Burn Me Once

by Clare Connelly

  I keep my head down as I glide into the Gramercy, wincing as a flash goes off in my face. I’ll get better at that. I’ll learn to live with the paparazzi and the other women who want Ethan I-love-you Ash.

  Because he does love me.

  Believing that takes a leap of faith, but I’ve already leapt. For him. And for myself.

  For us.

  Because it’s what my own heart demands of me.

  I jam my finger against the button for the lift impatiently, turning my back on the curious stares of a couple of women across the lobby. But heat spreads through my cheeks. They obviously know who I am, and can probably guess where I’m on my way to.

  So what?

  The lift whooshes open and I step inside, waving Ethan’s key over the panel and pressing the number for his floor. It climbs up quickly and smoothly—and, oh, my heart.

  How it pounds and races and flips and flops.

  I stare straight ahead, trying to look outwardly calm when I am an absolute mess.

  What if he’s angry?

  What if I hurt him too much?

  Well, then, I’ll fix it. I’ll make him see that I was just scared.

  And he’ll understand. Because he loves me.

  I hold that thought to my chest like a talisman as I reach his door. I think about knocking. I lift my hand but something stops me. I smile slowly, imagining him asleep in bed, naked. I think of the best way to wake him up. The most meaningful apology.

  I slip the key card from my back pocket and slide it in the door, then push the door inwards, juggling the coffee cups in one hand with the bag of burritos dangling from the same fingertips. I’m purposely slow because I don’t want to wake him prematurely.

  But I needn’t have worried.

  He’s awake.

  Sitting at the table we first made love on the night we met.

  And he’s not alone.

  I recognise her instantly. Dark hair like glossy black opal, shimmering over impossibly slender shoulders. A face without even a hint of make-up still looking Vogue-cover worthy. Skimpy singlet top barely concealing her tiny breasts. And she’s clearly not wearing a bra—and pulling it off without a hint of cleavage sweat.

  It isn’t just Sienna Di Giorgio. It’s all my fears—everything I’ve worried about—staring right back at me.

  I don’t know who’s more shocked.

  Me. Ethan. Or Sienna.

  Memories of Jeremy and Fiona barrel towards me—it is just the same, but so much worse. I am the outsider again. The interloper. The home-wrecker. I look at them together and they make so much sense. They are perfect together. Two gloriously perfect celebrities.

  ‘Ally—’ He stands so abruptly he knocks over a glass of water. It seems to fall in slow motion, cascading through the air and landing with a thump, spreading liquid over the tabletop.

  He’s fully dressed. He looks good. And he looks bad. Like he hasn’t done a heap of sleeping.

  Jealousy unfurls inside me. No, it doesn’t unfurl. That sounds too gentle and progressive. It explodes like a nuclear detonation, singeing every single nerve ending in my body.

  ‘Wait a second.’

  He surprises us all with the firmness of his command. I stare at him, and then at her, and finally, after long seconds which feel like minutes, I shake my head as if to wake myself up.

  ‘I...’

  I stare at him. He’s moving around the table, and if I don’t act fast he’s going to come up to me. He’s going to touch me.

  I swallow and shake my head again, my eyes locked on his pleadingly. It is a silent plea, but he hears it loud and clear. He stops moving and I place the key card I’m still holding in my fingertips onto the side table.

  ‘I just wanted to bring this back,’ I say.

  I can’t look at him any more. I turn around and walk quickly out through the door, bumping my elbow on the way out so that coffee spills down my front. I swear between my teeth but don’t stop. I pick up speed as I get closer to the lift, dumping the coffee and the bag of food in an aluminium rubbish bin. I press the lift button.

  But it doesn’t open straight away, and Ethan is behind me. I feel him before I see his wobbly reflection in the scrubbed metal surface of the lift doors.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ I say urgently.

  ‘Ally, that looked bad. The timing was fucking awful. But it’s not what you think.’

