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“You’re right. And that’s the real reason I’m here, Natalie,” he said. “I need to tell you that all of this—it has to stop.”
I stared at him, blinking. “All of what has to stop?”
“Us. We have to stop. We can’t go on like this.”
“What are you telling me, Colt?”
“That we can’t be together.”
I sat still and quiet for a long time, letting his words sink in. I shook my head and gave a mirthless laugh. “So we’re back to this?”
“Yes.”
I stood too, my anger rising. “Well correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it you who decided to go forward with this? Wasn’t it you who said you couldn’t stay away from me? Wasn’t it you who said that whatever obstacles came our way, we would just figure it out?”
“Yes, but that was before—”
“Before what?!”
He sighed again, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “Before I realized that it just wasn’t possible. My job is too important to keep risking it like this. If I’m distracted, I can’t protect you like I need too. If anything ever happened to either one of you, I would feel personally responsible, all right? I can’t have that on my conscious. I won’t.”
Somewhere in my brain, I knew there was a ring of truth to his words. My heart didn’t want to pay attention to reason though. My heart only knew that Colt was telling me that we couldn’t be together. And that—I just couldn’t accept.
“Colt, we can work things out. You’re doing your job just fine. We’ll work it out. You can’t do this to me…I…I love you.” The words were out before I had any hope of stopping them.
Colt lowered his eyes to the floor and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, Natalie. Can’t you see that? It just doesn’t matter. We can’t be together under these circumstances. It’s too risky. From now on, we have to go back to keeping things between us strictly professional. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it has to be.”
I pressed my lips together and tried my best to ignore the stinging I felt in my eyes. Those weren’t the words I wanted to hear. I had just told this man that I loved him, and his response had been to tell me that it didn’t matter.
He couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell me that he loved me too.
He was willing to pretend that I meant nothing more to him than a paycheck.
My blood boiling and my body trembling with fury, I stormed over to him. He tried to turn his head to avoid my gaze, but I wouldn’t let him.
My hand flew back, and I slapped him across the face, wanting him to feel just as much pain as I did.
He stumbled backward. He was such a large man, I doubted I really hurt him. His reaction was more from shock than anything. He rubbed the side of his face and his mouth opened and closed as if he wanted to say something. But I was no longer interested in anything he had to say.
“Stay away from me,” I said. “Don’t come back. I want a new security detail, and I never want to see you again. I’ll be alerting my father that you are not to come back again during another shift change. Stay out of my life forever, Colt.”
Not wanting him to see the tears about to fall from my eyes, I turned around and rushed to my bedroom and slammed the door behind me.
CHAPTER 16
Colt
Back inside of the security headquarters, I moved from the seat in front of the vents, the air-conditioning coming out entirely too cold. Then again, the coldness I felt could have very well been coming from within.
I was more exhausted than I’d ever felt in my life, and to top it all off, my spirit had never felt so broken either.
As I sat in the waiting room, having been called in by Jared again, I felt like a complete idiot. What had I been thinking? How could I have honestly expected Natalie to respond to the way I had behaved last night?
I knew that I had just made one of the biggest mistakes in my life.
I had finally found the woman of my dreams, and there was a chance that I had just caused irreparable damage to our relationship before it had even gotten a chance to fully begin.
I was a fucking idiot.
