Need you Now (Top Shelf Romance Book 2)

by Laurelin Paige

  Donovan Kincaid knew how to run away.

  Well, fuck him.

  "Fuck you." I crossed my hands over my chest, hiding myself, as if I could un-bare what I'd bared to him. As if I could cover myself up when he’d already seen all of me. "You don't deserve me? You're right. You don't. Maybe you don't know how to love someone, and it’s not your fault that you didn’t learn before. But you’re a grown up, and you’re old enough to start trying. Your parents are hard; I’ll admit that. But I don't see you even trying to love them. And now you're not trying to love me. And I deserve someone who will try."

  I was crying now, tears fully streaming down my face, but despite the display, I felt a burst of strength. "Love doesn't have to be perfect or traditional, Donovan. I can put up with a lot of mistakes, and the way I'm loved doesn't have to look like the way anyone has ever loved me before. It doesn't have to look like the way anyone has ever loved anyone else in the world. And that will be enough as long as someone tries."

  I wiped my cheeks with the butt of my palm. "But running away every time there's a problem isn't trying. And peering in on my life and nudging now and then like you would on the paddles of a pinball machine isn't trying either. Which is a real shame, because I really did try with you. I really did fall in love with you."

  "Sabrina…" He trailed off, and I waited for him to say more but more never came.

  He didn’t even know how to try to console me.

  I swallowed another threatening sob. "I'm going to bed. Stay if you need to, but I'm going to be just fine if you go."

  I didn't look at him again. I swept back to the sofa and picked up my robe, determined to leave as little of myself with him as possible. And then I headed straight to my bedroom, shut the door behind me, and immediately sank to the floor, my back pressed against the wood, and silently sobbed while pretending I hadn't just told the biggest lie of my life.

  Chapter 22

  I knew my apartment was empty when I woke up the next morning. In my mind, he'd left during the night. I was sure of it before I opened my eyes. But my heart held hope that he’d stayed, and so the first thing I did after I found my living room empty was to check the guestroom to see if the bed had been slept in. I stared at the pillows. Had they been rearranged? The comforter certainly looked unruffled.

  He'd really left.

  Not just politely given me my space. And the only way he would've really left, after the horrors of last night, was if he was really gone.

  I would grieve this more when I let myself feel it. Right now, I was numb.

  I shuffled into the bathroom and faced myself in the mirror. I'd slept in, but my reflection’s puffy face and eyes indicated I needed at least another two hours of sleep. I called my secretary and told her I would be in later in the day then asked her to transfer me to Weston's assistant since I was still filling in for him.

  "Mr. Kincaid said not to expect you at all," Roxie said when I informed her of my plans for the day.

  I pricked at his name, like it was a thorn I'd stumbled upon unexpectedly. And then I hated myself when I looked for the rose attached. "Really? What did he say?"

  "That you had a rough night. You sick?"

  I deflated. I didn't know what I was expecting. That he would've left some clue that he was still thinking about me with an administrative assistant at our company? Of course not. He was simply thinking of the business. And himself. Explaining my absence beforehand so that no one would come looking to ask him later if I didn't show up.

  "Yeah. I'm not feeling too hot." It wasn't a lie.

  I took three Advil and laid back down, barely resisting the urge to give the middle finger to the empty space of my bedroom, in case he was watching.

  Honestly, I was afraid he wasn't.

  Mostly I was afraid he never would again.

  "I didn't expect to see you in the office today," Nathan Sinclair said, leaning back in his red modern high-back swivel chair, his hands laced behind his head.

  I sat down on the white faux leather chair opposite him. Nate's workspace was the most artistic of the men, fitting for the creative director of the agency. He did have a desk, but it was a standing desk and he never conducted meetings across it. If he wanted to have a conversation with someone, he would most likely have him or her seated where we were now.

  I rarely came to this corner of the floor, but since I was coming into work nearly three hours late, I figured I should check in with one of my superiors, and I was not voluntarily going to Donovan.

  "I live to exceed expectations. What can I say?” It was my attempt to be cute, but without any “cute” behind it, the attempt failed miserably.

  “You sure you want to be here? You don’t have to stay.”

  “I’m sure.” I pulled my hair over my shoulder and tugged at the end, letting my answer sit to be sure I was sure. Luckily Nate was good with silence.

  I'd napped fitfully. While I'd slept dream-free the night before, my morning rest had been filled with nightmares of a faceless man standing behind me, his hand on my throat. I'd awoken wanting Donovan with an intensity that I couldn’t begin to examine. Not just because he’d always been my go-to balm for these situations, but also because I hadn’t begun to truly imagine that we were over. It hadn’t settled in the deepest parts of me, the parts of me that seemed to need him most.

  "If you're trying to prove something to him, I think he already knows."

  I pulled my gaze from the silver and blue metal floor sculpture that I'd been absentmindedly staring at.

  "What did Donovan tell you?" I was surprised he’d said anything. Donovan never talked to the guys about his personal life, it seemed. And Nate rarely butted in, though I had a feeling he was aware of much more than he let on.

