“Danny,” she breathed against his mouth. “We don’t have to stop. I want you.”
She felt his body tense, and then he pulled away from her abruptly, taking two quick steps backward before he sat on the edge of his bed and ran both hands down his face. “I can’t, Leah.”
“Please,” she said, her chest heaving with her labored breath. She realized she should have been embarrassed at her behavior, at the fact that she was begging, but she was too wild with desire to care. She wanted him. She wanted to touch every inch of him. She wanted to hear his sighs and his moans and her name on his lips. She wanted to make him feel that good.
He dropped his hands from his face, gripping the edge of the bed on either side of him, but he wouldn’t look at her. She took the tiniest step toward him, and a muscle in the side of his jaw flexed before he said, “I think you should go.”
She froze, unsure if she had heard him correctly. Several seconds passed, but he still wouldn’t look at her. He sat there with his eyes trained on the floor and that muscle in the side of his jaw flexing over and over.
“You want me to leave?” she asked, her breath still unsteady, and he closed his eyes.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
Leah continued to stare at him, and as the intensity of the moment dissipated and her desire slowly ebbed, she realized how exposed she was—physically and emotionally. She crossed her arms over her uncovered breasts, turning to scan the floor for her shirt, and as soon as she found it, she bent and scooped it up, holding it over her chest as she walked swiftly from the room.
Once outside, she pulled her shirt over her head as she passed through the dining room, grabbing her purse from the floor and her cell phone from the table. Just as she walked out the front door, she heard a sharp bang that sounded like Danny had hit something.
Leah bypassed the elevator and went directly to the stairwell, refusing to chance the possibility that he would come out while she was still waiting for it to arrive.
Her body was responding to what he had asked, carrying her down the steps, bringing her out to her car, starting it up and putting it in drive; she was going through the physical motions of leaving, but her mind felt like it was on a time delay. It was such an abrupt and jarring shift to go from swimming in desire that potent to drowning in rejection, and her thoughts were still scrambling to catch up. And she knew that when it happened, when she finally began to process what had just transpired between them, she would want to be as far away from this place as possible.
Leah cranked the radio, trying to put some noise in her head. She just wanted a little more time before she was forced to think. With the unnecessarily loud music eradicating any possibility of it, she focused only on the curve of the road, the white and yellow lines rushing toward her windshield, the taillights of other cars, and she sank into the comforting numbness of it all.
When she pulled into her parking space and cut the engine, somehow the sudden silence seemed even louder than the music it had replaced, and she sat there staring out of the windshield, trying for a few more minutes to keep her thoughts at bay.
The double beep of her phone snapped her out of her daze, and she reached into her purse apathetically, pulling it out and glancing at the screen.
One new message from Danny.
I’m so sorry Leah. That wasn’t about u, it was about me.
A breathy laugh fell from her lips as she tossed the phone back into her purse. He’d had almost an hour, and the best he could come up with was the “it’s not you, it’s me” routine?
She shook her head as she exited the car, and a rush of cold air hit her in the face, pulling her from her fog and forcing her to feel. And then it all hit her at once.
Confusion. Rejection. Embarrassment. Resignation.
As she entered her apartment and walked straight back to her bedroom, she was certain of two things: she had feelings for Danny, and his issues went far deeper than she initially thought.
In another time, in another life, she may have been able to tough this out with him, to ride out the storm and let him figure himself out while she sat on the sidelines, rolling with the punches and taking a few hits every now and then. But Leah knew she didn’t have it in her to do that now. She promised herself that she would never let a guy screw her around again, and while she knew Danny and Scott weren’t even close to being cut from the same cloth, the bottom line was, he obviously wasn’t ready for what she wanted.
The back and forth, the push and pull, the mixed signals—she had thought they were past all that after their conversation last weekend, but apparently that wasn’t the case. And she valued herself too much to be treated that way, even if she knew it wasn’t coming from someplace malicious. She wouldn’t allow herself to settle for something less than what she wanted, or to wait around hoping for something she might never get.
Life was too short, and she’d already wasted so much time.
Holly had been right; she had gone too fast with Danny. There were things he needed to figure out, broken pieces of his life he needed to fix. And she needed to walk away and allow him to do it. It would be best for both of them at this point. And maybe when he figured everything out, when he could give her one hundred percent of himself, they could try again.
Leah kicked off her shoes and pulled the blanket up over herself, not even bothering to change out of her clothes.
She knew what it felt like to care about him, what it felt like to want him so badly it erased all rational thought from her mind.
And as she closed her eyes, she began dreading what it would feel like to miss him.
He couldn’t believe he was doing this.
Danny closed his eyes and shook his head as he grabbed the pen, scribbling down Leah’s address before he closed the lid on his laptop.
It was bad enough to look up a girl’s address online, but to do it so he could show up at her place uninvited? It didn’t get much creepier than that.
He ran both hands down his face as he exhaled, because in the past twenty-four hours, he’d managed to be both a tease and an asshole, so creep wasn’t really that far of a stretch.
