My pulse quickened. I had spent my adult life ensuring I’d never have to make this decision.
“You can do this,” he said firmly, standing. “I would be there every step of the way.”
“David,” I said with an unsteady breath. I took a few steps away to gather my thoughts. “What I’ve been through since . . . there was a moment when . . .” I let the sentence trail off. Saying these things aloud was different than thinking them. I’d opened up to him, but not like this. The thought terrified me, but I looked him straight in the face. “There was a moment when I thought I might die without you. But I’ve already ruined so much,” I said, pressing my fingertips to the corners of my eyes.
“When I said that everything was for you, I meant it,” he said sternly. “My whole life I’ve been building and saving and preparing for the woman I knew would come along. I had to believe you were out there, because if I didn’t, I would have nothing.” His big shoulders heaved as he took a breath. “I’m not a religious or spiritual man. I am guided solely by my instincts, my gut. And they have led me to you. Without you, I have nothing to believe in.”
I blinked, shocked into silence. His words were needy, romantic, loving—misaligned with the man I had originally suspected him to be. And despite his stiff, almost militant stance, his eyes held only warmth and truth. “I-I don’t know what to say, David.” I did, though—I wanted to say that it was beautiful. That no one had ever said anything like that to me.
“It’s just the truth—the plain fucking truth.”
An awed smile touched my face. He was looking at me again the way he had that night at the hotel.
Love. Love is what I saw that night, and that is what scared me. I already knew on some level that you loved me, David Dylan.
I inhaled. “What about Dani?”
His determination slid into confusion. “What?”
“Dani. You never really explained why you were at the ball with her.”
“Olivia, I—” He blew out a frustrated sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “Why are you asking me about that right now? I tell you I love you, that all I have is yours, and you want details about some meaningless dates we went on?”
My fingers tingled. “You’re asking me to leave my husband. I have every right to ask if you’ve ended things with the myriad women in your life.”
“You’re not asking because you believe they mean anything to me,” he said, frowning. “You’re asking because you’re scared and looking for an excuse out of this.”
I bristled. “That’s not true—and why aren’t you answering my question?”
“I tried to tell you. I ended things with Dani, but she begged me to take her to that one last event. I owed her that much.”
“You owed her?” I asked.
“She’s been patient and sweet, but I can’t give her what she wants with you in the picture.”
“And if I weren’t?” I asked.
“I don’t even care enough to wonder. She said she’d already paid for the tickets and that she was embarrassed to go alone. I’m only human.”
I scoffed. “That was a lie. They were Gretchen’s tickets.”
He pursed his lips. “Regardless. Do you trust me that nothing happened with her? She kissed me that night, but I stopped it. She was desperate.”
It wasn’t difficult to conjure up the image, Dani’s green eyes sparkling from behind the chocolate-brown mask that matched her hair. “Before or after me?” I asked.
“After, and like I said, I stopped it immediately,” he said frankly. “But it was nothing, Olivia. I promise.”
I’d heard that before. It was nothing. I promise. You’re acting crazy, Leanore. Your jealousy is unfounded.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. I was acting possessive over a man I had no claim to—and I’d spent years decrying my mother’s jealous behavior over her own husband. And yet, I couldn’t stop my envy at the thought of David with other women. “What about Maria?” I asked into the dark kitchen.
He exhaled a short laugh. “Do you think I’m playing games, Olivia? I don’t want Dani, I don’t want Maria, I want you. I would never ask you to leave your husband if I wasn’t ready for the commitment. Not just ready, but dying for it.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Why? I don’t understand why.”
“Why what?”
“Why me?” I whispered. “What makes me worthy? You could have anyone.”
His face fell. He cupped his hands under my jaw and looked directly at me. “How can you say that?” he asked sadly. He looked around the room and then back at me. “I’ve never had trouble meeting women, that’s true. But I knew as early as my first kiss that there was something missing. I never gave up hope that the right girl was out there. I knew you were her the moment our eyes met.” He paused and ran his thumbs over my cheekbones. “I didn’t need any other proof after our first night together.”
Tears streamed down my face, not only at the grave sincerity of his words, but because of how they echoed my own thoughts. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d secretly wished that Bill would tear me open and teach me what it meant to love. He might still one day, but had he waited too long?
“Are you sure this is what you want?” I asked again.
He brushed a piece of my hair from my forehead. “With everything I am. But even more, I want you to want to leave him. I want you to realize that he’s not right for you and that you deserve to be loved fiercely. And if I’m lucky, you’ll choose me to do it. You said you were mine earlier. And I know you meant it.”
My face screwed up as more tears fell. Even if I left Bill, could I let myself love David the way he needed? Did he deserve someone as cold as me? Would just loving me be enough for him? I searched his face. His eyes had always been my refuge. They seemed to know things that I didn’t.
My heart jumped in my chest when I realized that I could love him the way he needed. Without boundaries. Without control. And that scared me more than anything, even more than leaving my life behind. I could fall into those heavenly brown eyes and never find my way out.
Once I was his, I’d be at his mercy.
