by Jody Holford
Brady had asked her to bring her notebook for event planning. He wouldn’t tell her what was going on, but maybe it had something to do with the building and the party Mia wanted Shay to organize. Whatever it was, it couldn’t wait, and Brady had been too kind to her to turn him down for this one request.
He answered on the first knock. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“Come on in.” He moved back so she could.
“I brought Wyatt’s jacket. I was hoping you could give it to him,” she said as she followed him down the short hallway. She wasn’t chickening out. She was in survival mode.
He looked back at her, over his shoulder, and paused. “You could give it to him yourself.”
She started to tell him why that was a bad idea, but her breath caught in her throat. In his living room stood Wyatt. Dressed in a black T-shirt and dark jeans, his hair was slightly mussed and his eyes—his amazing eyes—looked tired. He looked perfect, and her heart hammered so hard she thought he might be able to see it moving her shirt.
“Wyatt.”
“Shay.” The word was almost whispered, as if it hurt him to say it. It knocked her breath out of her to hear it.
Shay looked at Brady, tears forming in her eyes. Brady shrugged. “He said you wouldn’t return his texts. I figured he must be pretty sorry if he was begging for my help.”
Wyatt growled. “I did not beg.”
Brady shook his head and put a hand on her shoulder. “It was sort of heartbreaking really, the way he cried.”
Shay bit her lip and looked back and forth between them.
Wyatt didn’t move, but through gritted teeth, he ground out, “Brady.”
Brady put both hands up. “Sorry. I probably wasn’t supposed to tell her that part.” He turned back to Shay. “Hear him out?”
If she spoke, she’d cry. She nodded and Brady slipped away, walking down the hallway, back toward the kitchen.
She held his jacket at arm’s length. When he took it, his fingers brushed against hers and the simple touch shot electricity through her body.
“What are you doing here?”
He hesitated, put the jacket over one of the armrests, and gestured to the couch. “Did you bring your notebook?”
Confusion warred with the painful relief at being near him. She’d missed him. Missed being in the same room. Breathing the same air. Touching him. Kissing him. This was why she’d needed more time. Obviously, they’d run into each other eventually, but she didn’t know if she could handle sitting beside him yet.
“Yes. I should go.” She sat down, staring straight ahead.
“Please don’t,” he said. She realized, staring at his jean-clad thighs, that he was waiting. He was asking her not to. Giving her the choice.
“I can’t stay long.” Or I’ll fall apart.
He sat down beside her, so close she could inhale the scent of his soap and his cologne, and it was all she wanted to do. She just wanted to snuggle into him and take deep breaths.
“Let’s just clear something up first. I didn’t cry.”
Shay smiled, knowing he meant for her to, but everything inside her went still when he reached for her hand and linked their fingers. She held her breath.
“But if I was going to cry over losing a woman, you’d be the one.”
That air whooshed out of her lungs like a gust of wind, and she finally forced herself to make eye contact. A large lump filled her throat. He let go of her hand.
Wyatt spoke in a serious tone. “Can you get out your notebook? I need your help planning an event.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Brady came in from the kitchen, and Wyatt gave a frustrated groan. “Get lost.”
“It’s my place. And I’m being nice, so check the attitude.” He set two glasses of water down on the coffee table and spoke to Shay in a mock-whisper. “His throat might get dry if he cries again.”
“Son of— Brady.”
Shay laughed, unsure how this could be both funny and painful at the same time. “You can go. I’m okay,” she said, knowing he was hanging around to be sure. Another protector. And wouldn’t she feel the same if her friend was hurting? Or one of her siblings? Did that make her overbearing? Or was it just part of caring?
Brady held her gaze a moment, as if weighing the truth. He nodded. “I’ll see you later.”
Brady winked at her and then looked at Wyatt. “Turns out I need to go in to work for a bit.” He grabbed his keys from the side table and walked away. The door opened and just before it closed, he called out, “If you plan on making up—for real—don’t do anything on my couch. Go back to your own place.”
The door shut, and Shay’s nerves turned into a giggle. She bit her lip but couldn’t stop. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This isn’t funny.”
Wyatt’s mouth tipped up on one side before he took a drink of his water, then set it down. “It isn’t. But at least he left.”
Biting the inside of her cheek, she turned to him. Part of her wanted nothing more than to sit here and just be near him.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
Curling her fingers into fists, she stared at her lap. She didn’t doubt the sincerity of his words. “I know you are. And so am I. If you’d told me it was work related and you were concerned for my safety, I would have listened.”
“I wish I’d handled it differently.”
What could she say to that? So do I?
“Can you get your notebook out?”
Lifting her head, she frowned at him. “What event do you have? I can’t play games here. You know, we never really gave the friendship thing a chance before it became more so maybe one day, who knows? But right now, it hurts to look at you. So please, just say what you need to say.” Wyatt moved closer on the couch, making it hard to think.
“There are actually several events I need to organize. I’m not joking, Shay. I’d like to engage your services.”
