Seeing what ‘love’ did to my mom, my stepmothers, to Jagger, to anyone and everyone, leaves me in little doubt that I did the right thing. I don’t want any part of that world, and never have done.
But I do want Asha. I want her with every single part of me.
Enough to put my own doubts aside?
The sky is grey and bleak, rain threatening. I stare out at it, my eyes scanning the skyline, and then I imagine Asha, as I often do. What’s she doing? Where’s she at? Manhattan is massive so I’m not surprised we haven’t run into each other, but it doesn’t stop me from looking for her everywhere I go.
Fuck.
It’s been ten weeks. Seventy days. When the hell am I going to stop feeling like a fire’s been lit in my chest? I’m hollowed out, barely recognisable as the man I used to be.
I feel...
I feel...
I don’t know.
I’ve never felt anything like this before. My life is tied to hers, I know that. I’m so sick of waking up and knowing I won’t see her. That I won’t get a text from her. That I won’t hear her voice or be able to make her laugh.
I’m so sick of this.
That night we met for a drink, the night we broke up, I told her I just wanted her, and it’s true. I do. I want Asha. But enough? Enough to put aside years of telling myself love is the devil itself? Enough to admit to myself that what we were—what we are—goes way beyond sex?
Fuck.
I pull my hair up into a bun, jerking an elastic around it hard, frustration evident in every line of my body.
I can’t see that future. When I think about marriage and everything Asha wants, a part of me closes up like a vice. But when I think about Asha, when I imagine I’m with her again and everything’s fine, I can breathe, I can finally breathe.
But I can’t go to her and ask her to take me back unless I’m willing to offer her every damned thing she wants, and I don’t know that I am. I just know I can’t keep going like this. I just know I need to see her, to hell with what makes sense, to hell with the fact it’s selfish and ill-advised.
I need to see Asha like I need air and water, and I can’t ignore that for a moment longer.
* * *
It doesn’t occur to me for even one second that she won’t be feeling as crappy as I do. I imagine we’re two sides of a coin, both tortured by our separation, both made miserable by not being together. I imagine she’s in hell, just like me.
So when I see her walking towards her apartment with a huge smile on her face and some beefcake guy at her side, it’s like having the ground ripped out from under me. I’m glad I’m partially obscured by a lamppost. It gives me longer to watch unobserved. It gives me a chance to leave without letting her know I came here.
But I don’t leave. It’s like watching a head-on collision. I’m rendered silent by my shock.
They stop walking and I hold my breath, waiting to see what happens next. Is it a date? Maybe he’s just a friend.
She puts a hand on his forearm, leans forward and says something quiet. His eyes widen and he laughs, wrapping an arm around her, then pulls her towards the front door of her apartment building.
My heart is pounding inside me. I stare at it, unable to make any sense of what I’m seeing.
It’s a frigidly cold day but I stand there, staring at the apartment, as though with the sheer force of my will I can bring them back down, as if I can make him disappear out of her life.
My pulse is slamming through me and whatever indecision I’ve been toying with, seeing Asha so completely moved on with her life makes me realise how much I haven’t. And why.
* * *
‘I told you, it’s the best cheesecake ever, right?’
Kevin takes another bite, closing his eyes exaggeratedly, and nods. ‘Your heartbreak is terrible for my waistline, though.’
I don’t bother to deny that’s what I’m feeling. I’ve looked on the internet. I know it to be true.
heartbreak/ˈhɑ:tbreIk/
noun: heartbreak
plural noun: heartbreaks
example: what Asha feels without Theo
I don’t know what I expected. Probably that I’d start to feel more like myself again, but I don’t. I feel like I’m floating on a turbulent ocean with only my job to anchor me. And Kevin, who’s been some kind of godsend.
The thing is, for all the pain I feel, I never doubt I did the right thing to walk away from him. It would have been so much easier to stay. So much easier to ignore my needs and exist only in that heaven of his creation. But I have known this pain too well, this ache to be loved by someone incapable of offering it, and I cannot submit to it again. With my father, I have little choice. He’s my dad, I’m in his life by biological necessity. I have a choice with Theo and I refuse to spend any more time knowing myself to be unwanted.
I just want you.
Not enough. Never enough.
We take the cheesecake and a bottle of Prosecco into my lounge and put on The Fashion Channel, and every time a Fleurs Sauvages product is name-checked Kevin makes us do a shot of Prosecco, so I’m pleasantly light-headed when he leaves an hour later.
Not light-headed enough, though. The blissed-out feeling only lasts as long as it takes for me to be alone, and then it’s back, along with the ghosts in this apartment; Theo is everywhere I look, everywhere I stand.
