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Another hiccup.
More guilt hit him, but he pressed onward, knowing he had to end this tonight. “If I gave you reason to believe I cared more for you, it was unintentional.”
“Unintentional?” Her lost expression turned angry. “Making love to me was unintentional? What about the other night, Adam? Did our love-making mean nothing to you?”
The night in question blazed through his mind like a fiery brand. He’d forever imprinted his memory with her that night. Everything about her from her taste to her softness to her sweet responses to his body. Everything.
“That was just sex, Liz,” he lied.
“Just sex?” She scoffed. “You’re insane. That wasn’t just sex.”
“How would you know?” He hit her where he knew it would hurt. “I’m the only man you’ve been with. I’d say I’m a better judge of what’s between us physically, and it’s just sex.”
Unlike any sex he’d ever had, but somehow telling Liz she was phenomenal and made him feel like he could leap tall buildings and save the world didn’t seem appropriate, given current circumstances.
“You’re saying because I haven’t slept around I don’t know what I feel?”
“I understand you’re upset, but arguing about this isn’t going to change anything.”
She curled her fingers into fists. “Tell me the truth, Adam, what’s going on with you? Because I don’t buy this. None of this fits.”
“I’m sorry you can’t accept that we’re over, Liz.”
Her entire body trembled, but she held herself together. Just like she always did. Gramps’s death and funeral had been the only times he’d ever seen her so shaken. Liz would be OK, would get over him, and find the life she deserved.
“OK,” she agreed, lifting her shoulders in a brave gesture.
OK, she would be OK, get over him, and find the life she deserved.
“But you’ll have to explain how this works.”
“How what works?” She’d totally lost him.
“Us.”
“There is no us. Not any more.”
“So we pretend we don’t know each other? You’re going to keep ignoring me? Act like we never meant anything to each other?” Pink crept into her cheeks. “I mean, that you meant something to me,” she amended, with a slight sarcastic edge to her voice.
“We can still be friends.”
She picked up a burgundy-colored square cushion from the corner of the sofa and threw it at him. Hard.
He didn’t attempt to block the pillow from hitting him in the chest. He expected a tongue-lashing to accompany the blow.
But she didn’t. Instead, she stood, wiped her hands over her faded jeans, and took a deep breath. “If this is what you want, fine. But don’t ask me to be your friend, Adam. Hopefully I can be someday, but not now, because right now I think I hate you for dragging this out. For not telling me weeks ago that you didn’t want me in your life when you knew we were over. How dare you let me think you cared for me?”
He nodded his understanding, wondering why he didn’t feel better that his plan was working. Liz was starting to move away from him. He should pat himself on the back for a job well done. Instead, he felt like giving in to the gaping hole in his chest.
She turned away, but not before he saw the tears streaming down her cheeks.
He caught up with her as she reached the front door, placed his hand on her shoulders just as she grasped the knob. “Don’t go like this.”
“Like what?” she asked in mid-hiccup, not looking at him.
“Upset. Be reasonable. You don’t need to drive until you calm down.”
“Reasonable?” She spun and faced him. Her eyes narrowed to livid golden flames. “Don’t you tell me about reasonable, because I’ll tell you what I think is reasonable. Reasonable is spending a year of your life loving a man and having a wonderful, albeit limited relationship with that man. When life lifts those limits, thinking you have a future with that man, thinking you will someday marry, raise a family together. That’s reasonable. You playing games with my heart, that’s what’s not reasonable.”
