“Darius, I need some time,” she said. “This is really new to me and I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond and react.”
Darius sighed. He wanted to know how much time she was going to need and what was going to happen when she returned to New York. The lyrics of Bonnie Rait’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” began playing in his mind. Had he turned into Tiffany and many of the other women who had come into his life? They all pressed him to give them something he didn’t want to give. Was he doing the same thing with Celina? Maybe their connection was purely physical and she was only going to give him her body and nothing more.
“Fine,” Darius said, ignoring the questions running through his mind. He gathered their things and stalked to the car with Celina nearly running to keep up with him. Darius stopped short of the car then turned around and glared at her.
“Celina, I can’t do this. I love you so much it hurts, but you keep holding me at arm’s length as if I’m going to do something to break your heart. When you look at me it’s as if you don’t believe that I love you, and it’s breaking my heart.”
She walked over to him and stroked his face gently. “Darius, I don’t want to do that to you. But I’m . . .”
“Afraid, I know. You’ve said it over and over again. But have I given you a reason to feel that way? What more can I do?” he asked as he grabbed her hand and held it over his heart. “You feel that? This is yours, all you have to do is reach out and grab it.”
“But Darius, my life is in New York. My art and my . . .”
He silenced her by placing his finger to her lips. Darius stared into her eyes. “Your life can be anywhere you want it to be. You’ve said it yourself, you can find art anywhere. What’s wrong with here?”
“So, because you say you love me, I’m supposed to pack up and move here? What happens when you decide you don’t love me anymore?”
“Would you rather I packed up and moved to New York? Either way, here or there, I will never stop loving you,” he said.
Tears pooled in her eyes as he stared at her. Darius wanted to kiss her and never let her go. “Celina,” he said. “I need to hear you say it. I don’t want to waste your time or mine if you don’t feel for me what I feel for you.”
“Darius, don’t do this to me,” she said as she clutched her sketch pad to her chest.
“Do what? Love you? Ask you for answers that I deserve?” Darius pulled her into his arms and kissed her forehead. “Celina, if you need time, I’ll give you time. Just don’t expect me to wait forever and allow you to play with my heart because you think that’s what I’m going to do to you. In this time that you need, are you going to consider having a life with me? Or is this a smoke screen for you to push me away?”
Celina shook her head and laughed sarcastically. “You know, I didn’t come down here for you. My father is my priority and he needs me. This relationship is secondary and I can’t look beyond today until I know what’s going to happen with my dad.”
“And I would never take you away from that,” Darius said. “You’re here for your father and I’m here for you.”
“As long as I give you what you want, right?” Celina snapped. “Damn it, this was a mistake, you and I should’ve never hooked up and confused everything.”
“What’s confusing?” he asked, closing the short distance between them.
“The way I feel,” she said. “Yes, I’ve been holding back and trying hard not to love you, but every day you show me something new and I want to . . . We’d better go.”
Darius nodded and they got into the car. They rode in silence back to their houses. He didn’t know what to say or how he could say anything without sounding as if he was being overbearing. I’ve said enough, he thought as he pulled into her driveway. Celina has to decide what the next move will be.
She climbed out of the car without saying a word and Darius followed her lead. He started for his driveway, but stole one last glance at Celina as she walked up the front steps. She didn’t look back. Darius held his breath as he walked back to his house. What was he going to do, he wondered. What else could he do to show Celina that he loved her? Darius walked into his house and plopped down on the sofa. Thoughts of Celina clouded his mind until the telephone rang. What is it now, he wondered as he reached over and picked up the cordless phone from the charger on the oak end table. “What is it?” he asked when he picked up the phone.
“Darius,” Tiffany said. “This is getting ridiculous.”
“What’s ridiculous is you breaking windows at my store and burning my shed with thousands of dollars worth of azalea bushes in it. What’s ridiculous is you acting like a child and trying to prove a point.”
“I’m tired of the police questioning me every time something happens to you,” Tiffany snapped. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Darius slammed the phone down, unable to listen to another word from her. He knew she was going to try something else and the only way to stop her would be to catch her in the act. Walking over to the window, Darius stared helplessly into the night sky, watching the twinkling stars. Tiffany was a problem he didn’t want to deal with, but she needed to be handled. Why couldn’t the police find some sort of evidence that linked her to the vandalism and arson at his store? Nothing like this had ever happened in Elmore before. Darius was so deep in thought that he didn’t see Celina walk up his front steps. Her rapping at the door startled him. Darius opened the door, thinking it was Tiffany. When he saw Celina, he smiled.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. “Actually, I want you to just listen.”
Darius stepped aside and watched Celina walk in. She stood next to the sofa until Darius nodded for her to sit down.
“I do care about you,” she said without looking at him. “You have opened my eyes to what love can truly be, but I still can’t be sure that I’m ready for this. What I feel when I’m with you can’t last forever.”
Darius sat beside her, held her face in his hands, and brought her eyes to his. He could tell it was hard for Celina to open up to him. He stroked her hand as if he was telling her it was all right to tell him what was wrong.