Was he messing with her? He didn’t touch her and yet she felt him everywhere. If he could do this, so could she. She was through running. She pulled out her notebook and opened it to a fresh page.
Scribbling his name on the top of the page, she looked up expectantly. His lips were tilted up at one side, but his eyes were hard to read.
“Should I just tell you all of the events?”
“If that’s what you’d like,” she said. She wanted to scream at him. How could he appear so calm when everything inside of her was now shaking?
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his legs. “All right. I’ve given these a lot of thought so if you can just let me get through the list, we can discuss each one when I’ve finished.”
What the hell is he doing? “Wyatt. This is weird.”
“Please, Shay. Let me do this?” Leaning back, he pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and opened it up. It had several creases.
“If you have the list, why don’t you just give it to me and let me look,” Shay said, her uncertainty warring with the pressure of too many emotions.
“I’d rather read it. If that’s okay?”
She sighed, looked down at her page. “Fine. Read it then.” If she didn’t look at him, maybe she could get through this.
“Okay.” He took a deep breath, and when he spoke, his voice was low. “Event one is the perfect date. I need to arrange it as soon as I possibly can.”
Shay’s hand shook, and she looked up at him, her eyes filling. “What are you doing, Wyatt?”
His expression lost its swagger. His eyes stared into hers and he gestured to her book. “Please, baby. Write it down.”
The endearment almost broke her. With trembling fingers, she wrote: The perfect date.
“Event two,” Wyatt said, “making it up to you.”
Shay huffed. “I’m sorry? That’s an event?”
He smiled crookedly. Shay’s stomach fluttered when he said, “I have some great ideas for that one, so yeah. It’ll be an event.”
>
She wrote down with a shaking hand: Make it up to you.
The paper rustled. “Event three: moving in together so we don’t have to spend any more time apart than is absolutely necessary.”
Shay’s head snapped up. Her pen froze and her heart stopped, like a machine that was suddenly unplugged. “Excuse me?”
He gestured to the paper. “I said we’d discuss them after. Please. Let’s get these down.”
Teardrops fell onto the words she scrawled. Move in together.
Wyatt leaned closer. “Event four: An engagement party. That one should have a star beside it, because I’m not sure if it’s something you’d want or if we can just skip all the before stuff and jump right to getting married.”
Shay set the pen down and wiped the tears from her eyes. Looking up, she shook her head. How could he go from shutting her out to wanting to marry her? And why was she so irrational that everything in her wanted to shout, “Yes, please!”
“Wyatt. I can’t do this. What are you doing?”
He crumpled the paper and closed the space between them. Kneeling in front of her, he took the book and pen, set them beside her, and held her hands. “I’m trying to show you that I want to plan ahead. My whole life, or most of it lately, has been about getting through each day. Just making it through. But as soon as I met you, I started thinking about tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. I knew, from the second I saw you, that I wanted you to be part of all my tomorrows.”
Shay pulled her hands away and covered her mouth, but it didn’t stop the sob from escaping. He brought both his hands to the side of her head, holding her still and locking his eyes on hers.
“I am so sorry I hurt you. Jake texted me that he was outside and everything fell apart. I went to get rid of him. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry. I really thought I’d only be a minute. There was nowhere else I wanted to be except with you.”
Shay tried to focus on the facts and not the raging beat of her heart. “Why was Jake there?”
“He’d been following me. He was nervous and wanted to talk. Who the hell knows why junkies do what they do? All I cared about was getting rid of him. I didn’t want the ugly part of my job to touch you. Any more than it already had.”
One tear slipped. “Jake hurting me here had nothing to do with your job.”
He cursed under his breath. “If I’d followed through, he wouldn’t have had reason to come back. When you came outside, I was desperate to get you to go back in. To keep you safe. I was a complete jerk, and I’m sorry.”
She wanted to pull her hands back but they felt warm inside of his, and she craved the connection. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Because I wasn’t certain he was gone. I’d called Jimmy after Jake walked away and was waiting for him to show up so he could follow Jake home. But Ice clocked Jake and threw him in the trunk.”
She nodded, remembering that part at the same time she remembered the ice-cold fear that had frozen her spine when the drug dealer had grabbed her and held a gun near her face.
Like he was reliving it, too, Wyatt’s shoulders shook. He ran his hands up and down her arms. “I have never, in my life, been as scared as I was in those few minutes he had you.”
“It wasn’t my favorite moment, either.”
He looked down, his hands resting beside her thighs. “I didn’t protect you.”
“That wasn’t your job.”
His head snapped up. “No. It wasn’t. But you mean everything to me, and if anything had happened to you, I’d never have forgiven myself. If someone was hurting me, wouldn’t you want to stop them?”
She bit the inside of her cheek. His pain was almost harder to feel than her own. She nodded slowly. When she put her hands on her lap, he covered them. His eyes looked damp when he met her gaze. “I’m so sorry. There are a hundred things I could have done better since meeting you. I’ll do better. I swear to you, I will do anything to show you I can find the balance you’re looking for. I trust you. More than anyone. I’ll always want to protect you, but not because I don’t think you can take care of yourself. I know you can. But when you love someone, their safety and happiness become your world. At least, that’s what happened for me. I didn’t handle it right, but I’ll get there. Please don’t give up on me. On us.”
