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“Every minute of sleeping with me? Is that all this was to you?”
A muscle jerked in his jaw as he clamped his mouth shut, refusing to answer that question – to himself or her.
“And here’s me thinking that we were starting to actually feel something for one another. That just maybe you were waking up and realizing you didn’t want to be such a cynical, lonely jerk.”
He flinched at her accusation and the names she labelled him with.
“I can’t give you more than this.”
“Stop making excuses! I know you, Noah Storm. You are determined, brave, a man who makes his own destiny. You could give me the whole bloody world – if you wanted to. So don’t say you ‘can’t’. Say you ‘don’t want to’. Say you don’t ‘choose’ to. Say you don’t choose me.” She tilted her chin at a defiant angle, her eyes sparkling like emeralds.
In that moment, he would have said or done anything to relieve her pain. He would have promised her the world, just as she’d said, if he hadn’t known that it was just delaying the inevitable, that any pain she felt now was only going to get a thousand times worse with every day they spent together, with every day she grew to hope for more.
It was better to tear off this Band-Aid now, to leave and let her be angry with him. Anger was better than heartbreak. Heartbreak? Did that imply love? Did she love him? No. Not yet. But she might. She was too kind, too generous with herself, to sleep with someone with feeling. He couldn’t allow it. He’d been a selfish bastard to let it get this far.
“I can’t,” he responded firmly, refusing to use her language, refusing to say he didn’t want to. In another world, if he were another man, he would want her with all of his heart. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, go to hell,” she snapped, tears moistening her eyes. She spun away so he wouldn’t see her cry, but it was too late. His gut ached.
He stared at her back, waiting for her to turn around, wanting, more than anything, not to end it like this. But after more than a minute, he understood. She wasn’t going to turn around. She didn’t want to face him. And there was nothing he could say to make this better.
“Goodbye, Max. Take care.”
The heat in New York was oppressive, humid and unrelenting, so just walking from his office to his apartment made Noah feel as though he’d run eight miles. He shouldered his way into the door of his brownstone – a flat conversion in the Village that boasted high ceilings and art deco architecture, as well as mostly retired neighbours who’d been there for what felt like millennia. Noah had got the place on good terms. The other tenants liked having someone like him around to keep an eye on the place, especially as the area had morphed from a sor
t of eclectic, hippies’ paradise to a boho chic neighbourhood filled with luxe Instagram influencers and movie stars. As the values had gone through the roof so too the tourists and temptation for sticky fingers to wander the place.
As he walked in his front door, he stripped out of his shirt, tossing it through the open bathroom floor to somewhere in the vicinity of the wash basket. It was late in the afternoon, almost evening, the sun low in the sky. Noah appraised the street below him as he always did, as he had every night for the last six nights, since flying back from London. He stared out at the street, tried to reconnect with his life, his normal self, tried to remember who and what he’d been before he met Max.
Then he sat down and picked up the phone, calling his London office for an update. He might be a loner, determined to never fall in love, but that didn’t mean he could put Max Fortescue anything like out of his mind. Nowhere near it.
Max closed out the last mile, stopping with breath burning in her lungs, pressing the button on the side of her watch to pause the exercise recording. “Damn it.” She wiped her brow, the speed slower than the day before, despite the fact that she felt as though she’d run her ass off. She paced the footpath, long strides as she drew in breath after breath, trying to return equilibrium to her harried lungs, lifting her hands to her hair and scooping it into a bun, tucking the ends into the elastic holding her ponytail in place. A door across the street opened and past trauma had her eyes immediately homing in on the movement – she was out of immediate danger but her central nervous system hadn’t quite got the memo.
Edward Walton emerged, and their eyes met for the first time since his arrest. Heat bloomed in her cheeks. She lifted her hand, half-expecting him to ignore her, but he smiled and walked laconically towards her, surprising her by giving her a big bear hug.
“I am so bloody sorry, Max. What a bastard he is. I had no idea. Obviously.”
He pulled away, looking at Max with concern.
She blinked rapidly, his sympathy softening her heart, making her feel a thousand kinds of vulnerable. “You stole my line,” she muttered. “I was about to say sorry to you.”
“What for?”
“Um, the whole ‘you being arrested’ thing,” she reminded him.
“God, don’t even worry about it. It was kind of exciting, actually.”
“Exciting?” she spat, shaking her head in disbelief.
“Sure. I mean, I knew I was innocent, so the whole process was sort of an out of body experience. I had no doubt the truth would come out and I’d be free, so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.”
“Geez. I wish I could have even a pinch of your perspective.”
“It sounds like you kept a level-head pretty well yourself.”
She grimaced. “Maybe. Have you heard –,”
“Nothing more than you, I’m sure. Sounds like an open shut case. He’ll be locked up a long time.”
