of my mind, and all I wanted to do was show him how desperately I wanted him. Needed him.
“I don’t know which square you are on”—he inflected his words so they stung straight to the center of me—“but I’m not on one.”
I wanted to throw my hands up and beg him to give me something. Elaborate. Divulge details. I wanted to call his bullshit because he knew, just like I did, what I meant. You can’t go from zero to sexy to uncertainty in less than sixty and not have whiplash. Taking a deep breath and a page from Roman’s book, I remained still, calm, and said a single word.
“Explain,” I said.
His mouth turned up at the edge in amusement. We both knew this was now a battle of wills. The reality of our situation was jumping back and forth between us, even without being acknowledged.
“I think of you all the time. Your smell, your smile, the way your lips tremble against mine right before I sink inside of you,” he said.
My breath caught in my throat, but Roman didn’t even blink. I’d wanted an explanation—apparently he’d raised that to full disclosure.
“I don’t like you knowing certain things about me. I can see it on your face: always thinking, trying to figure things out, just like you are now. What’s worse is, I’m giving you information I don’t typically share.”
“And you don’t like that?” I asked, repeating his words, my stomach hurting from his admission.
“No. Yet, I still do it.”
“You give me pieces,” I agreed.
But those pieces left more question
s. All I wanted was to feel normal, and to have him feel normal with me. As I knew and had pointed out, little was normal about the relationship between me and Roman. It would have me flying high with happiness, burning hot with desire and lust I hadn’t known existed, then leave me confused. The high was amazing, but the crashes were becoming increasingly difficult to handle.
“Pieces are better than nothing,” he stated, as if he’d just won the discussion and was ready to move on.
“The problem is, you’re not happy. Don’t you see how that is an issue?” I asked.
“I never said that. I said I didn’t like sharing certain things with you.”
Okay, that time I did throw my hands up. “Problem. That is a problem.”
He leaned in and ensnared my attention with a look so deadly I shivered. “Yet, I still do it.”
“Then you ignore me.” I shook my head, which hurt all the way to the base of my neck.
