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“I …” Stammering, I took a step into the room. This was my home. It had been my home for months now and yet I was avoiding sitting on my own couch and watching my own TV. He was the guest here, and yet it felt like I was. And an unwanted one at that.
“You have made your feelings for me pretty fucking clear, Lola.”
Freezing, I studied him. I had made my feelings for him clear? That's not how I remembered it. The words he had used earlier still cut into me. Tears rushed to my eyes unbidden, and I wiped them away angrily.
“I'm sorry, ok?”
God, I was pathetic. Louis would murder me if he could see me crying because someone had been nasty to me. He’d always said I was too soft, that I wore my heart on my sleeve, and that I let people's opinion of me rule my life. I tried to be tougher, to be more like Elodie and girls like her who knew how to hold their own, but it just wasn't me.
Dion was right about one thing: deep down, I was a good girl.
“Are you crying?” Panic made his voice higher, but it was nothing compared to the panic in his eyes. He looked every bit like a deer in headlights.
“No, I'm…” I scrubbed the heels of my hands against my cheeks, hard.
“Fuck, Lola.” With a leap he was off the sofa and in front of me. Strong tanned arms wrapped around me until my face was squashed up against his chest. My arms locked to my side and I let him hold me for a second. “Fuck, don't cry. Shit…”
“I'm ok. I'm...” I sniffled pathetically. “I'm snotting all over you.” Wrenching my neck back, I tried to keep my disgusting face away from the perfection that was his chest. If he didn't already think I was pathetic, he definitely would now.
“Don't care.” Dion's hand came back down on my head, pushing my cheek into his skin. “It's snot and tears, Lola. Believe me, I've had worse on me from your brother the last few months.” He chuckled softly, his chest vibrating, but it was a forced sound.
I let him hold me for a while and I cried. Really cried for the first time since all of this had started. And it was only then that I realised how much I had been bottling it all up. I had put a brave face on rather than deal with my feelings. Which was a classic Lola move. I held it all tight to my chest until it exploded in snot and tears.
“It's been tough for you,” Dion whispered above my head. His breath moved the hair on the top of my head. “Hasn't it?”
Mutely, I nodded. Tough was a bit of an understatement. It had been hell. I had gone from a nobody, but at least someone my friends and colleagues thought of as nice, to the other woman in a very public and very volatile relationship. It hadn't been something I was ready for, or could ever have been prepared for.
“I bet you wish you’d ever set eyes on me, huh?”
Pulling myself out of his arms, I turned my eyes up to him, searching his face in the half light. There was pain there as well. Whatever I had been through had been nothing compared to him. They had dragged his name through mud for much longer than mine.
“No, I don't wish that.” Without thinking, my arms went around his waist. I hugged him because I could see he needed it.
Dion was as broken as I was. Maybe that was why we seemed to be drawn to each other.
“You mean that?” There was a heartbreaking amount of hope in his voice.
Mutely I nodded. “Maybe…” Chewing on my lip I let my head fall down against his skin. Half because I loved the feel of him, the utterly masculine scent of him and half because I didn't want him to see my face. Gathering my nerves around me I asked the question I desperately wanted to ask him. “Can we maybe go back to the beginning?”
“The beginning?” he parroted back
“Yes.” My voice was stronger now. “Act like we have just met? Maybe be friends. I think we could both do with a friend right now.” Nervously I laughed.
There was a second silence as he mulled over my words. “I mean we got naked pretty quickly after we first met Lola, so…”
Groaning, I pulled out of his arms an inch. “Dion, that's not what I meant.” Except maybe it was.
Tugging me back he pressed his mouth to the top of my hair. “I know, Lola. We can start again, be friends as you said. But one thing hasn't changed you know?”
Looking up at his god–like face I raised an eyebrow. “And what's that?”
“How much I fucking want you.”
* * *
“So, this band,” I was trying to follow the documentary on the screen that he was watching which seemed to be about some ancient rock band with massive hair and seriously bad attitudes, “they were pretty famous?”
He shifted his weight so he could half turn to me. And even in the darkness I could see the absolute disbelief on his face.His mouth fell open like a fish and then closed again. “You're joking right? You don't know who they are?”
