by Measha Stone
He glanced at Alex’s retreating form before settling his gaze on her. “I put Melody on the first plane to New York,” he added.
“The next morning,” she scoffed.
“Yes. After I spent the evening sleeping on my couch.” His tone deepened.
“Okay.” She stared at him with what she hoped was a bored expression.
“You’re hiding again.” He pointed a finger at her.
“I can hide as much as I want to. This is my apartment.” Switching the bottle from one hand to the other, she said, “I’ve been thinking. I don’t think this is working for me anymore. It’s been fun and all, but I think we can stop now.” She wondered how her mouth could so easily say things her heart didn’t mean.
His eyes narrowed, and he clenched his fists.
She attempted to look unbothered.
“Melody seems like a wonderful girl. I’m sure she can kneel for you and take all sorts of beatings from you. I’m not interested.” She swallowed hard and straightened her spine.
Royce slumped. She’d hurt him.
After a long pause and a glance toward the kitchen he caved. “Okay. I’ll let you have tonight.” A shake of his head. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Pick up when I do.” A warning lingered there.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said to his back, while his hand rested on the door handle.
He froze, and she followed his gaze to the floor. Next to the door sat her shoes neatly lined up on a pink mat—a mat matching the one he had bought for her.
Royce turned to her, taking his time. His eyes still dark, locked on hers. He was back in control. His determination resonated from his stance.
“Why are your shoes by the door?” he asked, his voice hard.
“I don’t know,” she lied with a shaky voice.
“That’s two, and I told you I wouldn’t give second chances. Tell me what happened with Melody. What did she say?” He removed his coat casually and placed it on the hook near the door.
“I don’t want to get into this right now.” She was losing the strength to go forward with her plan. He’d seen her shoes and the mat. He knew how she really felt. It was too much. “Please, Royce, just go.” The words were spoken so softly she was surprised when Alex bounded from the kitchen.
“I’ll walk him out.” Jessica found herself staring at Alex.
“Jessica.” A plea.
Not sure where to go, or what to say, she left the living room. She didn’t want to see him walk out her door. She couldn’t bear to hear it close behind him.
“You really hurt her.” Alex’s voice carried to where she hid in the kitchen, out of sight. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I know she is in pain. Just go. Leave her be for a while.”
“You let her hide. She runs when there’s a bump. I get it. She’s had shitty luck in the past. I’m not shitty luck. I would never do what she thinks I did, never. Not to her. Not ever.”
She clenched her eyes shut against the tears. No more crying. No more trusting.
“She’s not hiding—”
“The hell she’s not. I’ll give her time, but we aren’t done.” The proclamation sounded more for Alex’s benefit than for hers. The door creaked on the hinges as it opened, and the echo of it slamming shut broke her.
The floodgates opened, and the tears poured down her face.
Chapter 18
Royce sat staring out the window of his office at the dark clouds rolling by, covering the skyline. He’d promised to give her time, and he had. It was Friday, and she would be going to dinner with her friends. He wondered if she even thought of him, or had she climbed so far behind her walls she didn’t allow herself to feel.
“Hey.” Alex walked into his office, filling the space between them with unspoken anger. Alex hid her. He allowed her to crawl into herself and not face her own demons. Royce knew he did it out of love for her, but that acknowledgment brought an entirely different set of irritations. “Devanaoe went home sick, so the ten o’clock meeting’s canceled.”
Royce met his gaze, jaw clenching in reaction to his presence. The two had been avoiding each other pretty successfully all week. “I know. Janice informed me.” He waved a hand in the direction of his admin sitting at her desk outside his office.
“Right.” Alex cleared his throat after a long pause. “Jessica is a wreck.” Royce’s jaw flexed, and his heart sped up at the sound of her name. “And you don’t look much better. She called in sick this week. She never does that, even when she really is sick.”
Royce studied the man standing in front of him. “She can’t hide from her feelings. You let her hide inside herself and try to forget she even has any.” Royce poked at the truth. It was Alex’s turn to set his jaw.
“She’s been hurt too many times. James wasn’t the first guy. She seems to be a magnet for liars and cheaters. Her heart broke so many times…” Alex shoved a hand through his blond curls. “And I’m always the cleanup guy—”
“But you don’t want to be. You want to be the guy.” Royce stood from his chair but didn’t make a move toward him. Physical confrontation wouldn’t make a difference, even if it would help him relieve the tension in his muscles.
“Jessica and I are just friends,” Alex stated as though he’d said it a thousand times already. A rehearsed statement meant to appease others and hopefully convince himself.
“She doesn’t need coddling,” Royce said after several moments of tense silence.
Alex blew out a loud breath and shook his head. “I know.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and relaxed his stance. “She needs you. I’ve known Jess for years, and I’ve never seen her this wound up about someone. Now she’s completely unraveled. She may not want to see you, but she needs to.” Alex turned to leave the office but stopped at the door. “If you hurt her again—”
“Nothing happened with Melody.” Royce couldn’t suppress the vehemence in his voice.
