He liked that a little too much.
Because in a week, she’d be gone.
“When does your brother come back?” he asked.
“Saturday. His flight comes in a few hours before mine leaves, so we’re going to try to have a drink at the airport before we go our separate ways.”
“What kind of writing does he do? I know you said technical, but I’m not sure what that entails.”
“He writes instruction manuals and maintenance and operating guides with a goal of toning down the big words so they’re user-friendly for the average person. Or at least that’s what he told me.”
“You think he’d be willing to do some work for Fusion? We hand out the manufacturer’s instructions, but they’re not exactly user-friendly. A rewrite in plain language would be fantastic.”
“I’m sure he would.” She frowned. “I still haven’t broken the news to him about the air conditioner.”
“Keep it,” he said. “I have the old one on standby if for some reason he wants it back, but if not, we’ll credit the trade in, and he can make payments on the new one. Or, rather, we’ll get him one that fits the apartment. If he’s not interested, he can just send it back for no charge. Just have him give me a call, and we’ll work it out.” They stopped in front of their building. After returning from his mom’s, they’d walked to get some coffee. Now that whole awkward first meeting was happening all over again, one week to the day after the original. Only this time she didn’t smell of pickle juice, and he didn’t have to wonder how incredible it would be to taste every inch of her body.
He knew.
But there was so much more he wanted to know. Like if she liked the beach. Or how she’d look in the winter, bundled up against the weather, cheeks pink and snowflakes snagging on those mile long lashes. He bet he could look into her eyes in the heart of a blizzard, and no matter how many clouds choked the horizon, he’d see a clear summer sky.
“I really like your family,” she said, dragging him from his thoughts.
“Which makes you completely insane or…” Don’t finish that.
“Or what?”
“Or maybe they’re not bad in small doses.” Yeah, whatever.
“I have a feeling Sawyer was really holding back.”
He laughed. “I’m surprised he managed as well as he did, but you’re right. Even at his worst, though, there are some lines even he won’t cross.”
“What about you?”
Her suddenly playful tone had him on edge. A very good edge. “What do you mean?”
She traced her fingertips down his chest. “Are there any lines you won’t cross?”
He toyed with the hem of her dress, dragging it a precarious distance up her thigh. “Any particular lines you had in mind?”
She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him down for a kiss. “Why don’t you come upstairs, and I’ll tell you all about it?”
“You’re going to tell me?”
“You have a better idea?”
“Sure do,” he said, grabbing her and tossing her over his shoulder. She shrieked and giggled as he carried her into the building, saying hello to Earl on his way to the stairwell. Once they were alone, he set her down and pinned her to the wall, kissing every inch of exposed skin until she was gasping. Then he took her upstairs, and they crossed all kinds of lines together.
Except one.
The fucking state line.
The one line he just couldn’t forget.
Chapter Thirteen
The week passed quickly. Crosby spent almost every night at Estelle’s apartment, and each day he took her somewhere—not the touristy spots, but the places where real life happened. And but for the lack of fresh air, she loved it.
But she still loved home.
She had a gorgeous four-bedroom house on a quiet street with wonderful neighbors. She’d bought it as a fixer-upper and poured her heart into it. It was the perfect place to raise a family. The fact that she hadn’t met anyone to share that dream hadn’t deterred her…until now.
Now the only man she could see was Crosby.
Logic dictated the butterflies would wear off or fly away or whatever they did. That it was new and exciting, and it couldn’t last. That if things were different and they stayed together, that eventually they’d settle into a routine that would kill the thrill. Whatever. What good did logic do when the idea of sharing a pizza was exciting? It wasn’t like he was showing her the world. He was showing her his world, and she loved it. Every mundane, ordinary bit of it.
And it broke her heart.
Made her angry.
She was twenty-eight years old. She’d busted her butt building her life and her business. She had the responsibility and the honor of a memorial garden back home that her mother had planted with her own two hands. The fact that she even considered life somewhere else pissed her off. She didn’t work that hard to build something from which she could walk away.
She wouldn’t.
She and Crosby were at her apartment, sharing a bottle of wine on the fire escape. The city lights had a way of delaying sunset—something she’d grown to appreciate as her time there had grown short. Two more nights. Including that one.
Her chest hurt.
Crosby tightened his hand on hers. He had a way of reading her, of knowing when she needed him. She wondered how long that would last.
Two more nights.
His warm gaze was on hers. “Do you still hate the city?” he asked.
She looked up at him, the fading light glittering in her eyes. “No,” she said. “But my life isn’t here. I can’t stay.”
“I know,” he said. “But maybe you’ll visit?”
Emotion choked her throat. Either she hadn’t had enough to drink or she’d had too much, because the heat that pricked her eyes had no business there. And that was when the reality of their situation really hit. Getting on a plane wouldn’t make her forget a damned thing. How long would she sit in her big empty house and think of him? Or him with his family? If Grady accepted Crosby’s job offer, even her brother would be a part of what she’d leave behind.