He wiped my face of the tears before leaning in to kiss my closed lips. “Talk to me. This won’t work if you’re not honest.”
I hated myself when I said, “I need time to think this through.”
He froze, then dropped his hands to his hips, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t deserve to be strung along any longer. I want you, but I’ve asked, pleaded, and begged for you to open up to me. To trust me. I can’t keep doing this to myself, and yet I do. Because this isn’t something we can just walk away from.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I cried. “Don’t you know that I felt it from the beginning? What do you want to hear? That I’m yours, that you’re the one who has my heart? You know you do. But I can’t just leave without knowing what will happen. I made a commitment!”
“Fuck your commitment,” he roared. “You know it’s not about that. You’re too scared to take a chance, and it’s not fair to me, you, or Bill. This last month has been a glimpse of how life will be for all of us. Is that what you want?”
I shook my head hard.
“So then make the decision.”
“Nobody would understand.”
“Is that what this is about? Other people?”
“No.” I sniffled. “And yes. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s right anymore.”
“I won’t let anybody hurt you,” he said. “You make this decision, and we’re in it together. I will be your shield.”
“David, I can’t—how can I? How can I leave him after what I’ve done? And after he stood by me anyway?”
“What we have is stronger than all of it.”
David didn’t know that. He was counting on love to be enough, but he’d never been married. In fact, he was trying to break up a marriage. How could he know that we’d be stronger than what I had now? That it would carry us into for
ever?
But he was right in that I’d not ever experienced this with Bill or with anyone else. It was always all of my strength to fight our magnetic pull to each other. I didn’t know what to do. “What we have is strong,” I agreed. “But you can’t ask me to leave on a whim. I need time to—”
“No. There’s no more time.”
I clasped an arm over my stomach. “What?”
“I cannot do this anymore. It’s killing me. I love you, and you either love me or you don’t. But please, put me out of my misery,” he pleaded. His hands ran over his face and dove into his hair. “You have to decide.” The bass of his voice bounced off the walls. Veins pulsed from his neck, and his face flushed with rage. “Can’t you see that this is it? It’s me or him. End this. Now. Leave with me. Tonight. If you’re mine, you aren’t spending another night in this apartment.”
Panic gripped me. Now? Tonight? Bill’s presence was all around me. I pictured him coming home to an empty apartment, calling for me, finding my things gone. David expected me to walk out the door, leave it all behind, and go . . . where? He was being idealistic, ignoring the gritty details. I could spend tonight with him—but what about tomorrow and the next day? I couldn’t move from one life to another overnight.
David took an easy stride and grasped my face in his hands. “I love you,” he said earnestly, “but this is destroying both of us. End this. If you don’t, then I will. And once I walk out that door, it’s truly over.” I whimpered as he stared into my eyes. “My sweet,” he murmured, between soft kisses. “Say the word, and I will give you everything.”
My chin quivered viciously in his hands. My eyelids blinked fresh tears onto my cheeks. Everything? But there was only one thing I wanted. I wanted him, wholly and completely. Somehow, inexplicably—incomprehensibly—he was the only thing that had ever felt absolute in my life.
But I’d also seen just now how easily I could slip into a role I’d fought against. Irrational jealousy lived in me, a madness that only a love like David’s could trigger.
I wasn’t choosing between Bill and David. I was choosing between a life I’d planned and still wanted in some ways, and one where I’d be putting all my faith into two things I’d been taught to fear since thirteen years old: trust and love.
David expected me to dive from solid ground into murky, choppy waters, kept afloat by two abstract concepts that had failed me before.
I urged myself to move past that failure and hold on to this new future with all my might. I didn’t know how I could just leave it all behind tonight, nor could I bear for him to walk away. My decision wouldn’t come; words stuck in my mouth, lodging in my throat. I swallowed them down, along with a hard, painful lump.
David’s eyes darted between mine, and hope drained from his features. “It’s him?” he asked finally, dropping his hands and stepping back.
My knees gave, and I fell to the floor in a broken, bawling heap. How could I have done this to everyone? How was I the source of so much despair?
David hesitated only a second before he strode away. He pulled open the front door, and without looking at me, turned his head over his shoulder. “You can have the house.”
I choked back my tears. “No,” I screamed, but it was muted by the slam of the door.
The first time I’d seen David had been electric. Our eyes had met across that shimmering lobby, and it was as if the heavens had smiled right on me. What had that feeling been? Lust? Love? Had it been nothing? Or everything?
Relief didn’t come. As I expected my fear to fade away with my decision to stay safely on the cliff and not jump, it only deepened instead, taking root. And new fears took place. That I might wake up one day trapped by all the things I hadn’t wanted because I’d been too scared to change my life. That Bill would never feel like home. That I’d fall out of love with Bill. That I already had.
As I broke apart on the kitchen floor, I wondered if picking safety over passion was still the right thing. Except, it wasn’t safety I’d chosen. It was fear. At some point, I’d lost myself to it, and David had tried to bring me back. Now, I’d stay lost even though fear would exist no matter what path I pursued. I’d just said good-bye to a man who’d tried to show me that a life without love was no life at all.
