“I can’t get you out of my mind,” I tell her quietly.
Her eyes snap to mine, and now they are filled with sympathy… for me. “I’m sorry,” she says apologetically.
What the fuck?
“Sorry? You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the asshole. I have so much to apologize for that I don’t even know where to begin.”
And because Mac is probably the kindest, most empathetic person I know, she still tries to make me feel good, even though I know she’s hurting.
“Matt,” she says softly. “It’s okay. I understand what was driving you.”
Stop it! She just needs to stop worrying about me and let me get through this. I walk toward her, eating up the distance and itching to touch. Her arms fall away from her chest and she watches me warily.
Tenderly… slowly… with purpose, I raise my hands and lay my palms on her cheeks, framing her face and holding her still.
Making her look at me, refusing to let her look away.
“No, it’s not okay, Mac. I have to make up for this, and I’m hoping that I haven’t messed things up so badly that you won’t let me start over by taking you out on a date. I want to give you what you want. At least, I want to try to give it to you… if you’ll let me.”
Fuck, that felt so good to get that out. To let out the words I think deep, deep down… way deep down… I really wanted to say to her for a long time… giving her something that she’s wanted.
Mac’s eyes go wide with wonder, maybe a little confusion. “A date?”
I smile at her, nodding my head, and wait to hear her answer. The suspense is killing me.
“What made you change your mind?” she inquires.
“I finally started realizing that the pain of loneliness is much worse than the pain of betrayal and heartbreak that I was trying to avoid.”
Mac’s mouth opens slightly, and she sighs in relief. “I’d love to go on a date with you.”
I give a sigh of relief too, because I’ve made it past the first major hurdle. “I’m probably going to be really bad at this dating thing… I hope you have patience with me.”
“I’m sure you’ll do just fine,” she says softly, but I might sense a little bit of apprehension in her voice.
Still, I feel like I just conquered the biggest fucking case of my career… convinced the most jaundiced jury to award me everything I could ever desire. And all she did was agree to go on a date with me.
Leaning in, I kiss her forehead and then pull back, searching her eyes one last time to make sure there’s no doubt… no hesitation on her part. She returns my look boldly… confidently… hopefully.
Smiling, I drop my hands from her face and turn away from her, heading back to the front door.
“Wait! Where are you going?” she calls out to me in confusion.
I don’t look back at her as I reach out and open her door. But I do yell back over my shoulder. “I’m going home so I can call you and ask you out all nice and proper.”
I hear her stammer, “But… but…” but then she fades away as I walk out and close the door behind me.
Chuckling, I practically skip my way to the elevator, so fucking high on life right now.
***
As soon as I get home to my apartment, I grab a can of Diet Coke from my fridge and hop over the back of the couch, bouncing on the cushions. Pulling my phone out, I call Mac and she answers on the second ring.
Her voice is all breathless and excited, and oh, so sexy, and I immediately think of having phone sex with her. But I shake my head to clear those thoughts. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she says back coyly, but I can hear the smile on her face.
“So, I was just wondering… would you be interested in going on a date with me Friday night? Maybe dinner? See a show?”
She really brings out her southern accent, and I can almost envision her batting her eyelashes at me when she says, “Why, Mr. Connover… I’d be delighted to accompany you Friday night.”
I laugh at her silliness, but I’m still immensely happy that she agreed again. I guess a small part of me was afraid she’d change her mind by the time I got home. She laughs with me, at me… I’m not sure, but it’s amazing to me after the week we’ve had, that we can laugh at all.
Which brings it crashing down on me, that I still have some amends to make with her. “I really am sorry,” I say quietly into the phone. “For all the ways I’ve hurt you.”
“You don’t have to—” Mac starts to say, but I cut her off.
“I do have to. If we’re going to start over and try this whole dating thing…I do need to apologize, and I need you to tell me you forgive me. I need you to listen to me… let me get it all out, and then I need you to forgive me.”
“Okay,” Mac says softly, appreciatively, and then she waits for me to begin.
“First… I need you to believe me, I have not been with another woman since you and I first met. I know I told you that you were ‘replaced and forgotten’ but I was saying that only to hurt you. You are irreplaceable, Mac, and there’s no way I could ever forget you.”
She stays silent, which is good, because I have more to say.
“I know it’s hard to believe… you know… me being a litigation god and all, but I have a lot of fears and insecurities, and I’ve been trying to work through them.”
Mac chuckles and says, “You? Insecure? When pigs fly.”
I laugh softly but tell her, “It’s true, Mac. The failure of my marriage… the shit that went down with Marissa and Cal… it fucked me up. Changed me. I just didn’t ever want to be hurt like that again.”
Her breath is gentle across the line. “I understand, and I’m sorry you went through that.”
“I just want you to know that the things I said… they were meant to hurt you because I was hurting and confused, and fuck… I know I sound like a girl, and I can only hope you remember all the stellar times I fucked you into oblivion as I’m saying this.”
Mac actually snorts in laughter. “Well, I certainly don’t want to have to revoke your man card. Let’s call it water under the bridge, okay?”