Visits. Sure. “I have more with you than I’ve ever had with anyone, which is pretty sad considering how long we’ve known each other. But we both know it’s ending. Hanging on won’t stop that from happening.”
“I don’t think it’s sad. We connected. People do that.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know why I had to connect with someone on the wrong coast.”
He shook his head. “Don’t know, but that doesn’t make the connection any less real. We can be friends, Estelle.”
“Friends with benefits?”
“No. Yes. Dammit, I don’t want to end this just because we don’t live in the same place.”
“So you’ll do what? Wait for me? To come back once or twice a year?”
She hadn’t been able to keep the edge out of her voice, and the hurt that flashed across Crosby’s face tore through her. “I don’t know. What’s the right answer here? I sit around like a love struck fool because we had an amazing couple of weeks, and I can’t see past that? Or I pretend that this small amount of time we’ve had together isn’t better than anything I’ve ever had before and just move on like it never happened?”
“I can’t answer that for you,” she said.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. For a long moment he stared ahead, not appearing to focus on anything. By the time he turned to her, the air was thick in a way that had nothing to do with the humidity. “What do you want?”
She wanted things to be less complicated. She wanted an answer that felt right—not one that made them both miserable. But there wasn’t any such thing. All they could do was move on, but if he wanted her blessing…screw that. She was hurting, too. “I’m sorry…are you actually asking me if I want you to bend some random woman over the fire escape and fuck her until the whole neighborhood knows your name? In the name of moving on? Forgetting me? New week, new girl?”
&nb
sp; His green eyes turned stony. “Is that all you think this was?”
She blinked back the threat of tears. Of course that wasn’t all it was. That’s what made it so damned hard. Real feelings didn’t happen this quickly. And even if they did, they weren’t allowed. She wasn’t going to do a long-distance relationship. And she wasn’t going to be able to break things off with him if he kept looking at her like that.
Like what they had mattered. Like it could be more.
“Yes,” she whispered. Her voice shook, and she prayed he wouldn’t notice. That he’d just go so this didn’t have to be any harder. Because she couldn’t afford to fall. Not another inch. She straightened. Her voice strengthened. And she lied. “Sex. That’s all it was.”
Stone-cold silence fell like a brick between them and shattered, as if masonry was prone to such a thing. She braced herself for his anger, knowing she deserved it. Knowing the last thing he deserved was to be dismissed as random sex. But she couldn’t stand to hold on. Not if it meant letting go in two short days.
“Kiss me,” he said.
“What?”
“Kiss me. Kiss me, and tell me you don’t feel anything. Tell me you don’t want me to touch you. Tell me you won’t spend the whole damned night wishing I was fucking you, and I’ll go.”
She wanted to bite out the words, but she couldn’t force them from her throat. She couldn’t look at this man and demean anything he was to her. “I…I can’t.”
“What does that tell you, Estelle?” His gaze tore over her. Decimated her.
Weakened her.
“Does it matter?” she managed. Dammit, she needed to breathe. That was what was so wrong with the city. No air. She’d said that all along, and that much would never change.
Fighting the pain that threatened to crush her, she dropped his hand and went back through the window into the apartment. She knew he’d follow, but there was something to be said for solid ground. And more wine. She had her hand on the bottle for a refill when he came back inside. His face looked as if it had been carved from stone. She froze when she realized the emotion behind that mask was because of her. It was for her.
For a long moment, they just stared at one another. She opened her mouth to say something, anything to break the tension, but he spoke first.
“You’re damn right it matters.” And then his mouth was on hers. It was the kind of kiss that belonged on a train platform in the pouring rain, but there was no platform. No rain. Just a small studio apartment with a broken elevator and a Hell Cat and a homeless man in the lobby. Nothing that should be perfect, but in some stupid, heartbreaking way, it was.
He was.
He lifted her onto the counter, knocking over her wine glass in the process. It hit the sink and shattered. That would be her. Like a speeding train into a brick wall. She could see it coming from a mile away.
“I’ll replace it,” he said, running his hands under her shirt. He managed to unsnap her bra, then just as quickly fit his hands over her breasts. They were heavy. Achy. She wondered if he could feel what he did to her, then she wondered if she did the same to him.
Too much. Too damn much.
The look in his eyes had been wild. Feral. Now, as he softly stroked her breasts, she saw something else. Something she wasn’t sure she wanted to name.
She swallowed the pain and threw back his words, a biting question that did nothing to ease the pain of knowing how close they were to over. “Are you going to fuck me now?”
He shook his head. Soft. Slow. “No, Estelle, I’m not. I’m going to make love to you. I’m going to worship every inch of your body and treasure every moment you share it with me. And if you can walk away from that and forget, then you’re stronger than I am.”
He waited, eyes full of questions. Probably waiting for her to say no. But she couldn’t speak, so she leaned in and kissed him.
And he her. In a thousand kisses, never like that. So slowly that time stood still. So deeply that he touched something new…something that had danced around the fringes of her conscious without allowing her to grasp it. Something that said too much about how she felt about him.