That was, I realized, even worse than the unknown.
A life without him. I’d lived that life in the anguished months following the morning I’d fled his apartment. And I’d been spiraling downward until he’d returned. Until he’d danced with me at Lucy’s wedding, walked with me through the streets of Chicago, and brought to life a house that could’ve been ours.
And then it hit me. I knew exactly what that feeling in the theater lobby had been when our eyes had first met.
I scrambled to my feet and flung open the door. I ran into the rain after him, and with everything I had, I screamed, “It’s you!”
David stopped. His shoulders tensed, but he remained frozen as the sky fell around us.
My voice cut clearly through the downpour when I said, “Of course it’s you. You are my home.”
After what felt like an eternity, he turned slowly. Pain etched his face. For a heartbreaking moment, I thought I was too late. But then he stepped forward, and suddenly I was running. He opened his arms, and I jumped.
And I was home.
Thank you for reading Come Alive. Keep clicking to start Come Together, the third and final installment in the Cityscape Affair series.
Come Together
Cityscape Affair, Book Three
With a single decision, Olivia Germaine’s fantasy has become a reality. Now, she’s faced with two commitments—one she must make, and one she must break. But in order to accept a love she never thought possible, Olivia will have to let go of the broken past that defines her…and of deeply rooted fears that could ruin everything.
Everything is what David Dylan wants to give her, and it’s what he demands in return. He’ll do anything to prove to Olivia that despite his playboy ways, he’s worth leaving behind the stable future her husband can offer her.
But even though he’s a man who always gets what he wants...this time, David may be fighting for something unattainable.
1
The sizzling was almost enough to make me scream. Plumes of smoke spiraled up from the fajitas platter that’d just been delivered to our table. Neither Gretchen, Lucy, nor I had even touched the chunky guacamole or done anything beyond salt a full basket of tortilla chips.
A mariachi band played in one corner of the Mexican restaurant. Tension grew as silence stretched between my two best friends and me.
Finally, Lucy blinked. “Wait. What?” she asked, horror clear on her face. “What did you just say?”
“I’m leaving Bill,” I repeated.
Lucy shook her head in disbelief. “And you’re telling us this over fajitas?”
I shrugged, not casually, but because the question had no appropriate response. I glanced from Lucy to Gretchen, who reached out to clasp my hand. I was drowning, and she could tell.
“Is this why you’ve been distant since I returned from Paris?” Lucy asked me. Her eyes cut to Gretchen. “And why don’t you look surprised?”
“I’m not,” Gretchen said evenly.
“Did something happen while I was on my honeymoon?” Lucy continued, touching her new wedding band.
“Something happened,” I confirmed. “And that something is that I’m in love.”
Up until that moment, Gretchen had looked almost relieved. Now she gasped as a breathtaking smile broke out across her face. “You are?”
“Well, I’d have to be to go through with this, wouldn’t I?” I asked.
She nodded, her mass of blonde curls bouncing joyfully.
“You’re in love with your husband,” Lucy stated, straightening her shoulders. “Bill.”
“Luce.” I took a deep breath and addressed her with unwavering focus. “You and Gretchen have been my best friends for a long time. When something
this big happens in my life, I want to share it with you. I’m in love with someone else, and I’m leaving Bill for him.”
She braced herself against the table and hissed, “What the fuck?”
I winced. Lucy was sweet, doe-eyed, and polite. She didn’t hiss, she squealed—and she rarely cursed. “I know it’s shocking,” I said. “I wanted you to hear it from me before I talk to Bill.”
Her mouth fell open. “You haven’t told Bill?”
I shook my head.
“Who is this guy?” she asked.
For “this guy,” I’d taken the leap—literally and figuratively. And he’d caught me in his arms, taking my weight with ease. Last night, rain had drenched us, our lips had joined, and relief had melted the muscular arms around me. Our foreheads had met. He’d told me he loved me.
I’d told him he was my home.
A small smile dissolved the tension in my face. “I’m leaving my husband for David Dylan.”
Lucy’s brown eyes doubled in size, and her knuckles whitened. “Ex-cuse me?”
My smile faltered as reality slashed through the sweet memory. Lucy didn’t find this sweet at all.
“What are you talking about?” Lucy asked. “Do you hear what you just said?”
“You’re in shock, Lucy,” Gretchen said. “Just listen.”
“You knew about this?” Lucy shot back, redirecting her glare at Gretchen.
“Some of it.”
“David Dylan,” Lucy echoed. “As in, my client, Andrew’s friend, Dani’s—” Her eyes darted frantically over the table as she tried to find the word.
“Yes,” I said softly. “Your client, your husband’s friend, and the man your sister was seeing.”
Lucy’s eyebrows met in the middle of her forehead. “How did this happen?”
“I’m sorry to spring it on you both, but like I said, you’re my best friends.” I looked between them. “I need you now. I need you there after I tell Bill.”
Lucy ignored what I’d said and quietly repeated, “How?”
Cityscape Affair Series: The Complete Box Set Page 54