He had texted her twice last night after his initial apology, once asking her to let him know she made it home okay, and the other a few hours later, asking if he could call her in the morning so they could talk. She hadn’t answered either one, and he’d gotten the worst sleep of his life because of it.
He just wanted to explain what had happened the night before. Even if she decided she never wanted to speak to him again, she still deserved an explanation.
He’d already had plans to go in to work late that morning, but now he was debating going in at all. It wasn’t just the fact that he was exhausted—he could work through that. It was because he was completely miserable, and he didn’t feel like dealing with Jake or Tommy or anyone else who would try to get to the bottom of what was up with him.
Instead, he spent the morning lying on his couch, running through all the ways he could have handled things differently last night. He’d heard the saying hindsight was twenty-twenty, but that wasn’t accurate.
Hindsight was a stupid motherfucking asshole.
At around ten o’clock, his phone went off with a text message, and despite the hours he spent warning himself not to get his hopes up, he couldn’t help but feel defeated when he read her words. She told him she wasn’t mad at him, but she just needed some space—that it would be best for both of them if they took a break for a while.
As much as it killed him to do it, at first he complied. He didn’t text her back, figuring that after disrespecting her the night before, the least he could do was respect her wishes now. After all, she didn’t say it was over; she just said she wanted some distance for a while.
But the problem was, he didn’t know if he had a while to give her.
Which ironically brought him full circle, because that was exactly why he shouldn’t have started anything with her in the first place. It was as if the u
niverse was sending him a reminder: Hey, asshole, you should have left her alone to begin with, but since you apparently have no self-control, I’m making the decision for you.
About an hour later, he finally decided to get up and go to work; he needed a distraction, and working in the garage was something that always succeeded in clearing his head.
But when Danny got to his front door, he noticed her jacket, still hanging where he had draped it the night before, and he stopped with his hand on the knob.
Did she realize she’d left it there? She hadn’t mentioned it in her text. But then again, her text wasn’t exactly conversational. Should he message her and tell her he had it? Or would she think he was just making a pathetic attempt at trying to speak to her? Although, how could it be a pathetic attempt if the jacket really was at his place?
Danny closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
He couldn’t do this—this overanalyzing every fucking thing until his head was spinning. And he definitely couldn’t look at that jacket every time he walked in and out of his apartment for the next few weeks.
And just like that, his decision was made. There was an easy solution to both of those problems.
He was going to go to her. He would give her back the coat, and he would tell her everything. Not just why he did what he did last night.
Everything.
He was going to lay all his cards out on the table and deal with the consequences, and if her desire for a temporary break turned permanent, well then, wasn’t that what he had been expecting from the beginning? There was no point in prolonging the inevitable anymore.
So he looked up her address. And then he sat on his couch, staring at the floor with the piece of paper in his hand and a lump of foreboding in his stomach.
He’d never had to tell anyone what he was about to tell her. The people who were important to him already knew, and those who weren’t read about it or heard about it second or third or fourth hand. But he’d never had to say the words—and he knew that somehow, saying them to her was going to make it a thousand times harder.
He pushed off the couch and walked toward the front door, grabbing her coat and his keys before he made his way downstairs. After programming her address into his GPS, he turned the radio off and started driving.
Danny spent the first half of the drive practicing what he was going to say, playing with the words to try and soften their effect, but it was a senseless exercise; any way he said it, it was horrible. In fact, the more he heard it out loud, the more awful it became until finally he cranked the radio and drove the rest of the way listening to some insipid pop music countdown.
By the time he was walking up the small pathway to her front door, his anxiety had transitioned into a sense of urgency; he just wanted to get it over with and deal with the end result, whatever it might be.
Danny took a small breath before he knocked on her door. It was a minute before he heard the sound of someone approaching from the other side, and then there was silence. He knew she must be looking through the peephole to see who was outside, but he couldn’t bring himself to lift his eyes.
The silence wore on, and for a second he thought she wouldn’t open the door. But then he heard the deadbolt slide back before she pulled the door open slightly, and he raised his eyes to hers.
Her expression was smooth as she looked at him.
Guarded.
“What are you doing here?” she asked softly.
Danny wet his lips before he held up her jacket, and she glanced down at it before bringing her eyes back to him.
“Thanks,” she said, reaching to take it from him, and he handed it over before shoving both hands in his pockets.
“I’m ready to tell you everything, Leah.”
The tiniest flicker of surprise flashed across her face before she composed her expression again, folding her jacket over her arm.
“I know I don’t deserve it,” he said, “but just hear me out. After that, if you want nothing to do with me, I promise I won’t ever bother you again.”
She stood there in silence, her eyes searching his face, and then she bit her lip before she stepped to the side, granting him access to her apartment.
He walked past her and into her living room, the nerves temporarily winning out over his resolve, and he reached up and rubbed the back of his neck as he heard her close the door behind him.
“How did you know where I lived?”
Danny jammed his hands in his pockets again. “I looked you up,” he said as he turned to face her. “I’m sorry. You weren’t answering my texts, and to be honest, I thought if I asked, you would’ve told me not to come, and I had to come. I can’t do this anymore. The partial truths and the bullshit and the secrets.”
