I move further into the apartment. Here it comes. The sentence I’ve spent days formulating.
‘I’d like to see you again.’
Abject fear crosses her face. It is unmistakable.
‘What?’
‘I’d like to see you again.’ I shrug. ‘I’ll be in London a few weeks. Maybe less. And then I’ll fly back here.’
‘Why?’
My eyes don’t lie. I’m not going to pretend any more. ‘Because I’m going to be missing the hell out of you by then.’
She practically jack-knifes across the room, the book in her hand as though it’s a lifeline, her tension a palpable force. Silence hangs between us.
‘No.’
It’s a softly spoken word. It’s a plea. And yet it’s emphatic.
I brace myself for her argument.
I brace myself for her doubts.
What I don’t brace myself for is the fury and rage which is obvious when she spins around a moment later, her eyes pinning me to the spot, burning me with irate contempt.
‘How dare you?’
It’s not what I expect. Did I think she’d be glad? Thrilled? That she’s been feeling the same growing sense of disbelief that our arbitrary deadline is drawing closer?
It takes me a moment to shake myself into responding. ‘I dare—’ my words sound coloured with anger ‘—because I don’t want this to end. I’m not ready.’
‘Oh, you’re not ready,’ she says sarcastically, slapping her palm to her forehead in an exaggerated and sarcastic gesture of sudden comprehension. ‘You’re not ready! How did I dare think you’d do the right thing and stick to our deal?’
‘Come on...’ I growl the words. ‘Be reasonable. We made this deal when we hardly knew each other. Are you telling me nothing’s changed for you in the last two weeks?’
Her eyes flash with more anger and her cheeks drain of colour. ‘Of course things have changed! I’m not an idiot! But nothing important has changed. What I want is still the same.’
‘And that’s for this to end when I leave?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So if I’m back in New York you really don’t want me to call you?’
She frowns, and that little divot forms between her brows. I ache to lift a finger to it and touch it, touch her. But I don’t.
‘No.’
A laugh escapes my mouth. A sound of disbelief. ‘I’m not ready to walk away from you.’
‘This isn’t about you.’
Her eyes hold mine for a moment and then drop.
‘What is it about, then?’
‘It’s about knowing we need to let this go.’
‘Why? You don’t think there’s something here worth keeping hold of?’
She sniffs.
Hell, is she crying? I can handle almost anything, but not Ally’s tears. I feel like my chest has been ripped open and someone is reaching in and squeezing my organs in a fist.
I wait for her to answer, my question sitting between us like an enormous, impossible-to-navigate boulder.
‘Ally?’ I prompt gruffly when she doesn’t answer.
‘I’ll admit,’ she says shakily, ‘that things between us are kind of amazing—’
‘“Kind of amazing”?’ I interrupt, running a hand through my hair.
‘But it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to be in a relationship. I don’t want a boyfriend. I don’t want to live with the risks that are bound up in loving someone.’
‘So you’re—what? Going to stay single for ever? Run through a succession of fuck buddies for the rest of your life?’
The very idea is curdling my blood.
She looks away from me and my stomach drops. Good job, jackass. Bully and berate her into a relationship. That’s a great idea.
‘I don’t know.’
Her whisper is a plaintive cry. I can’t help it. I cover the distance between us, my stride long. I press my body to hers, trapping her with my legs as my hands reach up and lock her face between them. I drag her up as I push my head down, finding her lips as though the survival of humanity will be ensured by this kiss.
‘I know enough for both of us.’
She shakes her head, and I can taste her tears, and it makes me want to fuck her so much more. It’s the only way we can communicate without doubts.
I push at her negligee, my hands demanding, my need raw. I rip it from her body and she moans into my mouth. I drop my lips to her shoulder and taste her flesh with my tongue, then press my teeth into her. She arches her back and, fuck, I need her more than I ever have.
I push at her bra—it’s just a scrap of lace that barely holds her in place. I drop it with an equal mix of contempt and admiration, and then I take a breast into my mouth with a primal moan of need.
I cannot function without her.
I lift her, wrapping her legs around me, and she is running her hands through my hair, tasting me, kissing my cheek, my jaw, her hands touching every square inch of me as she goes. I ache to possess her, but this torturous lead-up is heaven on earth.
I drop her onto the bed. I’m not gentle. She bounces as she lands and her eyes contain the same rush of fury as they meet mine.
I don’t care.
I’m furious as well. I’m furious with her for sticking to some stupid rules we agreed to way back when we hardly knew each other. But her crying... Her crying damned near breaks my heart.
I don’t think she even realises she’s doing it, but I run my tongue along her cheek, catching a tear, tasting her salt and her sadness, and then I kiss her.
I drop my mouth to her chest, running my tongue over her, and my fingers brush her sides, pausing at her hips to hold her as I take my tongue to her clit and torment her in the way I know she loves. Her fingers are tearing through my hair. She lifts her legs and I grip her ankles, holding her there, making her fall apart.