She squeezed his hand and continued. “I have sabotaged every relationship that I have ever had.”
“Why?” Darius asked.
Celina twirled a strand of hair around her finger and looked at Darius. “Love hurts. I want to skip the pain,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I know you say you would never hurt me and you love me, but what happens when that changes?”
Darius shook his head furiously. “Love doesn’t have to hurt. I’m not saying that we won’t have difficulties, but together we’ll get through them. I’ve watched my parents work through a lot during their marriage.”
Celina slipped her hand from underneath his. Then she stood up. “But what if we can’t do that?” she asked. “I didn’t have such great role models.”
He shook his head. How could a woman that beautiful, a woman whose paintings screamed love and showed that she obviously wanted love, say that she didn’t believe love would last? Darius knew Celina yearned to be loved, wanted to be touched tenderly, and it was up to him to show her that love was going to last. As passionate as she’d been every time they made love, he knew she wanted it and craved it just as much as he did. You need to let go of the fear of what your father did, he thought as he lost himself in her teary eyes.
“You’ll never know until you give yourself a chance to be loved,” he said, leaning into her. “And I’m talking about more than something physical.” Darius let her go.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Celina, when we make love, it’s more than sex. Then when we’re done, you seem to retreat into this ‘I don’t want to be hurt’ mode. We couldn’t make love the way we do if we didn’t have more than lust holding us together. I know that you love me. You just don’t want to admit it.”
Celina walked toward the door. “What do you want from me?” she asked as she
reached out for the doorknob. Darius stopped her from leaving, placing his hand on top of hers.
“The question is, what do you want to give me? You know where I stand and how I feel.”
She looked up at him, her black eyes reminding him of a young doe caught in the headlights. “I-I don’t know,” she said.
Darius leaned into her, his lips dangerously close to her ear. “I’ll tell you what I want from you,” he said. “I want you to open your heart and whatever is holding you back from loving me, let it go.” He took a step back from her. Darius reached around her and opened the door. “You can go if you want to.”
Celina raised her right eyebrow, then reached for the door. Instead of walking out, she closed the door and turned to Darius. “I don’t want to go,” she said. “I want to stay here with you.” Celina fell into Darius’s arms and he squeezed her tightly. She’d finally said what he’d needed to hear.
CHAPTER 12
Celina woke with a start. Her neck was aching, her back throbbing, and when she rolled over her lips collided with Darius’s nose. They had fallen asleep sitting on his sofa. A half-empty bowl of popcorn sat at their feet. Blinking her eyes, she focused on the TV, its screen filled with snow, and humming faintly.
Darius stroked Celina’s arm. “Um,” he said. “What time is it?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “We missed the movie,” she said as she stood up and stretched.
“Are you going to spend the night?” he asked.
“I don’t know, you know I have such a long way to go to get home,” she joked.
Darius stood up and pulled Celina back on the sofa, then pounced on top of her. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said as he brushed his lips against hers. “I make a really mean cheese omelet.”
Celina seductively licked her lips. “So, you want me to stay so I can sample your omelet?”
Darius reached out and stroked her hair. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s one thing you can sample.”
Celina reached up and grabbed his hand. She looked into his eyes and wondered if this was love. The look that she saw on his face was like nothing she had ever seen, not even when she was with Terrick, who’d made declarations of love all the time. When Celina had announced to him that she planned to move to New York, he hadn’t done a thing to stop her. She never really believed that what she and Terrick had shared was real love, anyway. Slowly but surely, she was starting to believe that Darius did love her. Now she needed to learn to love him back. It wasn’t going to be easy, because that nagging voice kept telling her it wasn’t going to last.
“So,” he probed, “are you staying?”
“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “Isn’t it time for you to go clean up your room, hide the dirty socks and everything like that?”
Darius gently bit Celina on the cheek. “I’m not a college frat boy. My room is presentable, for the most part. Besides, who said you were sleeping in my bed?”
Celina pushed him off her and stood up. “As if there was any doubt of where I would sleep,” she said haughtily, then headed down the hall. Darius dashed after her and grabbed her around the waist. They laughed and played like two middle-school students, running through the house playing tag in the middle of the night. They finally collapsed on the bed, covered in sweat. Celina turned to Darius, wanting to tell him that she loved him. It was on the tip of her tongue. She wanted the word to pass through her lips, but she couldn’t say it. Darius looked at Celina.
“We’re not as young as we used to be, are we?” he asked, breathing heavily.
“Not at all,” she replied. Both of them sighed, then broke out laughing. She smacked his arm. “No one told you to chase me through the house. We’re just lucky you got rid of Mrs. McRae’s china cabinet.”
Darius chuckled low and long. “Do you remember my seventh birthday when little Marvin nearly broke the glass?”
Celina nodded, reflecting on the memory. “Your mother swooped down on him like Batman or something. She said, ‘Didn’t I tell you children not to run in my house? Out! All of you, go outside and don’t come back.’”