“You forgive me then?”
“I do,” she says firmly.
“Why?”
She’s quiet a moment, then she tells me words that fill me with peace. “Matt… when you came to Nashville, to support me… when you were by my side as my mother died… I just knew that there was something special about you. I knew that I wanted more from you. Did the things you said to me hurt? Yes. Did I think you were being cruel, petulant, and ridiculous? Yes. But I also knew the real Matt, even if you wouldn’t acknowledge his existence. And to answer your question, I forgive you because you said you were sorry, and I can hear the sincerity in your voice. There is no reason I shouldn’t forgive you so we can have a chance to make something.”
Oh, man… what did I ever do to deserve this woman? This woman who looks like an angel, fucks like the devil, and has instantly forgiven my transgressions.
“Thank you,” is all I can think to say, because if there’s one thing I know about Mac… she’s about as ballsy as they come. She didn’t need to give me a second chance. She’s independent enough that she’d never give me a backward glance, she’s beautiful enough to have any man she wanted, and she’s brilliant enough to shoot for the stars. I’m going to have to accept her word as true… that she is giving me another chance because she sees something inside of me that makes me worthy of a woman like her.
I make a vow to myself that I need to treat Mac with all the respect and integrity I have within me, because she’s a far bigger person than I ever could be. I can’t hold anything back if I want to be with her.
“Tell me more about Gabe,” Mac says, and I can almost envision her lying on the couch, twirling a finger around a lock of her hair while we talk.
Gabe is an easy enough subject, because I could talk every minute of every day for a year and still not tire of talking about him. I’m not sure if, as humans,
we should make our entire existence focus on the benefit of one thing, but I think as a parent, that’s something that is impossible to ignore. My entire existence is about Gabe, and while I have room in my life for other things… such as work, maybe now a relationship with Mac… nothing will ever come before his health and happiness.
So I tell her about my son. It’s not an overly long conversation because talking about Gabe eventually leads to talk about hockey, because that’s his favorite sport right now. That leads us to talk of other sports, particularly those that we each like or dislike. This leads us to talk about other things we like or dislike.
For instance, I learn that Mac doesn’t like chicken that much unless it’s fried. She adores all vegetables, will pretty much try anything once, but abhors licorice so much, that she once almost passed out from the noxious smell of it in a candy store.
I grudgingly admit to her a fondness for foreign films, and that I’m so adept at watching a movie with subtitles, that I tend to watch all movies with closed captioning so I make sure I don’t miss any part of a conversation.
She tells me that’s annoying as hell and that if we watch a movie together, she’s not going to agree to closed captioning.
Our conversation goes on and on and on. We discover more information about each other in the two hours we talk, than we have come to know in the past several weeks we’ve known each other. Obviously, much of that time was spent fucking each other’s brains out, and conversation was admittedly not a high priority.
But it’s nice… I have to admit. That part of dating, where you are getting to know the other person, and you revel in the things you have in common, and the things that you don’t just make that person more interesting.
By the time we do hang up, with me telling her I can’t wait to see her tomorrow at work, I have a feeling of such immeasurable happiness coursing through me, I seriously cannot remember the last time I felt like that. I end up going to sleep that night early, just because I’m excited for Monday to get here so I can see Mac again.
Chapter 24
Mac opens her apartment door to me with a flirtatious smile.
“Hi,” she says brightly, and I swear, my soul sighs.
I just saw her not three hours ago at work, yet, it seems like fifty hours. When we had talked on the phone yesterday, and I had officially asked her out on a date, we had set it for this coming Friday.
When I woke up Monday morning, I knew I couldn’t wait that long. So I scrambled to get ready as quickly as possible so I could beat her into work. The corner grocer opens at the crack of dawn, and I swung in there to grab a flower.
Just a single flower.
Turns out, they don’t just sell single flowers, so I bought a bouquet of daisies, and when I got to work, I pulled just one of them out, trashing the rest. I wrote out a little card, asking her to go out that night, and snuck it on her desk along with the flower.
I waited in the break room, which is at the end of the hall from Mac’s office, and kept sticking my head out every ten to twenty seconds while I sipped on a cup of coffee, waiting for her to come in. She’s pretty much like clockwork and at seven AM, she walked into her office, never once catching me peeping at her.
When I walked down there to get her answer, I stepped into her office to find her doing some sort of weird dance that was strangely kind of hot. Her lickable ass was shaking back and forth and her arms were waving around in the air, with my card clutched in one hand and my daisy in the other.
“That’s some pretty funky dancing,” I commented as I leaned against her doorjamb.
Mac gave a panicked sort of yip, and she spun around on me with her hand clutched to her chest. Her face turned red, but do you think she would admit that she was embarrassed I caught her?
Nope.
She just stuck her chin out—making me want to bite it—and said, “I was just excited. It appears I might have a hot date tonight.”
Yes!
Excitement coursed through me and I had to resist the urge to do my own funky brand of celebratory dance. Instead, I leaned back from her doorway and looked left and right, making sure no one was around. I stepped all the way into her office and shut the door quietly behind me. I turned the lock and absolutely loved the way Mac sucked in her breath when she heard the faint click as I shut the outside world away from us.