  I shut my eyes and drop my head forward, pressing my heated forehead against the lift.

  ‘What do I think?’ I whisper.

  The lift doors whoosh open and I step in gratefully. He follows.

  ‘Get out,’ I say mutinously, staring straight ahead.

  ‘No.’ He presses the button for the ground floor.

  ‘Ethan...’ It’s a whispered plea. ‘Leave me the hell alone.’

  ‘Why did you come back?’

  Tears sting my eyes. The hopes I’d cherished only minutes earlier are lined up in my head, pointing at me and laughing, mocking me. The lift begins to suck us downwards. It can’t move fast enough for me. Soon I’ll be out. Soon I’ll be able to breathe.

  He moves quickly, reaching across and slamming his hand onto the emergency stop button, his body caging mine. His hands are on either side of me, trapping me in the frame of his beautiful body.

  My eyes jerk to his. ‘Restart the elevator.’

  ‘Not until you hear me out,’ he says with raw emotion in his words. ‘Sienna arrived thirty minutes before you did. She came to talk. That’s all.’

  I shake my head, emotions, feelings, thoughts, doubts and fears bubbling through me. I don’t know what to say, and I certainly don’t know how to say it. But I have to say something. He’s staring at me and the silence pounds between us expectantly, angrily, needily.

  ‘Does she want to get back with you?’ It’s a whisper.

  He doesn’t answer immediately and my heart cracks, my blood freezes. It’s Jeremy all over again. The lying. The uncertainty.

  ‘That’s not what I want,’ he says.

  I shake my eyes. It’s all the confirmation I need.

  Is this my fault? Do I have some gene that leads me to seek out unavailable bastards?

  ‘But that’s why she’s here?’

  I lift a hand to his chest and then instantly regret it when I feel his heart beating beneath my palm as though it’s talking to me. It’s racing.

  ‘Don’t lie to me.’

  His eyes lock to mine. ‘Yes.’

  I suck in a breath. It gets nowhere near my lungs.

  ‘Do you know how often I’ve thought of Sienna since meeting you?’

  I glare at him.

  ‘Barely at all. Even when I’ve spoken to her I’ve been thinking of you.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to her?’ I flush hot and cold all over. It’s history repeating itself and I cannot bear it.

  He has the decency to look somewhat apologetic. ‘She’s called me a couple of times.’

  ‘Of course she has!’ I say, with an angry shake of my head. ‘I told you from the beginning—I’m not going to get in the middle of this. I’m not! I won’t.’

  ‘I told her it’s over. It is over between her and me.’

  He presses a kiss against my hair and I shake my head in instant visceral rejection of the intimacy.

  ‘You have to believe me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  I want to. I want to so badly.

  ‘I’m your Sienna Band-Aid, remember?’

  For a second he looks vague, as if he doesn’t even remember that he said that. Then, ‘Jesus. That was a stupid throwaway comment.’

  ‘Like when you told me you loved me?’ I retort, my heart boxing itself away with every moment that passes.

  A disembodied voice comes into the lift. ‘This carriage will
be restarted in fifteen seconds. Safety checks confirm operation.’

  ‘Christ.’

  He moves his hands to my cheeks, holding me still as he does so often, trying to forge a line of trust and reliance between us.

  ‘This changes nothing.’

  My heart is wrapping itself up, determined not to crack any further.

  ‘Don’t you get what a big deal this was for me?’ I stare at him, honesty in my face. ‘I am terrified of what I feel for you and yet I came here anyway. I decided to trust you, and that was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made.’

  ‘I’m not Jeremy,’ he says softly. ‘Most guys aren’t. In six years I never once thought about cheating on Sienna—and, believe me, I had plenty of opportunities. That’s not who I am.’

  I squeeze my eyes shut at the sense of his words, and at the temptation to believe him. Because deep down I do, and pushing him away makes not a skerrick of sense.

