She was lost in thought as she approached her apartment building. She looked up just as she reached the base of the stairs and stopped dead. Matt was sitting on her steps. He was still dressed in a business suit and hunched over with his forearms resting on his legs, hands clasped together. He looked as disconcerted as she felt surprised to see him again.
She decided not to make the experience any more painful than it needed to be and instead of challenging him took the spot next to him on the concrete, avoiding looking at him as she stared vaguely in the same direction he was looking across the street. In contrast to the cool concrete against her bottom she felt Matt’s natural warmth radiating from him along her side. It reminded her of making love with him and it took every ounce of willpower not to cry at the memory.
“I don’t deserve you.” Matt’s painfully confessed words broke into her internal battle.
Of all the things she had expected to hear, that was not it. Matt had always felt right in all his actions. Even when he’d confessed to lying to her about not loving her, he still had tried to justify his actions as being for her own good. When he had told Tate about them, it had been the right and honorable thing to do. After spending a decade not feeling like she was enough for Matt, it was surreal to hear him confess that he was the one who wasn’t good enough for her. She couldn’t respond, didn’t know how to respond.
“I didn’t know you were in New York. I wanted so badly to be with you that I erased all your messages and emails before I listened to or read them so as to do everything in my power to keep myself away from you. I thought I was doing the right thing for you.” He sounded so honest, but she didn’t believe what he was saying.
“Matt, you saw me in the coffee shop that spring. You took one look at me, turned your back and walked away from me. No looking back, no second glance.” No more lies, no more misunderstandings, she was going to let everything out this time. It was the only way she was ever going to heal.
He reached out and took her hand, her small one completely engulfed in his. She didn’t say anything and still couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye, so instead she concentrated on the sight of their hands together.
“I honestly thought I was hallucinating. I had already thought I had imagined your voice, and seen you on campus, so when I walked into the coffee shop and saw you that day, I thought it was my mind imagining what I so desperately wanted to see.”
Her mind whirled with his last confession. She tried to put together the facts of the past, with her perceptions and now Matt’s. She started talking and wasn’t sure for whose benefit she was speaking.
“I need to understand this, Matt, because I can’t tell what’s true anymore. You’re saying you were in love with me the night we first made love and you lied because you thought it was the right thing for me? You’re also saying that you didn’t know that I was in New York with you, and that you wanted to be with me so badly that you thought you imagined me the day you walked away from me in the coffee shop? And now you’re saying that you know all this and you don’t deserve me?”
“I’m saying that I loved you then and I still love you, but I know now I don’t deserve you.”
She let go of his hand abruptly and their eyes met for the first time in the conversation.
“When do I get to decide what I deserve, Matt? When do I get to decide what’s best for me? Because I decided nine years ago that you were worth changing my life for and it’s about time you let me make my own decisions because I love you, still, and always will.”
As her last words echoed around them, Matt reached over and pulled Kate towards him. He held her close as his arms drew around her and his lips found hers. For the first time in their relationship there was nothing left unsaid. There were no thoughts about what the kiss meant or what the ramifications would be; instead, there was just love and honesty between them.
When they finally broke apart, he kissed her forehead and rested his against hers. Kate smiled. “Marry me?” he asked quietly. “I never want to be away from you ever again.”
Kate’s smile widened and she worked her hands between his shirt and jacket, feeling his shoulder blades beneath her fingers and holding him closer to her. It wasn’t just happiness she felt, it was a sense of contentment and peace.
“Yes, I’ll marry you, Matt. And you never have to be away from me again. You just have to agree to move to New York for two years and then back to Boston permanently because I’ve accepted a position at Boston General after my fellowship, and this time it’s your turn to move.”
He lifted away from her and smiled the same Matt grin she had fallen in love with so many years ago. “Anything for you, Katie. Always.”
ISBN: 978 1 472 04527 0
RESISTING HER EX’S TOUCH
© 2014 Amber Whitford-McKenzie
Published in Great Britain 2014
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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Resisting Her Ex's Touch Page 16