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“Nothing is going to happen to Porteras,” he said firmly. “But if it did, I would help you find another job.”
“And I wouldn’t be able to take a hand up from you. It wouldn’t feel right.” I shook my head. “I don’t want people to think I’m with you because of who you are, or the money you have. And I don’t want anyone thinking that any measure of success I might ever have is because I slept with you. I want to get by on my own merit, okay?”
“I know.” He smiled reluctantly. “It’s a very admirable quality.”
“Then why argue with me? I mean, I suppose I can understand you not wanting to talk about business with me. After all, I’m sitting here saying, ‘no special treatment because I’m fucking you,’ but I’m wanting you to listen to me about how to run the company. I guess that’s not terribly fair.” God, I hated when my own parameters for something came back to bite me. I had to pick, one way or the other, and I realized I wanted Neil to respect this boundary more than I wanted to try and give him my take on how Porteras should be run. “But I don’t want anything from you. I just want you.”
“I know. And it’s rare that someone comes into my life solely under that pretense.” He looped his uninjured arm around my shoulders, gave me a tight squeeze, and kissed my forehead. “I suppose that’s why I love you so much.”
Chapter Eighteen
Have you ever seen a nature documentary where a lizard will stand near something similarly colored and freeze out of pure fight-or-flight instinct? That’s how Neil looked about half a second after he said he loved me.
I had the strangest thought that this might be the moment everything fell apart between us. That he hadn’t meant to say it— okay, he obviously hadn’t meant to say it— and now he couldn’t figure out how to take it back, so he would be horrified and call everything off.
Before he could think too much about it, I asked, “Do you?”
“I, um.” He looked pretty green around the gills, like I had a few moments before, I’m sure. “What I meant to say...” He wet his lips, made a sort of pained grimace, laughed, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as though he’d just gotten the world’s worst headache. “I had planned to say that in a much different way. When I wasn’t bleeding through a kitchen towel, for one.”
I took his hand and slowly unwrapped it, steeling myself against the nausea that gripped me. The bleeding had finally slowed, though the cloth was alarmingly saturated. “Look. It’s not even that bad. Just a little scratch.”
“Oh?” His voice cracked like a teenager’s. It was kind of adorable. “Good god, here I thought I’d severed an artery.”
I gently closed his fingers and pressed the towel back into place, trying hard to ignore how freaked out I was by all the blood. “I love you, too.”
He looked over at me with a fleeting smile. “I’m relieved. I didn’t say it because I expected anything from you. I knew what you wanted from this relationship from the very beginning, and I’m not trying to push—”
“I know, I...” Wasn’t telling someone you loved them supposed to feel good? This felt like getting punched in the chest.
He studied my face, waiting for something. I could see the longing for reassurance in his eyes, and I hated myself that I couldn’t give him what he needed.
“I must admit, I was hoping that some day, not today, of course, but some day I would tell you that I loved you, and you would... respond differently.” He tried to laugh. It was a miserable try. He stood and went to the sink, dropping the bloody towel into it and rinsing his hands.
“I can’t help how I responded, sorry.” God, now I felt like an asshole. “I’m afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“If we’re in love... Doesn’t that change everything we have?” I really wished we could go back to ten minutes ago, even though we had been fighting. At least then I knew where we stood with each other. I got to my feet, but I kept my distance. “Doesn’t that mean we have to start spending all our extra time together and watch the same shows together and coordinate our schedules? Christ, I don’t know, would I have to have holiday dinners with you and your daughter? Would I have to tell my mom about you? She’s seven years younger than you. She is not going to take this well! This was all so much easier when it was just about the sex—”
He had slowly approached me as I ranted, and now his kiss cut me off mid-sentence, which I would have normally been furious about. It helped at the time, though; I had felt myself emotionally escalating with every word that came out of my mouth. With his lips on mine, his hand in my hair, I felt considerably calmer.
