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Why push me away as if I didn’t matter, if he’d loved me? Yes, he said it was so I could find the happiness he thought I’d wanted, but was there no other solution? No way for us to be together while I did that? Did he believe our worlds wouldn’t have been able to co-exist? Was that it? Maybe his intention had been altruistic, but I was angry. At my father. At Alex Davenport. At being controlled.
At . . . the man who’d kept his heart from me.
He parked the truck.
I remained frozen in my seat, even when he opened the car door.
I clutched my chain. He’d always opened the door. Gentlemen did that.
Like my brothers.
Not calloused men who used women and threw them away.
My heart hammered in my chest. His rejection had crippled me. I hadn’t fought for him, slayed by his words. Instead, I’d run. I’d begged and pleaded to get out of this city, away from any reminders of Garrett Calhoun.
That had been a fool’s mission.
An ocean and a different continent hadn’t made me forget.
Neither had time.
He’d rooted so deeply in me there had never been room for anyone else.
And he’d robbed us both of so much.
“You’re a thief.” I jumped down from the truck and shoved past him.
He caught me by the waist and held me as he locked the Suburban. It didn’t help that I was loaded down with leftovers.
“I’ve never stolen anything.” He lifted two of the pans from the stack.
Did he think that could keep me from escaping?
“Oh no?” I kept up with his long strides, following him down the street toward his apartment building.
It was the wrong way. I should’ve dumped this lasagna on him and gone back to my brothers. But his mother had worked hard to make it. For an afternoon I’d had a glimpse of what it would have been like to have a mom. And I wouldn’t disrespect her.
“No,” he said, as he held open the door to the building.
I stomped up the few flights of stairs like I’d been there a million times.
He balanced the two pans with one hand and jammed the key into the lock of his front door.
Once inside, he took my pan and set them in the refrigerator.
I followed him to the kitchen. The space between the fridge and the counter was almost too small to fit both of us.
Another mistake getting so close to him.
He smelled like everything I longed for. And damn him, he still made me feel safe.
“You stole my virginity.”
“You gave it to me.”
I lifted my chin, and he stared down at me.
“You stole our time together.”