“I know. Psycho ex-girlfriends are my specialty.” Alex’s lips curled slightly. “But if you do, if you hurt her—”
“I won’t. Ever.”
Alex surveyed him for several long moments. “Like I said. She called in sick today. She’s home.” With that, he walked out.
Royce wasted no time. He grabbed his coat from the rack, informed Janice he would be out for the day, and stalked to the elevators. It would take twenty minutes to get to her apartment—he had twenty minutes to figure out what to say. The only certainty he held onto was that he would not be letting her go. He would not lose her.
Jessica flipped the television off and leaned her head back against the couch. She hated TV. She would much rather be reading, but the mood she had been in over the past week left her unable to pick up a book.
Since the resounding slam of her door after Royce left, she’d been unable to concentrate. It had been the least productive week at work. Even Jeremy noticed. Not that he cared about the reason, only that she needed to get her game face back on. Easily said, impossible to do when one’s heart refused to work properly. She switched from hating Royce to hating herself, to missing him with such a ferocity she needed to hide to figure out how to breathe.
Could he have been telling the truth? Having seen Alex’s battle with his crazy girlfriends over the past few years, it wasn’t impossible. Royce never struck her as the dishonest type. Honesty and openness were big on his list. He made those a priority when it came to her—why would he do any less for himself? Why put so much effort into her, if he had something easy on the side.
Melody seems like a wonderful girl. I’m sure she can kneel for you and take all sorts of beatings from you. I’m not interested. The memory of her words, seeing his face after she said them, twisted her agony deeper. Maybe she should have heard him out, listened to what he had to say, instead of reacting out of fear and anger.
No. She made her decision, and she would get through this. Broken hearts were certainly not a foreign concept; she would move on. Starting with the prospe
ct of a new job. She had finally gotten around to returning Marcus’s phone call at the publishing house. An interview was set for Monday during her lunch hour. The weekend would be good to get her head back on straight and put herself in a better place. It wouldn’t do to go to the interview in the zombie state she found herself in. Taking the day off made sense. She needed to relax, let herself grieve and then she would pick herself up, dust herself off and move on with her life.
Right after a glass or four of wine.
Her phone sounded from the end table in the living room—another text from Royce. She ignored it and went to the kitchen to get a bottle of her favorite merlot. Merlot never lied or spent evenings with ex-girlfriends.
The buzzer blared into the apartment, insistent and demanding. Another bleep blared from her cellphone. Out of aggravation, she picked it up, gearing up to tell him to leave her alone, when a pounding on her door stopped her. She looked down at her cell.
I’m not leaving, Jessica. Open the door.
He was there. Outside her apartment, he was there. She took a ragged breath. Of course, he was there. The thought of losing was unacceptable. He chased her to prove he could conquer her—not love her. Well, he could shove off. She marched to the door while tucking her hair behind her ear and straightening her T-shirt.
“How do you keep getting in?” she blurted when she flung open the door. The breath whooshed from her lungs at the sight of him. His usually styled hair splayed over his forehead, his disheveled suit clung to his body in the well-mannered way it always had, but the knot in his tie looked lopsided, and he’d missed the top button of his shirt as well. But none of that affected her the way his eyes looked at her.
Wild blue eyes stared at her. Her breath hitched. “Someone left, and I grabbed the door,” he explained, not attempting to enter her apartment. His fingers itched to grab her, but instead he shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “We need to talk.”
“I think—”
“No, you aren’t thinking. You’re reacting to the wrong information, instead of thinking.” His eyes washed over her then to the floor, where her shoes remained lined up against the wall on her mat. She hadn’t had the heart to remove it, not yet. She tried to cover it by stepping to the side, but she could see the sight had given him more resolve—strengthening him. “We need to finish our conversation.” She could tell him no, lock herself away from him and eventually he would concede. He wouldn’t force her. But she didn’t want that. If they were over, she wanted it ended, no lingering doubts.
“Fine. Have it your way.” She turned her back on him and walked into her apartment, reminding herself to keep calm and stick to her decision. Nothing he said would change her mind.
The door shut behind her, and she turned back to him. He pointed at the mat on the floor. “Why do you have this here?” His soft voice contrasted with the intensity of his body language.
“Because I want it.” She wouldn’t explore that, not with him at that moment. It would be too humiliating, make her vulnerable again—and that was not happening.
“That’s one.” He held up his finger. “Actually, it’s three if I count from the last time we spoke, but I’ll be generous.” His jaw clenched. “We’ll talk about the mat later. Now, tell me what Melody said to you when you came to my apartment.”
She eyed him carefully. He wasn’t begging for forgiveness or for her to take him back. “It doesn’t matter, Royce. Look, I know you don’t like not getting what you want but—”
“Is that what you think?” His eyes narrowed. “You think I’ve been worrying about you all week because I didn’t get to have my way?” His voice held a challenge. “You think I’ve been so torn apart at the idea of losing you because I see you as some prize? A possession I don’t want to lose?” He still stood a few feet from her, he might as well have been breathing on top of her. He seemed to fill the entire room.