Walking up to Mac, I shot her a grin, letting her know I was digging her brand of morning humor and loved that she was excited that we were going out tonight rather than Friday. Reaching out, I skimmed my fingers along the side her neck, all the way around to the back of her head. She was wearing her glorious hair down loose so I sifted my fingers through it, and when I got about halfway down the length, I fisted it tight. Her eyes went wide when I started twisting it around my wrist until my hand was drawn back upward to the base of her skull.
Mac’s breath immediately got erratic… her eyes shadowy. I pulled her head back, skimming my eyes down the creamy skin of her throat. Bending over her, I bypassed her lips, choosing instead to kiss her lightly near the corner of that proud chin she had stuck out to me not long ago. I continued sliding my lips along her jawline, straight to her ear, and reveled in the way that she started trembling. Just that tiny reaction had my cock swelling.
“I take that is a yes to my invitation to go out tonight?”
She nodded her head slightly because there wasn’t much room for her to move with the hold I had on her hair. I pulled away just a bit so I could look at her and saw that she was as immersed in a haze of lust as I was at that moment.
“Good,” I said, my voice rough and raw, because it was taking everything in my power not to bend her over her desk and fuck her.
Taking a deep breath, I released my hold on her hair and took a step back so I could try to regain my senses. The look on Mac’s face had me wanting her so badly that I could literally taste her on my tongue. I knew, with just the slightest provocation by me, she’d be naked and splayed out on her desk in no time at all.
Although I really, really wanted nothing more than to sink into her, I refused to give into the urge. I wanted to wait… because I was betting it would only be better if I did.
“I’ll pick you up at eight. The restaurant I’m taking you to is dressy,” I told her and then turned to open the door. I paused and looked back over my shoulder at her. “Oh, and Mac?”
“Huh?”
“Do me a favor… wear those white, lace boy shorts tonight under your dress. You know… the ones that drive me crazy?”
She just nodded at me, her mouth hanging slightly open, and I grinned at her. She was adorable when she was dumbfounded. It’s not a look that Mac wears often I bet.
Now, as she stands in her apartment doorway, wearing a stunning, deep purple dress that has a plunging neckline but hits demurely at her knee, I have to wonder if those white, lace boy shorts are under there.
Stepping over her threshold, I hand over the carton of ice cream in my hand to her.
She looks at it with surprise. “Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Peppermint Crunch?”
“You said it was your favorite the other night,” I tell her with a grin. “And flowers can be so cliché sometimes, don’t you think?”
She takes the ice cream from me and turns toward the kitchen. I follow her in, eyes pinned on her ass as she walks before me. When she reaches the freezer, I walk up right behind her, dropping my hands down and grabbing the material of her dress at mid-thigh. She goes absolutely still, hand perched on the freezer door.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
“Checking to see if you’re wearing what I asked you to?” I tell her, my voice husky.
“I did,” she says, her voice trembling.
“I think I’ll just check.” I pull the material up her smooth legs, fucking loving the way Mac’s breath comes out all shaky and full of need. When I reach her hipbone and my fingers touch lace, I lean to the side and take a peek.
Yup… exactly like
requested.
Placing a kiss on the side of her neck, I drop the material of her dress and say, “Good girl.”
She shudders and sighs and I have to force myself to step away, or else there’s a very real danger I could throw her to the tiled floor and bang a quick orgasm out for both of us.
Taking her hand in mine, I give her a wink and say, “Let’s go.”
***
Dinner turns out to be a surreal experience for me. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been on a date… at least, as a single person. In fact, it had to have been years ago, when I took Marissa out on a date. I search my memory to try and remember what we did, and I come up blank.
No matter, I really didn’t want to dwell on her, but I did sort of want to try to compare the feeling.
With Mac, everything just seems effortless. When we get seated in the back of the restaurant in a tiny little alcove that provides us privacy, we start into a conversation about our respective childhoods. Mac talks fondly of both of her parents, her eyes getting just a tiny bit moist. But she clearly loves reminiscing about the happy times, and it was nice to get a glimpse of her life.
She had me spilling the beans about my family as well, and while I know that when it comes to intimate relationships, I’m very closed off… or at least I had been… Most people would be surprised to learn I am very close to my parents, so it’s quite easy to talk about them.
“So tell me about your parents,” Mac commanded after she took a sip of wine, licking a drop off her lower lip, which made me think of some very filthy things I’d like to do to her mouth.
“They’re great… fantastic. I’m really close to them. I try to get back to Pennsylvania to see them as often as I can, especially when I have Gabe so he can get to know his grandparents.”
“What do they do?” she asks, leaning forward and placing her elbows on the table.
“My mom is an artist, and my dad is a college mathematics professor.”
“An artist and a math professor?” Mac muses with an appreciative smile. “Talk about opposites.”
“Right? But man, are they in love. Like that gag-me, sweet type where they constantly hold hands and say mushy stuff to each other all the time,” I tell her as I crinkle up my nose in mock distaste.
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