Darius rolled off the bed because he was laughing so hard. Celina leaned over the edge and looked down at Darius. How could anyone not love him? He was absolutely gorgeous, had a wonderful sense of humor, and he was the most gentle lover Celina had ever known. He awakened more than lust in her. He’d opened her frightened heart to the possibility of love.
“You OK?” Darius asked when he caught Celina’s stare.
She forced a smile and said she was tired. Darius seemed to buy her excuse because he was tired, too, and crawled into bed with Celina. She rested her head against his chest and drifted off to sleep.
Darius held Celina as if she were a fragile china doll. He didn’t know if she was really sleeping or if she was faking it. In the silence of the room, he took the opportunity to explore the nuances of her, starting with her hair. He loved the wooly texture of it. Inhaling, he took in the jasmine scent. She reminded him of the most exotic flower, one that didn’t have a name. Slowly, he slid his finger down her arm. Italian silk had nothing on her skin, which was smooth and unblemished. Darius wondered if she fought acne as a teenager the way he had. Whatever awkward stage she’d gone though, she was a beautiful butterfly now.
Focusing his gaze on her lips, Darius wanted to kiss her, but he was afraid that he would wake her.
How did this happen? How did I fall for you so fast and so hard? No other woman has ever moved me the way you do. It’s only going to get better. I wished you could see that.
As he was about to drift off to sleep, the telephone rang. Darius eased his arms from around Celina and reached over to pick up the phone.
“Yeah,” he whispered into the receiver.
“You hung up on me earlier. I don’t appreciate that,” Tiffany said.
“When are you going to stop calling me?” Darius slid off the bed and walked into the bathroom. “It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
“And there was a time when I called you at one in the morning and you wanted me to rush right over,” she said. “I guess that would be a problem now that I’ve been replaced, huh?”
“Times have changed and you have proven yourself to be a crazy . . .” Darius stopped in midsentence as Celina walked into the bathroom.
“Darius,” Celina said. “What’s going on?”
He dropped the phone and looked at Celina with a guilty expression on his face. “Nothing,” he said.
“Who was that?”
“Wrong number,” he said.
Celina folded her arms across her chest. “Please don’t do that,” she said as she pushed her hair back off her forehead.
“Do what?”
“Lie to me. Who was the woman on the phone?” Celina put her hand on her hips and looked into Darius’s eyes. “I mean, no one gets out of bed to tell someone they have a wrong number.”
“Tiffany,” he said, looking away from her.
Celina huffed and pushed her way into the bathroom. She closed the door in Darius’s face.
“Celina, there is nothing going on with me and Tiffany, even though that’s what she wants.”
The bathroom door opened. Celina looked at Darius with anger flickering in her black eyes. “I’ve heard this song and seen this dance before,” Celina said. “If there’s nothing going on, then why did you sneak out of bed to talk to her?”
“Not from me you haven’t,” Darius said. “It isn’t a song and dance. It’s the truth. I didn’t want to wake you and . . .”
Celina rolled her eyes and turned her back to him. “Save it. It’s funny how this Tiffany woman keeps popping up.”
“Celina, it’s not like that. I think she’s the one who has been causing all of the trouble at the store.”
She narrowed her eyes into little slits. “Darius, spare me, okay? You’re just like him.”
He was confused. Who was Celina talking about? Then he realized that it was her father. “Celina, I know
what you’re thinking and it isn’t true.”
Celina jerked away from him. “What I’m thinking is, I’ve made a huge mistake being here. Darius, I refuse to let you play me for a fool.”
He grabbed her arm, forcing her to look him in the eye again. “Do you think that’s what I’m doing?”
Celina snatched away from him. “You tell me,” she snapped. Celina bolted over to the side of the bed, grabbing her clothes.
“I’m not going to let you run out of here. You’re not going to sabotage this relationship, not when I know that we love each other.”
“I’d like to see you try and stop me,” she said as she pulled her shorts up over her legs. Darius pushed her back on the bed, pinning her shoulders down.
“I know you love me as much as I love you,” he said. Celina pushed against his chest, but Darius wouldn’t release his grip on her. “I’m not going to let you go,” Darius whispered. “Tiffany isn’t a threat to us. The only thing that can hurt us is you walking out that door.”
“I’m not staying here,” she snapped. “What are you going to do when I return to New York? Tell Tiffany that I didn’t matter? I know this game. I watched my father run it on my mother for years. I’m not going to be your flavor of the month and fall for your lies of love.”
Darius stood up, ran his hand over his face and forced himself to calm down. “When are you going to realize that I’m not your father and you’re not your mother?” And you can’t believe what we have is a lie.”
“You’re right,” Celina said as she pulled her shirt over her head. “Because I’m not going to wait ten years to leave.”
Deciding to give Celina her space, he watched her storm out the front door because he knew it wasn’t over. What he didn’t know was that a shadowy figure sat across the street watching his house.
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