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He took a step back, nodding.
Now he knew the score.
It hurt like hell.
He’d actually never felt so put down in his place in his entire life.
He had thought that she was suggesting, hinting, considering something with him. That she felt the same way he did but didn’t know how to step away from the carefully constructed life she’d crafted for herself. That she had been asking him to make that move.
Which meant he was really wrong. Big time fucking wrong. So totally one hundred percent wrong.
But at least he hadn’t kissed her the night before. He didn’t have to add that to his list of fuck ups.
He opened his mouth, but realized there was nothing to say.
He just turned and left the apartment.
Sullivan was leaving.Why was he leaving? Edwina stared at his retreating back, her head pounding.
“Sullivan, don’t… I… wait!”
Everything about that had gone wrong. She didn’t mean to insult him or hurt his feelings. She didn’t mean it to sound like he had nothing to offer, which was clearly the way he’d taken it. She’d been asking for reassurance, for confirmation, for something more than casual.
Because the minute he’d started talking in hypotheticals and made it sound like he wanted her, she had been both thrilled and terrified. If he was talking about himself and if he was talking about having feelings forher, did he mean casual exploratory dating? Like they would try it on for size and see if it fit?
She couldn’t just throw over her whole entire life in New York for something casual or lukewarm. Because if he was only dancing around the subject she couldn’t make that leap of faith. Her whole life people had been deciding her future for her and she couldn’t let Sullivan do that either. Not that he would be intentionally but that’s what would happen if she was waiting for more and it never came.
She needed him to say it. Emphatically and clearly. Definitively.
Be with me. I love you. Marry me.
Any of those would work.
And she recognized that all of those would be a lot for just having spent a few days hanging out as friends. It wasn’t even close to realistic to expect that from him.
They’d had conversations about how nuts it was for Jesse and Astrid to have moved so quickly in their relationship.
So here they were. She couldn’t let go of everything she had in the hope that something might develop at some point with Sullivan.
Or could she?
Maybe it wasn’t fair to expect him to read her mind. Maybe he was trying to be respectful of her relationship. Maybe he was just as uncertain as she was and she should give him more encouragement to be honest about what he was feeling.
At the very least she needed to explain what she’d been thinking. That she hadn’t in any way meant it to sound like she didn’t think he had anything to offer. Quite the contrary.
Quite the opposite.
“Sullivan, wait!” She ran out the door and down the stairs, her bare feet slapping hard on the wood. She almost fell at the bottom but she recovered and started to take off across the driveway.
Then stopped immediately. The sight in front of her had her grinding to halt, her hand coming to her mouth.
Nigel was in Beaver Bend.
“Nigel!” she blurted out. “What the hell are you doing?”
He was talking to Sullivan. That’s what he was doing.
Both men were standing in her dad’s driveway, shaking hands. Nigel in a suit, Sullivan in his clothes he’d been wearing since the day before. They couldn’t look more different from each other. City businessman and small town single dad. Both great men. Both evoking very confusing feelings in her.