And she does.
She cries out as the rapture of her orgasm drops over us both and then I move, stepping out of my jeans, hovering over her. I stretch across and grab a condom from my side of the bed. My fingers are shaking as I stretch it over me. Need is like a spring, coiled tight in my chest.
I stare at her and, fuck it, I know I need to roll the dice.
I gamble. I gamble in the only way I can think of because I’m all in.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘I LOVE YOU.’
The words drop over me as he thrusts into me, his possession complete. I reject the words at the same time as I welcome him. I am fevered and frantic, afraid and so aware of every pulsing need inside my body.
He grabs my hands, lacing his fingers through mine and pinning them wide on either side of my head. His eyes stare down at me.
He thrusts again, harder, deeper, and he says it again.
‘I love you.’
He drops his mouth and kisses the words into me, swirling them into me, pushing them through me as he moves, each three-word bomb detonating in time with his body’s possession, so that I am being stirred to the height of desire even as I want to scream and push him away. Even as I am terrified and innately rejecting his sentiment.
‘Don’t!’ I say, sobbing, and he pauses, his body still, as if I’m rejecting the sex.
I’m not. The sex is what I want.
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I love you,’ he challenges, his eyes locked to mine. Something inside me flutters. Hope? Pleasure? Relief?
But I shake my head. ‘This isn’t love.’
He thrusts into me again. ‘It is for me.’
I shouldn’t be able to function in the midst of this, and yet I’m climbing higher and higher. My body is so sensitive that even the air around me is making me shiver with awareness. I can feel it waving over my body. I arch my back, tilting my hips, and he move
s inside me again.
‘I love you.’
I don’t fight it. I don’t reject the words. I let them fill me up. I let them curl around my heart and for a moment I pretend they’re what I want. Just for a moment.
It is a coming together ruled by animalistic passion, and yet there is a raw emotionalism to it as well. His fingers squeeze mine as we come together, and he kisses me, and I know what he’s thinking without him saying it.
He loves me.
Words that so many people find joyous and welcome fill me with dread. They are tainted by past misuse and all its negative associations. Ethan tells me he loves me but I hear Jeremy, and I instantly recall the disaster that followed.
I lie beneath Ethan, his weight on me, his body beautiful and warm, strong and hard. I feel his warmth and strength and I wish it would bleed into me. I am going to need to be strong.
‘Excuse me.’
The words come out cold and crisp. He’s still inside me and suddenly I need space and I need it now.
All I can think, as his words hover in the air like deceptive little bullets, is what an asshole he is. Why would he do this? Love is not why I’m here! Love is not what I want!
I pull my hands; he doesn’t argue. I push at his chest and roll him away from me, out of me, and then I stand up in one movement. I am shaking with desire and with anger. My negligee is ripped so I grab one of his shirts. It smells like him and my chest groans under the weight of certainty that soon it will be all I have of him.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, watching me as I step into my jeans without bothering to put my undies back on. I tuck them into the back pocket and then run my hands through my hair.
‘What do you think?’ I respond with the same arctic chill.
‘Listen.’ He stands, the word soothing and gentle. ‘Don’t run off.’
I glare at him. ‘Does it look like I’m running off?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m not,’ I snap back, storming into the lounge area and scooping up my bag.
I’m struck by the similarities to that first morning when I said goodbye to him—when I thought it would be the last goodbye.
I push my clutch under my arm and am instantly steadied by its presence. ‘I’m walking away.’
‘Alicia...’ he groans, and when I spin back to him I see he’s pulled a pair of low-slung jeans on. They sit on his hips, so I can see the protrusion of where his bones meet the sinew and strength of his shape.
It dries my mouth.
I have kissed every part of him. And I’ll never touch him again.
‘Don’t.’ It’s a shaky, hollow plea. ‘Don’t say it again. If it’s really how you feel, then please respect that I don’t want to hear it.’
‘You love me too,’ he says, prowling towards me.
‘No!’ I deny it on every level except one. Deep in my heart I wearily admit the truth of what he’s said.
He kisses me gently. ‘Yes.’
And, infuriatingly, I feel him smile against my mouth.
I stamp my foot down on his. ‘No.’
He rips his mouth away in surprise, his eyes laughing when they meet mine. ‘What the hell...?’
But then he’s back, kissing me again, holding me to him, holding me tight.
‘You love me. And I know that you’re not ready to see that, or to say it. But I think you feel it. I’m not going to walk away from this.’
I make a shuddering noise, as though I’m hyperventilating.
‘I’m not going to crowd you either. I’m just going to be in your life until you’re ready.’
That same little kernel in my heart is jumping up and down. I ignore it.
‘Why?’ It’s a question loaded with suspicion.
‘Because this is special. I know that you’ve been hurt and that you’re shit-scared to trust someone again. But I’m not Jeremy. And I love you.’
‘He—’
‘Didn’t love you,’ Ethan murmurs. ‘No guy who really loved someone could do what he did.’
