No! she screamed inside her head. I’m ready! I’ve been ready. For ever and always!
It was just after Stu’s awful visit, and Lissy being dumped, and the surfeit want, the need, the desire—it was all a big mess inside her head. A big mess with a solid centre. When it came down to it the thought of laying her heart on the line and being rejected was more than she could bear.
A tear plopped down her cheek before she’d even felt it well in her eye. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, but another followed.
“Don’t cry,” Nate said.
It was the closest to begging she’d ever heard from the man.
“I can’t do tears.”
Which only made her cry more.
With an oath, he pulled her into his arms. She struggled against him, knowing if she softened she was gone. And she was all she had.
“Hush,” he said, his breath against her hair.
A second later, maybe ten, the effort of keeping herself strong crumbled.
He kissed her on the forehead and then, as if it simply wasn’t enough, lifted her face with a finger beneath her chin and pressed his lips to hers. The silken heat of his touch flowed through her, even while her whole body was rent with tension.
His kiss was lush, lovely, lost in time. Her mind was a whirl of sensation and sadness.
With a groan she slid off the stool, threaded her hands through his hair and sank against him, imprinting herself on him, and him on her, as if it might be the last chance she’d have to commit him to memory, pouring every ounce of love she felt into that kiss in the hope he’d feel it, know it and understand it without having to be hit over the head with it.
When he pulled away the tears kept on coming.
Love me, she thought, love me, love me, like I love you.
Smiling—smiling!—he pressed her hair from her cheeks. “You’ll be just fine, Saskia Bloom. I know it. I knew the first moment I saw your picture. You’re content. You have your house, your dog, your work, your friends. Your life is in a groove that’s made for you. I envy you that.”
“I want...more,” she said, as close to admitting anything as she’d come.
He shook his head once, then, looking her right in the eye, said, “When you told me what you wanted in a relationship, back at The Cave that night when you refused to come home with me...?”
Saskia nodded, astounded that it felt like such a long time ago.
“You talked about meeting a guy, moving in together, getting married?”
She nodded again, knowing as she pictured all those things that even then she’d imagined those things with him.
“You never once mentioned being in love.”
Saskia stopped nodding. The glorious self-pity fled and she shook her head a little as she tried to unearth that memory in its entirety. “Of course I did.”
“No,” Nate said. “You didn’t.”
But she did. She wanted to be in love and loved with so much of herself her lungs tightened to fists at the very thought. And yet she couldn’t open her mouth and say so.
But he was the one with the walls, not her. She wanted him, she loved him—couldn’t he damn well stop talking rubbish and look at her? It was pouring out of her!
But with a kiss to the end of her nose he extricated himself from her embrace and stepped back, then another step and then he moved around to the other side of the bench to check his pasta sauce and it felt as if he’d walked a mile.
And his words finally came through. You’ll be just fine, he’d said. Meaning she’d be just fine without him.
She stood on shaky legs and collected her things. She waited until her throat wasn’t so tight she could barely swallow, then said, “Nate?”
He turned, faced her across the kitchen. And she wondered if he knew what she was going to say before she did.
“I don’t see how... I’m so sorry, but I can’t go to Mae’s wedding with you.”
“Yeah,” he said, frowning at his shoes before looking back at her, all dark and impenetrable, his thoughts kept from her behind the deep, dark tunnel of his eyes. “I wondered about that too.”
She just looked at him in silence. Her throat a dry wasteland where words could apparently no longer pass.
“Consider this my breaking off our agreement.”
He lifted his hands and tore the air and her heart snapped right in two. She heard it. Ping and crack. And then a swoosh as air filled the crevasse.
“Thank you,” she said.
He’d broken her heart and she’d thanked him. She might not have pressed charges on Stu, but she’d never thanked the guy! She was clearly way more screwed up than she’d thought.
Nate said, “It’s been my absolute pleasure.”