A day or two ago, she may have answered that he did see her as a possession. But he stood in front of her, hair mussed, eyes dark, and flushed cheeks, and she knew. It was her he wanted, not just anyone, but her. She hadn’t taken the day off to mourn a loss—but a loss of him and his love. She mourned losing him. She loved him. Love—the one thing she didn’t want and had convinced herself she didn’t need. She couldn’t breathe without it, without his love. She needed his hands, his eyes, his words, his heart. She wanted him—all of him.
He didn’t leave work and hightail it to her apartment just to win some conquest. He stood there for her.
She gripped the wine bottle with both hands. “She said you were out getting dinner,” she answered honestly, squaring her shoulders.
He studied her for a long moment, and she worried he’d changed his mind. That he didn’t care about that anymore, that he would turn and leave her again.
“And?” He waved his hand in a circular motion as though to pull the information from her.
“That you’d be home soon, and she needed to get the table ready.” She lowered her voice unintentionally. Hearing Melody call him Sir had severed her heart. She’d replayed it in her mind until her body shook with heavy, breath-stealing sobs.
He slid his coat off his broad shoulders and tossed it to the couch.
“Tell me what she said…exactly.” Royce stepped toward her, unbuttoning his sleeve.
She tried to fight off the raging emotion rising in her, but it was too strong.
“She said, ‘Sir will be back any moment, and I have to prepare the table,’” she recited out loud as she had so many times in her mind over the past week.
Royce winced. “When she called me Sir—which I told her to stop doing—how did that feel?” He rolled up his sleeve.
“Royce—”
“Answer me,” he snapped. He didn’t shout, but his voice was firmer than she’d ever heard. The tables had turned somewhere from the point he entered her apartment. She was no longer the predator in the room.
She took a deep breath. “I hated it.” She put the bottle on the coffee table and sat on the couch. “I hated her.”
“Melody is part of my past. She understands that now. You are my present and my future.” He softened his voice and unbuttoned his other sleeve. “I should have told you about her. For that omission, I’m sorry. She’s been sending gifts weekly, and I should have known she wouldn’t just go away.” He stopped his movements to look her in the eye as he gave his apology. “I won’t lie. She tried her damnedest to get me back in her life. I have no interest in her or anything else she offers. She isn’t you.” He rolled up the second sleeve.
Tears pooled in Jessica’s eyes as he explained. She should have known, should have given him a chance to tell her all these things before shutting him out.
“You didn’t tell me she sent you gifts.” Her accusation lacked any heat.
“No, I didn’t tell you. I suppose I should have. They started arriving before I met you, and, since we started seeing each other, I moved my focus to my future with you rather than getting rid of my past. But I should have told you. I’m sorry. Melody showing up like that wouldn’t have been such a shock if I had told you what she was up to.”
Jessica nodded. Melody really was his past. Had he really been looking at their future?
“She left? Just like that?”
“Well, not just like that. Like I said, she did her best to get me back in her grip. She kissed me.” Jessica’s eyes flew to his with his confession.
“You kissed her?”
“No, she kissed me. When I pushed her away, she started to get the idea. I ended up having to be blunter than that, though. I think what I said may have hurt her—”
“What did you say?” Jessica asked softly.
“I told her I wasn’t in love with her.” After a short pause, he continued. “I told her I was in love with you.”
For a moment, Jessica frowned. She couldn’t imagine how much it hurt to hear him say something like that, to hear Royce say he didn’t love her. Then her bra
in registered the second part of what he’d said. His gentle smile eased the tension from her shoulders.
“You love me.” It wasn’t a question—she needed to say the statement out loud—to feel the words roll around on her tongue.
“And if you allow yourself to think about how you really feel, you’ll see you love me too.” He gave a curt nod.
“I already knew,” she pointed out. “Well, I just figured it out, but I do. I love you too.” The realization had surprised her, but putting it out into the world made the emotion explode inside her. His grin widened, and she wanted to launch herself at him, but the smile faded from his lips, and the stern, authoritative expression surfaced.
“Enough about my lack of communication and on to your transgression.” He walked to her and yanked her off the couch before she could utter a word of protest. “Where is your bedroom?”
“Why?”
“I don’t think the people passing by your window should see your bare ass being tanned.” He motioned to the windows. She sucked in her breath as he stepped toward the dining room. “I’m sure I’ll find it.” He tugged her in the direction she nodded toward.
Once in the bedroom, he kicked the door shut and half shoved her onto the bed. She looked up at him. Too many things were reeling through her mind. He hadn’t gone behind her back. He hadn’t been playing with her heart. He had been exactly what he’d seemed, what she had fallen in love with. And he loved her.
“Tell me again why you haven’t called me in three days.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
His strong stance didn’t intimidate her. His eyes burning into her, exposing raw feelings and unexplored emotions, jumbled her nerves. “Because I thought you were seeing someone on the side, and that I was a toy to you,” she answered with a shaky voice. She knew it wasn’t true, but the hurt of feeling that way remained fresh in her mind.
He nodded. “You are not a toy to me,” he stated, enunciating each word clearly.
She wiped her eyes. “I know.”
“Why do you keep a mat by your front door?” He asked again.
