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“I’m sorry,” he broods.
His hands are in his hair, and he’s looking at me like a man who crossed the line.
I’m looking at him like a woman who is done with men who pull me too close and push me away without an explanation. I’ve had enough.
“Not again,” I declare.
Now, it’s my turn to walk away.
twenty-one
I STORM OUT OFthe bar and onto the main street of Walden. My chest is heaving, and my pulse is racing.
I can’t blame the alcohol because I only had one drink. No, this fury swimming in my veins is the cause of my intoxication of Luke.
My hands fly over to the door handle of his truck as I try to get inside, where I hid my purse under the passenger seat. The door is locked, so I slide my phone out of my back pocket and pull up the Uber app. There are cars in the area, but no one accepts my request to drive to Greenwood Village. I refresh my request and get a ping.
Thank goodness.
The car is ten minutes away.
The steel doors of the bar bang open, and Luke steps out. His footsteps heavy, he walks toward me and hits the unlock button on the car. I open the door, take my bag out, and then slam the door.
“Get in the car.”
I turn to him with a fierce defiance. “There is no way I’m going home with you. I’ve found my own way home.”
“You’re taking an Uber? Absolutely not.” He runs his hands over the back of his neck. “You’re coming back with me. It’s late.”
“You don’t have the right to tell me what to do. You never did, and you never will.”
Pacing toward the sidewalk, I stand on the corner and watch as the Uber driver draws closer to my destination. He’s still eight minutes away.
“Jillian, please, if I gave you the wrong impression back there, I’m sorry.”
His words have me spinning on my heel and gunning at him with an evil glare.
“Wrong impression? Since the day we reconnected, you’ve taken every chance to drop these emotional bombs on me. You say the weekend you met me was the best three days of your life, you drank because you had ameproblem, and you haven’t been able to stop seeing red since the moment we met. Hell, Luke, you haven’t been with another woman in five years!”
I run my hand through my hair and pull at the ends. Passersby stop and stare at me like I’m crazy, but I wave them off. This makes two nights I’ve been unhinged, and the need to maintain decorum dissipates with every second that passes.
“I’m not the kind of woman who becomes unraveled. I’m pristine, poised, and the epitome of etiquette. Except when it comes to you. You have me in knots. So many knots. I didn’t grow up in a picture-perfect country life like you did. I had a family who held me ten feet away at all times and saw me more as a product than their child. My success is theirs. My choices are theirs. Who I love is their choice. I decided a long time ago that I was my own master until, one day, I met this man at a bar, and he swept me off my feet. Literally. You think you had to work to get me on that catamaran. I was putty in your hands from the moment you looked at me, Luke. Because when you look at me, it’s like I’m the only woman in the room. You did it to me then, and you just did it to me now, on the dance floor in a stupid kind of bar that I don’t even like.”
I look at my phone. The Uber is still five minutes away. I turn away from Luke and will him to say something.Anything.
Another minute passes, and there isn’t a word from him. His silence is crashing waves to my ego, and I feel the moisture of tears threatening to fall from my face. I breathe in sharply through my nose and will myself not to cry.
Instead, I turn around, and with my fiercest expression, I say, “How could two people who had an intense connection over a three-day weekend, who were so enraptured by one another and destroyed at the same time, both have given up on intimacy for over five years? All these years, I assumed you were sleeping around, and yet you were just waiting. For what? I have no idea because you only give me what you want me to hear. It’s what I don’t hear that frightens me.”
“Jillian, if you wanted me to kiss you back there, I would have. If you want me to kiss you now, I will.” He lifts his hand in the air and punches the air. “Fuck, I’ve been dying to kiss you again since I saw you outside in that robe, holding that damn ice bucket. I’d take you in my arms and kiss you right now, but we both know that would be a disaster.”
“I don’t want you to kiss me! I want you to stop pushing me away. When I woke up in that hotel room to a text message that you had to leave the island for a family emergency, I still held hope. The entire day, I had hope that you and I had something special. You pushed me away. Time and time again, you push, and I can’t take it anymore. And then you say you’ll do me the favor of kissing me. Well, I won’t let you close enough to kiss me.”
I swallow and squish my brows together as I bring my fist to my mouth. Two minutes to go.
“You’re Ainsley’s father, and I can’t change that. You have the key to her future, yet you won’t get tested. You’re selfish, Luke Incendio. You’re a selfish coward of a man, and I’m embarrassed to have ever thought I could fall in love with you. Every step of the way, you’ve only thought of yourself. What you want. What your feelings are. You never think about us.”
“Jillian—”