He shrugs, and the simple truth is sitting between us like a diamond I never noticed before.
It makes so much sense.
Jeremy never loved me.
It is so simple and so immediately freeing.
Except there’s nothing simple about the tangle of what I’m feeling now.
I’m still so angry. I’m angry at Jeremy and at Ethan, and I’m angry at myself for letting it get this far.
‘I need to go,’ I say.
‘Alicia,’ he says grimly. ‘Don’t walk away from this.’
I storm towards the door and wrench it inwards. I have no concept of what I feel, nor of what I want. I know only that I need to get away from Ethan before I start actual ugly crying.
‘I have to go.’ I force myself to meet his eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
* * *
I don’t sleep. I brood. Ally has left me after I put everything on the line. Ally has left me after I did everything I could to help her see why she should stay.
She is everywhere I look in the hotel room. The bed smells of her, of me, of us. It is rumpled from where we lay. My towels have been used by her. We have made love on just about every surface of this damned hotel room.
I pace through it as the minutes of the night groan heavily, sombrely past. I am at the funeral of our relationship and I don’t know if I should rip my hair out or... I don’t know. I press my hands into my eyes, hard, and then I blink, staring out at the city as dawn slowly spreads like the yolk of an egg being cracked into a pan.
I stare at New York and I imagine I’m not here. That I’m back in London.
I try to picture my life BA—Before Ally—and I can’t.
I know I have a heap on in the next year, but suddenly it’s all so pointless.
Is she thinking of me? Is she missing me?
A little before six o’clock there is a knock at my door, and every part of me responds with a surge of relief. I wrench it inwards, a smile on my face as I prepare to pull Ally into my arms and do whatever it takes to keep her in my life.
My smile drops.
It’s not Ally.
* * *
I am in agony.
I am in pain.
I am alone.
I stare up at the ceiling, the incessant ticking of my clock like a sombre marching band. It is a noise that I used to find hypnotic and reassuring but that now makes me want to stab my ears.
Or is that just my general mood?
Everything seemed so easy two weeks ago. It all made so much sense.
We were fucking.
And having fun.
We both knew what was at stake if we fell in love. We both knew why we couldn’t.
And yet we did it anyway.
But love terrifies me. Loving Ethan even more so.
He’s not just a normal guy—someone I can trust to look after my heart and keep it safe with his. He is a rock star. A celebrity. He has the adoration of the world.
I would worry all the time that some other woman was going to usurp me.
It would be so much worse even than with Jeremy.
I give up on sleep. I’m exhausted, but the relief of dreams will not come. I am still wearing what I came home in yesterday. His shirt is soft against my skin. I breathe it in and I cry more tears. I sob into the darkness of my room. I pull my blinds aside a little and stare out at New York. A lamp from overhead casts a perfect cone of light into the street.
I rip the shirt off impatiently and pull one of my own from the drawer, not bothering with a bra. It’s a simple floaty black blouse with dark grey beading stitched across the front. I rake my hair over one shoulder.
He will leave in two days and then my city will be my own. I won’t have to wonder if I’ll run into him. He’ll b
e gone. In London.
Until he’s not.
Until he’s back in New York and I know about it from Twitter or the newspapers.
I close my eyes, anguish heavy upon me. I can hardly breathe.
I can’t lose him.
I can’t.
Maybe that’s just inviting pain. Maybe I’ll be hurt one day and it will be ten thousand times worse than what I went through with Jeremy because these feelings I have for Ethan are so different, so raw and powerful and pure. But I can’t walk away from what we share just because one day it might end. It would be like never going to school because one day you might lose your dream job.
What’s that expression about loving and losing? It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Something like that.
I tiptoe out of my room and lift my keys silently from the nightstand. My clutch purse is there too. I remove my bank card and his key card and check my reflection—and thank Christ I had the foresight to do so when I see that yesterday’s mascara is now two sludgy racetracks along my cheeks.
I slip into the bathroom and lather my cheeks, washing away all of yesterday except the pieces I want to keep.
His kisses.
His touch.
His words.
I love you.
I smile at my reflection. I clean my teeth, brush my hair, and then I sneak out of the apartment, making sure the door clicks softly behind me so as not to wake Cassie or Eliza.
I catch a cab but get it to pull over a block from the Gramercy. I stop for breakfast burritos and coffee. His love for fried food was a constant in our brief, blinding relationship. Besides, once I see him again I have no plans to leave his bed for the foreseeable future—arming myself with sustenance seems wise.
The waiting is soul-destroying. I glare at the burger flipper until finally he places the food into a brown paper bag and hands me the coffee cups in a recycled card tray.
‘Thanks,’ I mumble, pressing my card to the machine and then moving towards the Gramercy with my head bent.
The whole time I imagine what I’ll say to him.
How can I convey to him that I’m willing to risk everything—even my heart, even knowing what heartache feels like? How can I apologise for letting him down last night? For not being brave when he was so far out on a limb?
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