  ‘The problem is, Jeremy didn’t just cheat on his wife and on me. He made me question everything. He made me question what I think and feel so that I can’t say if I’m misreading you or myself right now.’

  ‘I know. I get it. I begged you to trust me and you did—and then you found my ex in my hotel room. Any woman would find that hard, let alone after what you’ve been through.’

  His understanding should mollify me, but it doesn’t. ‘I don’t remember how to trust. I thought I could... I came here... I don’t know what I was expecting when I came here. It was wrong.’

  ‘But you did want us to give this a shot?’

  I shake my head and then nod, and then the elevator moves and I suck in another breath, trying to equalise.

  ‘Then let’s try. Please.’

  ‘No.’ A short, emphatic word. ‘No.’ Louder. I lift my hands and push at his chest. ‘You can burn me once, Ethan. But not again. Not again.’

  The lift doors open. There’s a team of technicians there. I step out and, sensing that he might follow me, spin around.

  ‘Don’t.’

  I lift a hand, staring at him, and I walk away backwards for a few steps, pinning him with my eyes, making sure he doesn’t step off the lift.

  He doesn’t. But he watches me the whole way across the foyer.

  I feel his eyes on me and I know it’s for the last time.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DAY FOLLOWS NIGHT, follows day, follows night, and I bear witness to it all. I’m aware of the rotation of the earth around the sun but I am weary.

  I see Eliza and Cassie and I hate it that they are worried about me. Again. I see the concern etched on their faces and try to smile, but I have forgotten how. I am learning the hardest lesson of all.

  Good intentions be damned.

  You cannot immunise yourself against some things, and all-consuming love appears to be one of them. How stupid I was to believe I could control it. How awful the pain at realising my mistake.

  Did he sleep with her?

  I dismiss the idea instantly. Of course he didn’t.

  Ethan isn’t Jeremy. He wouldn’t do that.

  Would he?

  That’s the problem. Just like I said to him over a week ago, when we argued. I’ve forgotten how to trust, and that includes my instincts. I don’t know if I believe him to be good because I want to or because I should. I cannot see clearly any longer.

  Jeremy took that away from me.

  I’m not ignoring Ethan because I believe him to be a cheat. I’m ignoring him because I believe he is a pathway to unimaginable pain. I know that I’m not strong enough to weather the demise of what we are. It is almost killing me now, and we have only been sleeping together for two weeks. What if I let myself admit how much I love him? What if I let him into my life? And after six months...two years...five years...two kids? What if it ends then?

  I see the future and I see those paths before me, just like on that first night, and every single path leads to hurt and lost hope.

  Unless I stay right where I am, pretending that I’m glad we’ve ended it.

  I stare at the images on my screen and rouse myself. Ethan’s brownstone. The proposal is complete. I have arranged two options for him, and yet I know which he will choose. I have selected pieces that inherently reflect the essence of who he is. On that score I have no doubts.

  I have chickened out of presenting them to him, though. Natasha can do that. I can’t see him again. I can’t see him in the house that I have come to love. I can’t see him there and imagine him living in those rooms, only a few blocks away from me. I can’t.

  ‘Your four o’clock is here.’

  Lesley’s voice comes through the intercom, about a thousand degrees too cheery for my current mood.

  ‘Great,’ I say through gritted teeth, clicking into my calendar to see just what appointment I’ve got. I can’t see an entry but I stand, a perplexed look on my face.

  The door swings open and there he is.

  Ethan tormenting-my-dreams Ash—all sexy, dishevelled, good-enough-to-eat handsome, watching me as though I’m a bomb that might detonate.

  I have no time to gather my wits. He moves into the room and shuts the door behind himself and then he comes right up to me, so close that I can feel his warmth and smell his adrenaline and I want to kiss him. I want to kiss him all over.

  The knowledge of that makes me push back. I’m not that woman. I have a brain and I have a decision-making process and, damn it, I’m going to use both.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  The question comes out in a rush, but I am pleased with how defiant I sound. How pissed off, when actually I’m part-way to melting.