When two people love each other, it isn’t about if they’ll work it out, but how. Shay’s tears fell, but she made no effort to wipe them. “You love me?”
He cupped her cheeks like she was a precious jewel. “Shay, I love you so much it consumes me. I think about you when I go to sleep, when I wake up. When I stop at the store. In the middle of meetings. It feels like I think about you every damn second, which is kind of messing me up. I tried giving you a couple of days. I tried text-groveling and phoning. I tried coming to your place. I know I screwed up, but I will do anything—anything—to make this right. Being with you makes me feel like I get another chance. When I came out from undercover, I felt like my soul had been…tainted. Like I’d seen too much to ever be a good person again. You make me feel like a good person. You make me want to be one. I love you, and even if you can’t forgive me, I will love you for the rest of my life.”
She knew she was ugly crying now, but she couldn’t stop it. He kissed her tears, despite how fast they fell. He held her close and rocked her from side to side. Pulling back, she used her sleeve to wipe her face. She did not even want to know what she looked like.
“What about the blonde?”
Wyatt reared back. “What?”
Sniffing loudly, Shay continued to wipe her tears. “I came up to meet you because it seemed like you were taking so long on the night of the show. When I stepped off the elevator, I saw a woman leaving your apartment. And when I asked you about it, you lied.”
Wyatt tunneled his hands into Shay’s hair and pulled her close so their faces were almost touching.
“I’m sorry I lied to you. She was a tenant. Turns out she had the package Jake had been looking for. She’d returned it. I honestly didn’t want anything getting in the way of our night so I figured we’d talk about it later. And even if I’d thought to tell you right that minute, I couldn’t have with other people around us. I really do have to keep a lot of my work private. But I should have talked to you. It was a stupid thing to do and I’m so sorry you thought, even for a second that it was anything other than work related. I will never, I swear to God, ever lie to you again.”
Her tears slowed as her thoughts sped up. She hiccupped and then let out a gasp when Wyatt stood and scooped her up in his arms. She held on as he walked down the hall to the bathroom. He sat her on the counter and passed her the box of Kleenex. Turning on the tap, he opened a drawer, shut it, then opened another and took out a washcloth. Shay wiped at her nose but refused to look in the mirror. She didn’t want to see. Wyatt wrung the warm water out of the cloth but instead of passing it to her so she could clean herself up, he gently rubbed it over her cheeks, under her chin, across her forehead. Shay closed her eyes, absorbed the feeling of having Wyatt take care of her. Not because she couldn’t take care of herself, but because he wanted to. Because he loved her. When she opened them, he’d put the cloth down and was staring at her with unbanked emotion.
He breathed in, like he was trying to figure out the words. “I didn’t want to talk about Jake. Shanna—she’s the tenant—showed up right before I came downstairs. That’s why I was running behind. She showed up as I was leaving. She dropped the package off and left. That’s it, Shay,” he said.
He paused, like he was unsure of what to say next. But his voice was very sure when he spoke. “I will never cheat on you, hurt you on purpose, or let you down. Again. I know I let you down, but I swear to you, it won’t happen again. I’ve been trying so hard to keep my work life and home life separate because I was scared I’d let too much of the bad stuff seep in. I went to see a department shrink yesterday. I talked about some of my baggage and surprisingly, I
felt better when I left. I will screw up. But I won’t let you down again. Other than confidential information, I won’t hold anything back from you. And I will love you with everything in me. I will be faithful to you, and I want the same in return. When you’re ready, I want to stand up in front of our three mutual friends and promise you that. I know it’s soon, and I won’t pressure you but I want you to know, that’s what I want. The rest of it just doesn’t matter. Please tell me it’s not too late.”
Shay’s tears welled again, but she was determined not to let them fall. She had something to say, too. “I’m sorry I turned my back on you. It seems like I have a habit of that.”
He stepped between her legs. “What are you talking about?”
“Instead of working through the hard parts, I tend to run or go home. I was mad at you for not opening up to me. I expected you to trust me even when a little piece of me never let me fully trust you. It was almost like I was waiting for you to screw up so I could say I told you so. I’m sorry for that.”
“You are a hundred percent forgiven.” He kissed the tip of her nose, and she cringed. She was just going to pretend she hadn’t been bawling and that her nose wasn’t all red and blotchy. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I understand if you can’t tell me everything, but you have to give me enough to know that whatever is going on isn’t about us. Isn’t about you feeling scared and shutting down.”
He nodded. “I promise. And you promise not to run. Unless it’s to me.”
Shay’s heart pounded like it was dancing inside her chest. “I promise. And it is soon, but when the day comes, I think we should probably invite our families along with our friends.”
Wyatt laughed. “Probably. Tell me you love me.”
Shay’s lips trembled. “I love you. I love you so much I had no idea how I was going to get over you.”
“Don’t. Don’t ever get over me. I need you.”
