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His words hit me like a truck. They hurt – but I knew they were honest, too. I could hear it in his voice.
If he was going to be honest, there was one more thing I wanted to know.
“Were you planning on sleeping with her when you met her?”
Derek closed his eyes, and his face screwed up in an expression of pain. “…yes.”
I felt like he’d stabbed me all over again. “You lied to me!”
“I lied to you when I was in the middle of a full-blown meltdown. I would have done anything,
said
anything, to keep you.”
“Whatever,” I snorted. “You were a complete douchebag in half of your texts and voicemails, and you took forever to come get me in New York.”
“Because I resented that I had to come crawling back to you, and you wouldn’t even talk to me. I hated that I needed you that much. Hated that I was weak. And when I wasn’t begging you to come back, I was furious at you for making me feel like – like you had my balls in your purse.”
I glared at him. “Well,
I
didn’t feel that way.”
“I know.”
“All I could think about was how you cheated on me. How you
lied
to me.”
“I know.”
“And you’re still lying,” I seethed.
He frowned. “No I’m not. Everything I’ve told you was the truth.”
“You lied to Ryan tonight to get me out here.”
“Because he went after
you
,” Derek said darkly. “He fucking stabbed me in the back and took the woman I love.”
“He didn’t ‘take’ me – I
left
you because you
cheated
on me.”
All the anger departed his face, and suddenly he looked sad. “I know, and I’m more sorry than you can possibly imagine.” Then the forcefulness came back into his voice. “But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I want to know if you love him.”
“Of course I love him!” I snapped.
“Then the next question is, are you
in
love with him?”
I stood there, my heart thudding against my ribs, afraid to answer.
Because I was afraid he might hear the truth in my voice.
Because I was afraid
I
might hear the truth in my voice.
“I’ll ask you what I asked you four years ago: do you wake up happy in the mornings because he’s right there beside you?” he whispered. “Do you get sad the second he leaves, because you can’t stand to be apart? Does he make your heart stop when he walks in the room?”
He reached out and gripped my arms.
His touch was like fire, like electricity, like sex. I felt it spreading through my entire body.
“Do you crave his touch? Do you feel like his kisses are a drug? Does it make you insane not to be around him, not to be naked with him, not to have him inside you?” he asked, his voice low and husky. “Because that’s the way I feel when I’m not around you.”
He was killing me. When he said
to have him inside you,
I felt myself get wet just from the sound of his voice.
But I reminded myself I had felt like that back in Vegas, too.
“Then you shouldn’t have cheated on me,” I snapped, wrenching myself free from his grasp.
He let me go – at least, with his touch. But his words, his voice, gripped me more strongly than his hands ever could have.
“You belong with me, Kaitlyn,” he whispered. “You know it’s true. You belong with me, not with him.”
“I’m not cheating on him,” I raged.
“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to do the same thing you should have done four years ago: leave the guy you know you don’t really love, and stay with the man you do.”
My body wanted to go to him. His words… his voice… his body… his face… all of them drew me to him like a magnet.
But I forced myself to think of that hotel in Vegas, and the naked woman standing in the doorway clutching a sheet to her body.
“You’ll just get bored and hurt me all over again,” I said, my voice cold and steely.
He shook his head. “No. No, I won’t. I swear, this time it’ll be different. I would die for you.”
As soon as he said that, I remembered the cougar in the Black Hills. How Ryan had stepped across me, putting himself between me and certain death.
“I don’t believe you. But I’m with a man I
know
would die for me, because he’s already risked his life to save me.”
Derek didn’t give up. “I don’t know what he did, but I would do it, too. And that’s the thing – he’s a great guy. He is. I know you love him. But you’re not
in
love with him; you’re in love with
me.
And we both know it.”
He stepped forward, and I tensed up. I was sure he was going to take me in his arms and try to kiss me – and I was afraid, because part of me really wanted that, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop him –
But he didn’t. He just stood there a few inches away from me, close enough that I could feel his body heat radiating through the cool night air.
“I love you, Kaitlyn. I know I fucked up, and that it’s going to be hard to forgive me. But I’m patient. I waited four years for you last time… I can wait a little bit longer.”
With that, he walked off across the parking lot into the darkness, never looking back.
And just like four years ago in that very same spot, I got back into the car and collapsed, sobbing behind the wheel.