I lie down on the sofa and stare at the ceiling. I don’t cry. I did a lot of that in the first couple of weeks but now I’m simply numb.
The door buzzes a minute later.
‘Hang on.’ I make my voice extra cheery in the intercom for Kevin’s sake, before buzzing him up, looking around to see what he’s forgotten. There’s nothing I can make out, so I wait with the door open an inch.
My smile drops when the elevator pings and Theo steps out, a look on his face I can’t possibly interpret. I stare at him, my mind going blank, my mouth going dry, my belly flopping all the way to my toes. My fingers begin to shake and my legs don’t feel strong enough to support me.
He stares at me when he reaches the door and his eyes are so tortured, so haunted, that I immediately forget my heartbreak and anger, my confusion, and say, ‘Is something wrong? Is it Grace? The baby?’
He shakes his head, his eyes sweeping over me. When he drags his fingers through his hair I see they’re shaking too.
‘I waited for him to leave.’
It takes me a second to realise he’s talking about Kevin.
‘I don’t know why I’m even asking this, but I just need to hear you say it. I need to know. Are you seeing that guy?’ He swallows, a look of distaste on his face, his voice gruff. ‘Are you fucking him?’
My intake of breath is harsh. It’s none of his business, but it is, because I’m Asha and he’s Theo and our lives will always be the other one’s business. Denying that is stupid and unfair.
‘You have no right to be here,’ I say instead, shaking my head, holding the door firmly in my hand.
‘I just need you to tell me and then I’ll go,’ he demands, and then, softer, ‘Please.’
I swallow, the plea bringing tears back to my eyes. ‘What are you doing here, Theo?’
His eyes bore into mine, his expression like stone. ‘I came to see...if you’re happy. And I saw that you are. I saw it with my own eyes.’ He rubs his hand over his face as though he can erase whatever he thinks he’s seen. I mentally replay my afternoon, and all I can think is that he watched as Kevin and I entered my apartment building. I try to see it from the outside, from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know that Kevin is a long-time friend and employee, and yes, I can definitely understand what conclusion Theo’s leaped to. ‘I just need you to say the words. Tell me you’ve moved on.’
I nod slowly, even when none of this makes sense. ‘And will that make you happy?’
His laugh
is completely lacking in humour. ‘Yeah. It’ll make me ecstatic.’
I bristle at his sarcasm.
‘I’m sorry.’ He closes his eyes, and his voice is raw. When he opens his eyes I see so much in his expression that my heart begins to twist painfully in my chest.
I open the door a bit wider. ‘Did you want...to come in?’
He shakes his head. ‘I can’t.’ A muscle jerks in his jaw and I know him so well that I understand what he really means. He can’t come into my apartment when I’ve just been—in his mind at least—having sex with Kevin. His misery is completely unreasonable, given that I told him I was in love with him and he let me go, but it’s so patently clear that he’s in some kind of agony right now.
‘Why did you come here?’ My voice emerges as a whisper.
‘It’s complicated,’ he says. And then shakes his head, rejecting that. ‘No, it’s simple. I can’t... I don’t want to live without you, Ash.’
Disbelief sweeps through me.
‘I’ve been so dead set against marriage, relationships, the idea of the whole fairy tale happily ever after crap, but when I think of you, all I want is to hold you tight and never let you go.’ He glares at me with a swirling torrent of emotions.
‘I fucked up. I really, really fucked up. I treated you like you didn’t matter, when you’re all that matters to me. I acted like we were just sex when sex is... I mean, I love sleeping with you, but I love being with you so much more. I love talking to you and laughing with you, eating with you, walking with you. I love listening to you talk about your company and your passions, I love holding your hand and running my fingers through your hair. I am so in love with you, and I have been fighting that because I thought loving you would mean losing you, and losing you badly, like I’ve seen happen time and time again in other people’s lives and marriages. But I’ve already lost you. I’ve already lost you in a way that’s killing me inside, so what the hell am I so afraid of? Nothing can be worse than this.’
He swears under his breath. ‘Nothing except coming here to tell you this, ten weeks too late.’ He takes a step away from me, pressing his back against the wall opposite. ‘Nothing except finally realising how I feel about you and seeing you with someone else.’
He closes his eyes, breathing in deeply, and I stand right where I am, staring at him, unable to look away, transfixed by the appearance of him at my apartment and the words he’s saying, and the fact that I hear his sincerity and I understand, completely, how he feels. I expel a soft breath and something like warmth flows through me. A warmth I haven’t felt since before we left for Australia.
