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“I am tired, but I’ll be fine until the end of shift.” She would. Already, just looking at him, she could feel her energy level rising. Or maybe that was her hurt and anger coming to a head. “Are you coming back to my place?”
He sighed, raked his fingers through his dark hair, and glanced around the otherwise empty break room. “We need to talk.”
Trying to read his expression, Abby searched his face. “I understand if you’re too tired. It’s just, well, I wanted you to know that if you want to come back, that’s good by me. I could cook us something.”
At least, she could cook him something. The thought of food made her stomach recoil. Or maybe it was the thought that he’d left her and she knew she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.
His jaw worked back and forth. “I’ve been thinking about last night.”
“Me, too,” she admitted unsteadily. She couldn’t quit thinking about last night, how they’d touched.
He grimaced. “Not like that, Abby. I’ve been thinking about what you said at the party about me needing to be sure before we went any further.”
A feeling of impending doom crawled up her spine. Doom that made her stomach pitch so high it could have capsized a tanker.
“And?” she asked, not really wanting to hear his answer. Why was he backpedaling? She’d thought they’d come so far last night. Had everything only been physical? Was she really so naive as to have misread his looks, his touches so drastically?
“You were right to say that.” He didn’t meet her eyes, stared somewhere to her right at the wall. “If we continue on that path, I will hurt you and that’s not what I want. I think we should just be
friends.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She could tell by the look on his taut face that he wasn’t. Friends? “If your phone hadn’t rung, what we’d have been doing was a lot more than what just friends do,” she pointed out, not willing to let him backtrack so easily.
“Which means we shouldn’t have been doing what we were about to do. Fate stepped in.”
Chin lifting, Abby’s hands went to her hips. How could he be so dense? “Fate had nothing to do with that gas leak.”
“But fate did rescue you from making a mistake, Abby. I have nothing to offer you beyond friendship. Nothing.”
Did he really believe that? Looking at him, she realized he did, but not because he didn’t want to offer her more, just that he didn’t believe himself capable. What had happened to make him so cynical? To make him see the glass as half-empty? How could she look at him and see so plainly that he had so much more to give? So much more life in him than he saw in himself?
Why was it that when she looked at him she saw a world full of good and amazing things? A world full of Christmas every single day just because he was a part of her life?
She closed her eyes and counted to ten. “Okay, if you want to just be friends, we’ll just be friends.”
She couldn’t make him love her. Couldn’t make him want to take a chance on loving her. She’d spent years living with her great-aunt, doing everything she could to earn the woman’s love. In the end, she’d realized you can’t make someone love you. Either they did or they didn’t.
“I’m glad you understand.” He let out a slow breath, looked relieved that she wasn’t going to make a scene.
Had he expected her to stomp her feet and throw a fit? Wrong. But neither would she pretend everything was fine, when it wasn’t.
“No.” She shook her head. “I can’t say that I understand, because I don’t. Obviously I misread your feelings for me.”
“Abs—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, holding up her hand. “Don’t say things you don’t mean in the hope of making this easier. I like you, a lot. You obviously don’t feel the same so, fine, end of story. We’ll be friends.”
So why didn’t she believe he didn’t feel the same? Why did she believe that something else had prompted him to back away? Something that ran so deeply through him he believed he had nothing to offer her but heart-ache? Something that had to do with his dislike of the holidays?
“You deserve better.”
She nodded. “You’re right. I do.”
This time she was the one who left.
By the time she got home, she was throwing up. No doubt from the stress of the night and the sickening feeling that had crept in during their conversation.
Friends. He wanted to be friends. Liar. Who did he think he was kidding? He didn’t look at her the way her friends looked at her.