  ‘Well, you haven’t been returning my calls or responding to my texts, so what choice did I have?’

  I glare at him, all the angrier at the effect his accent has on me. At the way my body is sensitised, my stomach churns and my mind almost goes blank.

  ‘You had the choice to take the hint,’ I snap, moving away from him, seeking sanity in the distance. ‘You had the choice to let me go.’

  ‘No.’

  His eyes glint as they meet mine and I feel like I’ve slammed into a brick wall. His determination is mighty.

  ‘No?’ I repeat sarcastically, even as my heart is shredding me from the inside out.

  ‘No.’

  He crosses his arms over his broad, muscular chest. He’s wearing a leather jacket over a grey T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. They’re low on his hips and I know that if I lifted his shirt an inch I’d see his hipbone. I remember running my tongue over the blade of his waist, but it’s wrong to remember something so personal.

  I take another step back, swallowing. ‘We had a deal.’

  His lips flick with amusement.

  ‘Don’t you dare laugh at me.’

  ‘Believe me, I’m not laughing.’ He drags a hand through his hair, his eyes probing me thoughtfully.

  ‘So?’ My breath hitches in my throat. I almost choke on it. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m here to broker a new deal.’

  Danger, danger.

  My eyes narrow; my heart races. ‘Because our last one was such a success?’

  ‘Yeah, actually, I think it was.’

  I make a snort of derision. Yes. I snort—in front of Ethan sex-god Ash. For Christ’s sake. I think I’ve reached pretty much the lowest ebb of my life.

  ‘It was a spectacular failure?’

  ‘Why? Because we exceeded expectations?’ He arches a brow. ‘I wanted to fuck you and instead I fell in love. You don’t think that’s commendable?’

  ‘Commendable?’ I repeat, my jaw dropping. ‘This isn’t a grade school assignment, for God’s sake, Ethan!’

  ‘Yeah, well, obviously... I think the school board would have a thing or two to say about it.’

/>   Again he smiles, and I feel like he’s laughing at me.

  I square my shoulders, staring at him with what I hope comes over as distaste. ‘I want you to get out. This is bordering on stalking, you know.’

  ‘Not until you’ve heard what I came here to say.’

  He’s not joking now. His expression is hardened by intent and his eyes dare me to challenge him.

  I don’t.

  But mentally I brace myself for the inevitable. I will walk away from him. I will draw new boundaries. I will run from this as fast as I can.

  Panic fills me.

  ‘Fine. Say what you want and then leave me alone.’

  * * *

  She’s still pissed off. Any hope I had that she might have mellowed over the last week has evaporated. Everything I planned to say, the arguments I wanted to level, the jokes I wanted to make about planting a peach orchard at my home disappear. I stare at her and I am lost. I am lost in the sea of what we were, and what we could be, and everything I am hinges on how I do this.

  ‘You’re scared of how much you love me. I understand that.’

  She makes a scoffing sound of disbelief. ‘You’re so arrogant! I walked away from you, remember? And you’re standing there telling me I’m in love with you?’

  ‘Damn straight.’

  She glares at me.

  ‘Tell me you’re not,’ I challenge. ‘Say that you don’t love me and I’ll go. Right now. If that’s what you want, say it and I’ll walk out that door.’

  Her eyes sparkle and then drop lower, mutiny in every line of her body. I hold my breath without realising it, but then I relax. Because she does love me. And she’s not a liar.

  ‘It was two weeks,’ she says angrily, as though the shortness of time we’ve known each other makes a damned bit of difference.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you hardly know me!’

  My temper rises and I want to shake her. No—scratch that. I want to kiss her and I want to fuck her. I want to rip that dress up around her waist and push her against her desk and do the only thing I can do to make her understand how perfect we are.

  ‘You think I don’t know you?’

  Again she doesn’t meet my eyes.