A warmth that promises spring and fresh growth, fleurs sauvages and sunshine. But pain has made me cautious.
‘What did you expect me to say when you showed up here?’
He lifts his eyes to mine and he is so bereft, so lost, it costs me to stay where I am, to stay here when he’s there and my heart is already straining towards him.
‘I don’t know. I think I hoped...but how could I hope? After everything I put you through.’
Still, I stay where I am. ‘So why come here?’
‘I needed to see you.’ He shakes his head. ‘I needed to tell you. Because even if you’ve moved on, you deserve to know that I get it. That I was wrong, and that I’m sorry. I need you to know that I love you, irrespective of how you feel now.’
His words tumble through me and I close my eyes, breathing them in. In my mind I see a dandelion, the seeds flying away on the breeze. I am free.
‘I look at our relationship and see the myriad ways I let you down. And still you loved me. Still you stuck by me and tried to explain. God, Asha, I’m sorry.’
I nod, because he’s right. He hurt me. But none of us exists in a void. His life, his childhood, the wounds that were inflicted on him, are all part of who Theo is today.
‘You saw what heartbreak does to people.’ I step into the corridor, towards him. ‘You saw your mom being hurt again and again by your dad, and as you grew older you heard how your dad had done that to Jagger’s mom and Holden’s mom. You saw so much hurt and you decided relationships can cause only pain.’ I press a hand to his chest and feel his good, solid, beating heart. ‘And then you met me, and you fell in love, and even though you tried to fight it, you realised that there is good in relationships too.’ I press up onto the tips of my toes and brush my lips over his. ‘With the right person, there is so much more good than bad. And the bad is worth putting up with to get all the good.’
He’s frozen still, his breath trapped inside of him.
Standing so close to Theo, I feel like a part of me that was missing is being returned, stitched back into the foundation of my soul. But he’s still hurting. He doesn’t see the full picture.
‘That’s my assistant, Kevin.’ I wrap my arms behind Theo’s back, smiling as his eyes widen and he exhales for the first time in a long time. ‘He’s taken on cheering me up as his mission in life.’
‘So you’re not...he’s not...’
‘I love you,’ I say simply, loudly, clearly. ‘And always will. There’s no one else.’
He drops his head then, pressing our brows together, and I hear his ragged breath, like he’s run a marathon. My heart bursts.
‘I love you.’ Because he needs to understand that. ‘I can’t promise you that we’re not going to fight from time to time, that’s life, and people don’t always agree. But you’re not your dad, and I’m not your mom. We’re us, and what we have, what we share—’ I press my hand to his chest again ‘—this is the real deal.’
‘I know,’ he groans, lifting his hands and cupping my face. ‘God, I know, I just can’t believe it took me so long to wake up and see this clearly.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ I shake my head urgently. ‘You did wake up, and today is just the beginning for us.’
‘The beginning of what?’ he murmurs, but he’s lifting me up, taking me into the apartment and kicking the door shut.
‘The rest of our lives.’ I kiss the words into his mouth and he laughs, a sound of sheer delight.
He pulls his head away for a second, his expression serious, his eyes holding mine intently. ‘For as long as we both shall live. Okay?’
My heart turns over in my chest. ‘Yep.’
* * *
‘You know what I was thinking?’
I turn to face him, the moonlight casting a streak of silver over his handsome face.
He draws circles on my flesh, his eyes following the action. ‘When we get married, if you take my name, you’ll be Asha Sauvages-Hart. And I was thinking how much that suits you... Asha Wild Hart.’
Speaking of hearts, mine is about to explode.
‘I think you’ve tamed my wildness, though,’ I point out with a broad smile, shifting a little and putting my head on his chest, so I can listen to the rushing of his pulse. It thunders through his body and it thunders just for me—and always will, of that I have no doubt. He’s left no room for doubt: there is only Theo and me and the love we hold for each other, wild, full of heart and never-ending.
* * *
If you enjoyed Burn My Hart, look out for the rest of the installments in Clare Connelly’s The Notorious Harts quartet,
Cross My Hart - Out now!
Harden My Hart
Unbreak My Hart
coming soon from Harlequin DARE!
Dare to read more sexy stories! Check out our other Harlequin DARE titles, available now:
Sexy Beast by Jackie Ashenden
Intoxicated by Taryn Belle
Sin City Seduction by Margot Radcliffe
Also by Clare Connelly
The Billionaires Club continuity
The Deal
Keep reading for an excerpt from Intoxicated by Taryn Belle.
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CHAPTER ONE
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