  He dropped his arms and looked out the window instead of at me. "Not a lot, but enough. I hope it doesn't embarrass you. He told me there was an assault attempt. That the man's in custody. That you had a frightening encounter."

  That hadn't been what I'd been expecting either.

  Why I thought Donovan might've talked about us instead of my near rape, I had no idea.

  "It was pretty terrible. But, horrible as this is to say, it's not my first rodeo." I already knew from experience that what had happened with Theo would take a long time to deal with. I didn't know how long it would take to deal with what happened with Donovan.

  I wasn't sure it was possible to fully recover from either.

  It was a terrible thing to say though, to Nate. Most people had a hard time knowing what to say in times like this. I didn't need to make it harder for him.

  "Does that make this time better or worse?" He surprised me by appearing truly interested in my response.

  I didn’t have to think about it. "It just makes this time the next time."

  He nodded without judgment, without opinion. As though he understood that there were things that happened in the world and some of them were fine and some of them were not fine, and living was what happened in between.

  "Last time I did stay home all day," I admitted, remembering how I'd stayed in bed for two whole days after Theo's first assault. "And this time I wanted to try out the distraction of work."

  "Work is good for getting your mind off… a lot of things." His pause was loaded with baggage, and for the first time since I'd entered his office, I thought to look beyond my own burdens and notice someone else’s. Nate had circles under his own eyes and worry lines in his forehead. He had something on his mind too.

  "Why, Nate Sinclair. You sound like a man who has a woman under his skin." It was strange how discovering someone else's romantic woes could suddenly lighten your own.

  He rubbed his hand over his face. "Is that why I can never really get her out of my mind? Because she's under my skin?"

  I totally knew how he felt.

  "For me, he’s in my veins." I didn't need to say his name for us to know who he was. "So it doesn't matter what I'm thinking about, because he’s still coursing through
my blood. Even when he thinks he’s walked away."

  Nate stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed his arms over his chest. He understood me. Better than he should, maybe. "I thought you and Donovan were making it work together."

  "I thought so too."

  "Well, aren't we a sad mopey pair?"

  I narrowed my eyes. With Nate’s David Beckham looks and his broody artist personality, I had a feeling he was a chick magnet. No one complained about men like him being mopey.

  Women in my position, on the other hand, were supposed to be strong and steel. Bitches.

  I was feeling bitchy, but not strong. Not steel. "I imagine I'm pretty impossible to be around right now.”

  "I don't know. You seem like good company to me."

  I laughed, which was nice. It felt good to laugh. "You’re a fellow moper, though. I don't think you are a good judge of company right now."

  "Perhaps not." He drew his legs in and sat forward. "But I'll tell you what—I haven't given up. And neither have you."

  My burst of humor was short-lived. I was somber again. I wasn’t sure what he had to not give up on, but I knew about myself. "Actually, I think maybe I have this time."

  "Nope," he insisted. "Want to know how I know?”

  “Sure.” I was humoring him.

  “You came into work today.”

  I thought about what Nate said for the rest of the day. Maybe he was talking broader than I’d thought. Maybe he didn’t mean I hadn’t given up on Donovan. Maybe he meant I hadn’t given up on life, and that’s why I got out of bed and faced the world.

  But even if that wasn’t what he meant, he’d put the thought in my mind that he was talking about Donovan. And then I wondered if that was really why I’d forced myself to come in. Because I wanted to see him. Or be near him. Or just feel his presence. And every time someone came to my door, every time there was motion outside the glass, I sat up, hopeful.

  But Donovan never came down the hall. He never called or passed by, and eventually I darkened the glass so I could focus on my tasks instead of wondering whether or not my ex-boyfriend meant it when he said it was over.

  By the end of the day, I’d given up on him altogether.

  It was quiet, and employees left me alone until Roxie came in and said goodbye at five. She made me promise not to stay too late, and I vowed that I would finish what I was working on and then close down for the night. She’d been my only interruption all afternoon, so when there was another knock right after on the doorframe, I expected she’d forgotten something.

  But when I looked up, it was him.

  I wasn't prepared.

  I was never prepared, and seeing him at my door—at Weston's door—asking for entrance, something so out of character, was like seeing him for the first time after a decade all over again. It felt like he was trying to prove we couldn't possibly have a personal relationship, one that would allow him to make assumptions or just walk in. Jesus, he couldn’t even allow himself to be my boss. Couldn’t exert authority over me. He had to knock like we had nothing between us.

  Yet we had something.

  The mere sight of him sparked a chain reaction of the things he did to the inside of me—the stomach drop, the heart race, the butterflies. Ah, the butterflies. Those reactions were strong and sudden and dramatic—the kind of intense reactions expected after being apart from someone you love for several years, and not several hours.

  Did I not spark anything similar in him?

  "Can I come in?" he asked, and if he were a vampire I still would've said yes knowingly.

  But I couldn't look directly at him as he walked past me to stare out the windows. Not until he was behind me, facing away, could I look. He had his hands in his pockets and his stance was wide. He wore my favorite three-piece bespoke gray suit. It fit him like he’d been sewn into it. The fantasies I'd had with him wearing that suit. With him taking off that suit…

  Would I ever stop being turned on by this man?