Something terrifying.
He scooped her from the counter and walked over to the bed. This time he didn’t toss her down. He eased her to the mattress like she was fragile, then crawled over top of her. His weight and the heat of his body were exquisite. Solid. Warm. An anchor she never knew she needed. So she held on.
Held on until it hurt.
He spent several minutes undressing her, fulfilling his promise to kiss every inch, all the while avoiding her attempts to return the favor. When he finally shed his jeans, the sight of him nearly brought tears to her eyes. But that could wait, because he wasted no time rolling on a condom and sinking into her. His movements were slow, measured. All the feelings that usually came with flinging body parts and slapping skin had been reduced to earth-shattering precision. Every move, every inch resonated deep, and despite the slow burn between them, she was soon trembling, her skin sweat-dampened. She could only hold on, her fingers digging into his biceps or winding desperately through his hair, as he stretched her, filling her again and again. And not even the torturously slow motion could hold back the force of her orgasm. She felt its blinding impact from her head to her toes, from the blistering tension that seized her to the tenderness of the aftermath, where he kissed her gently, swearing under his breath as he climaxed, his own orgasm touching her in ways hers hadn’t.
Because she knew it was good-bye.
They lay together for a long time afterward. He held her tightly from behind, no words between them. Just a darkened room, city lights taking the place of candles, in the very last corner in the world that was their own. She could tell by his breathing that he didn’t sleep, and when a single tear rolled down her cheek, he brushed it away, though she hadn’t thought it possible he’d seen it fall. The tender gesture made her choke back a sob she hadn’t felt coming.
It wasn’t fair, but no one ever promised it would be.
“Dammit, Estelle,” he said, though his voice was soft. “What does that tell you?”
“It tells me this is too much. It can’t happen like this.”
He gently pulled against her shoulder until she lay on her back, facing him. “Well, guess what. It did. Do you really want to throw that away?”
“Throw what away? Whatever it is, it’s temporary. We’ve known that from the beginning. Why are you trying so hard to define something that can’t exist?”
“Because it does exist. And I don’t know what to do with that, but I’m not going to turn my back and pretend it doesn’t.”
“What choice do we have?”
“What if we did have a choice? What if there were no miles between us?”
“What difference does it make?” This time, the tears fell in earnest. Silent, as if they, too, knew they didn’t have any fight left. “I don’t have an argument, Crosby. I know where this goes. I get on the plane. And as much as I don’t want that to be the end, it has to be. So stop pushing. Please. Because it’s hard enough letting go without you holding on to something we can’t have.”
They’d said everything there was to say. She hadn’t left any room for argument or misinterpretation. But when he simply stood, pulled on his jeans and shirt, and left, her heart broke into a thousand pieces. No good-bye. No anything. Just gone.
Leaving her alone in the apartment with a brand new set of rumpled sheets, a maple tree, and a heart she hadn’t known could be broken in two short weeks. She stood and turned off his air conditioner, but it didn’t eradicate the cold. As immediate silence settled over the apartment, she found odd reassurance in the muffled sounds of the city far below her window.
But they didn’t drown the sounds of a broken heart.
Nothing ever would.
She dropped to the bed and curled up with a pillow, breathing his scent, so lost in him that she didn’t notice Hell Cat had entered the apartment until he jumped t
o the bed, probably to chew off her face. A fitting end, she supposed, but he didn’t attack—not unless a head butt counted. Instead of unleashing his fangs, he turned in a circle and settled on the bed beside her, his ugly little kitty head tucked near her shoulder.
And purred.
Chapter Fourteen
Crosby extracted a box of hardware from his truck and dropped it on the work bench with enough force to move the piece of furniture several inches across the concrete floor. His dad had pulled him into the office earlier. They were losing money. Fortunately, they had savings from which to draw, but that wouldn’t last forever. Probably wouldn’t even last months. While he’d been out screwing around with Estelle, his family was taking a hit. Knowing she was leaving made him want to crawl back into his work, but he’d enjoyed every minute he’d spent in the sun. But what had he gained? Nothing. He’d lost money. Lost a piece of himself. Nothing he’d get back…not on either count.
Ethan and Sawyer looked up from their respective places on the other side of the shop.
“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked.
“Woman trouble,” Sawyer said.
Crosby threw a stray wrench onto the table. It skidded across the top and tumbled to the floor. “Fuck you.”
“No, thank you. Frankly, I’ve turned down much better offers.”
Ethan shot Sawyer a look Crosby couldn’t explain, but he damn sure appreciated it. “Get lost,” Ethan told his brother.
Sawyer looked back and forth between them and shrugged. “I’ll go over the schedule. Maybe Liam and I can cover you this afternoon, Cros.”
“Thanks, man.” Crosby knew better than to show up in a pissy mood, but he was having a hard time wrapping his head around this thing with Estelle. The worst part was there wasn’t anything to work out. They were damned good together, but they belonged on opposite coasts. That was too much of a chasm to close after a couple of weeks.
Five Things I Love About You Page 10