She sighed softly, laying her coat over a nearby chair before she motioned for him to sit down. Danny lowered himself onto the edge of her couch, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he dropped his head.
A few seconds later, he heard her come into the room, and he looked up as she curled into the chaise lounger next to him, her eyes on the hem of her sweatshirt as she twisted it between her fingers.
He took a deep breath before he shifted to face her, and her fingers stilled as she glanced up at him.
“Last night,” Danny started, and her eyes instantly dropped. “I’m really sorry about the way I handled that.”
Her eyes were still pinned on her sweatshirt, but Danny could see her cheeks flooding with color.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want you. I did. I wanted you so fucking bad. I still do.”
Leah’s eyes flashed up, her expression taken aback, and he felt his shoulders soften.
“Did you really think it was because I didn’t want you?”
She shrugged. “What else was I supposed to think?”
He exhaled heavily before dragging both hands down his face. “God, I’m an asshole,” he mumbled. “You have to understand something, Leah. You had just told me you hadn’t dated anyone, hadn’t been with anyone in two years, and then you wanted me. It didn’t matter how bad I wanted you. I couldn’t do it. Not before you knew the truth. You were making a decision without having all the information. I didn’t want you to regret being with me, and there’s a good chance that after you hear what I’m about to tell you, you would have. And I refuse to be another reason for you to doubt yourself.”
Danny leaned back against the couch, running both hands up through his hair as he said, “I’m sorry I asked you to leave the way I did, but Jesus Christ, Leah, I only have so much self-control. I was trying so hard to do the right thing, but the way you were looking at me…and the way you were kissing me…and then hearing you say please.” He closed his eyes and exhaled, the memory causing his stomach to flip in a way that had nothing to do with nerves. “I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out with you right in front of me. I was hanging on by a fucking thread as it was,” he said, rubbing his hand over his eyes.
He heard her shift slightly, and he turned his head to look at her.
“Just tell me,” she said softly.
Danny nodded as he sat up slowly, turning toward her. “You asked me once why I kept pulling away from you. Why I said it was a problem that I had feelings for you.” He took a steadying breath. “It’s because there’s a good chance I’ll be leaving soon.”
“Where are you going?”
Fuck. Just say it.
He swallowed around the knot in his throat as his eyes met hers. “Prison.”
She sat completely still for a few seconds before she closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips into her temples. She looked more confused than upset, although Danny knew that was about to change.
“What did you do?” she said weakly.
Danny knotted his fingers together as he said, “I didn’t plan on it, Leah, and I didn’t mean to do it.”
She dropped her hands as she opened her eyes. “What did you do?” she repeated more firmly.
He took a deep breath before he said, “Bryan isn’t dead.”
Her eyes flew to his; there was fury behind them, and he held up his hand quickly. “I didn’t lie, Leah. He’s alive because machines do everything for him. Pump his heart, make him breathe, give him food. His body is alive, but he’s gone. He’s been gone for a year. There’s no brain activity. There’s nothing left. It’s just that Gram can’t let him go, because she’s still hoping. But he’s gone.”
Leah stared at him, her eyes softening slightly before she shook her head. “What does that have to do with you going to prison?”
Danny leaned forward, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. It physically hurt to say these words. He had known it would be hard, but he hadn’t expected physical pain. It felt like his chest was caving in.
“The night it happened, I was with him. We were hanging out at this bar in Manhattan, and Bryan kept ordering round after round of Alabama Slammers.” He smiled sadly before he said, “That was his shot. He’d always start the night off with one, but that night he just kept going. And I went right along with him.
“At some point during the night, these three guys came up to us. We had no clue who they were, but apparently they knew this girl that Bryan used to mess around with. So the one guy started with Bryan, talking about how he was gonna make Bryan sorry for fucking his girl. The bartender was quick, though. The whole thing got broken up before it could come to blows, and the guys were asked to leave because they were the ones who instigated the whole thing.”
Danny rubbed his hand over his forehead before he said, “So they left, and we went about our business. We didn’t even think twice about it. Typical drunk assholes at a bar. We’d seen it a million times. Hell, we’d been them a few times. Nothing out of the ordinary, you know?”
She nodded gently, and he said, “By the time the bar was closing, we were both pretty fucked up, and I went to the bathroom—” He stopped suddenly, his jaw flexing in rapid succession as he rode out the sharp pain in his chest.
Danny cleared his throat. “I went to the bathroom, and when I came out, it was just chaos. And I knew. I just fucking knew. Some people were moving toward it, and some were trying to move away, but after a few steps, I could see them over the tops of people’s heads—the same guys from earlier. I don’t know how they got back in. They must’ve known a bouncer or something, because it didn’t make any sense why no one was trying to break it up this time.” Danny shook his head. “And if I hadn’t gone to the bathroom, or if we hadn’t been so fucking drunk…” His jaw tightened again as he felt rage and regret start to trickle through his veins, and it was a moment before he could speak again.
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