  Would it ever stop hurting to be near him?

  "I meant it when I said you look good in this office," he said his back still to me. "I can go back to Tokyo and you could have mine. Operations isn’t your thing, I know. Weston isn't attached to marketing, though. You could shuffle duties between you."

  My heart had already been broken. Now he was just stomping on the pieces.

  I wouldn't cry. I refused. "Is that what you're planning to do?" Somehow I managed to sound ambivalent.

  He turned to look directly at me. "No. I'm not."

  And now I didn't know what to feel. Was he playing games? And if he was, why on earth was I surprised? He'd always been good at that, slinging me back and forth and back and forth.

  I opened my mouth to scream or yell or tell him to stop once and for all, goddammit. Tell him to go to fucking Tokyo at this point. I’d hurt less without him here to yank me around.

  But he cut me off before I even started, his own anger more impossible to contain than mine. "Do you know why I waited to come out and help you that first night?"

  “At The Keep?”

  “Yes. Then.”

  He'd taken his time before rescuing me from Theo. Long enough to notice what was happening and then fully lace up his boots. I'd always figured he couldn't decide if he really wanted to get involved. Theo, nasty as he was, still had a better pedigree than I did. He was the “right” kind of person, and Donovan had no loyalty to me. I had always understood Donovan’s hesitation.

  Now he was suggesting there was more reason than that?

  I shook my head.

  "Because you were the one who was supposed to save me.” He let that settle on me like a heavy chain around my neck. “Don’t you get it? I was never good enough for you. All the days I spent in that classroom with you, you never saw me, and I just knew that if you did, you’d be able to fix everything that was wrong inside me. But you never looked up.

  “And then there you were outside my door. Then outside my window. And it was you who needed someone. You who needed help, and I knew that once I played that role for you, there would be no turning back. You would never see me any other way, so I waited before coming down there. Waited for someone else to help you. Waited until it was almost too late.”

  He paused, making sure I understood exactly how he’d struggled.

  And I did. Somehow, I did.

  “You saw me then,” he went on. “But it wasn’t how I’d wanted to be seen. I wasn’t a hero. I didn’t want to be your demon, but that was more accurate. The way you looked at me after that night—like you didn’t know if you wanted me to fuck you or forget you—I didn’t know what to do with that. What could I do with that?”

  His voice was harsh and raw and his words impassioned, and I had no answer for him. Nothing to give him for this burden he’d been carrying for so long, nothing to offer in exchange for this weight that he was finally laying in front of me except to listen.

  He crossed in front of the desk, his hands still safely in his pockets. “So I tried to be your hero, Sabrina. I tried to give you everything you needed. Tried to take care of you. I wanted to keep you from everyone I thought would do you harm, and that included me. Because I knew I could hurt you. I wanted to, even. You can't imagine the contradiction of wanting to hurt you and wanting to save you at the same time. Rescuing you from the frying pan meant throwing you into the fire. From Theo to me. But I was never supposed to save you, Sabrina. It's your name that means ‘savior.’ You were supposed to save me."

  He suddenly became clear, like the signal from a radio station when the interference was removed. I could see him, and he was in focus and I understood him and I understood everything that had happened between us. He'd been so alone and desperate after Amanda's death, and he'd found me. And all I'd seen was the sun. All I’d seen was Weston, while Donovan had waited for me to find him in the dark. Waited for me to save him.

  And, man, did I know what that was like, because when I finally saw Donovan, I tho
ught he was the one who could save me.

  And then he did.

  And wasn't that what people did for each other?

  I had a feeling Donovan's intent with his confession was to make me see how impossible everything was between us. But it did just the opposite.

  "I guess I thought we could save each other," I told him.

  His eyes widened, like he hadn't been expecting that. Like I'd caught him off-guard, which was hard to do with him.

  He chuckled even—he was so surprised. "You always were smarter than me."

  I would have made a big deal about his compliment because he rarely gave me credit for my brains, but I didn’t give a flying fuck about what he thought about my IQ at the moment.

  I did care about what it meant that he’d said it, and I sat up, wary. Hopeful.

  "I don't want to love you from afar, Sabrina." He stood in front of me, naked, vulnerable, and I was already lost to him. "I've done that already, and it's not enough anymore. And I've fucked up. But no one else can love you like I can up close. No one."

  Of all the things he'd ever offered me, it was the first time he'd only offered himself. It was the only thing I’d ever wanted from him, really.

  "I know," I said, and my voice caught.

  "You do?"

  "Of course I do." I pushed aside my laptop and climbed across the desk because it was the fastest way to him. "Who else is going to love me like you do?" I rubbed the palm of my hand across the scruff of his cheek, and he closed his eyes, sighing into my touch. "This isn't how everyone wants to be loved. But it's how I want to be loved. I love the way you love me."

  He opened his eyes and brushed a strand of hair out of my face before planting his hand on the side of my neck. "The way I love you brought a rapist into your house,” he said, with both worry and apology.

  "And the way you love me brought you there to save me in time. Both last night and ten years ago."