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, and the sooner Noah accepted that, the better. This was a no-win situation.
“What’s that?” Emerging from her room sometime after midday, the last thing a groggy Max had expected to see was a leather overnight bag by the kitchen bench.
Noah moved towards her, dressed in a dark suit, just like he had been the morning they’d met. She smiled at him, relieved, and light-hearted for the first time in a long time. Despite the trauma of the night, she felt like she could breathe again. Her stalker had been caught. Life could and would get back to normal. A new normal, because everything was different now. There was Noah, there was hope, there was something buoyant and joyous inside of her stomach, a feeling of delight that wouldn’t go away.
“My bag.”
“I see that,” she murmured, trying to hold onto that flicker of warmth, to not jump to conclusions. “What’s it doing there?”
“My car’s waiting. I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”
“Leave?” She repeated, her feet stopping where they were, stranding her in the floor in the middle of no man’s land, between the kitchen and the lounge area, between delight and devastation. “What do you mean, leave?”
“My work here is done,” he said, attempting to lighten the mood with a joke. A bad one. It didn’t help.
“Your work,” she repeated, pressing her lips together while she attempted to get her brain to catch up. “But that doesn’t mean you have to leave.” She forced her feet back into action, making her way across to him, pressing her palms to his chest. His arm was in a cast, and the sight of it made her want to kiss him better all over, all afternoon. “Not right away, at least.”
“There’s no need for me to stay,” he said gently, but unmistakably firmly. “DCI Wingrave has matters well in hand. They’ve already charged Baslemore with multiple crimes. He won’t be getting out.” Noah frowned. “And naturally my company will keep an eye on matters through to his conviction. You’re safe, Max.”
Max’s heart stammered in her chest. “I know that. I got the significance of the guy who broke in last night being arrested. I just didn’t think his arrest would mean you’d pack your bags right away.”
He nodded slowly. “I know that.”
So he did feel something? He did understand what she was feeling?
“The thing is, if I stay, things here go from bad to worse, and I don’t want that.”
“What’s bad about what we’re doing?” She demanded, tilting her face up to his so he felt as though he’d been punched hard in the gut.
“It’s not right,” he said slowly. “I’m not the guy for you and never will be. I’ll never really be yours, you’ll never really be mine. But for as long as we fool around, we’re taking a risk that one of us will forget all the reasons this would never work. And I’m not prepared to risk that.”
Her lips parted, confusion in her eyes. “Is it really so hard to imagine a world where we could make a go of this?”
Something like determination fired in his eyes. “Yes.” But he softened the admission by kissing her temple. “God, Max, you are so beautiful, but you know how I feel about relationships, what I want in life.”
“And it’s not me.”
“It’s not anyone. And you want the whole deal, love and romance and happily ever after, stuff I can never give you. I’m not going to waste your time, leading you on, until one day you grow to hate me because of what you could have had if I hadn’t been such a dick, selfishly taking what you’re offering without thinking about your future. This doesn’t work between us. There’s no path we can go down together that leads to the ending you want.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me,” she snapped, stepping back from him, her hurt obvious. He hated seeing that on her features, but even in that moment he knew that it was better to go through the temporary pain of this than it was to lead her on any longer. He’d told her again and again that they were playing with fire and he was right. He just didn’t expect they’d both get burned, even after his warnings.
“I just want to spend a bit more time with you, that’s all. A few more nights. Is that such a terrible idea?”
The razor-sharp temptation tightening in his groin told him exactly what was wrong with that idea. Plus, there was Gray. Noah didn’t mention Max’s brother – it wouldn’t have been fair to draw Gray into this anyway. He’d simply held a mirror up to Noah’s behaviour and made him admit what he already knew.
“And then what? I leave and you don’t care anymore? You think this is going to feel any different in a few days? A week? A month? Leaving you is always going to feel like shit –,”
“So don’t go,” she responded angrily. “Don’t run away from this. Stay and see what happens.”
“I know what happens. I know how this ends. All I’m doing is making us both face the music now, rather than in a month’s time.”
“You’re not making any sense!”
“Yeah, I am. For the first time in a week I’m saying something sensible. I should never have slept with you. It was a gross betrayal of my professional ethics, my friendship with Gray, and despite what we shared, I can’t not regret this, Max.”
Her gasp was like a knife, slicing through his belly.
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t love every goddamned minute,” he growled.
