“You deserved what I needed to fight my way through to the other side of being good again. To survive the pain the heartbreak. And what I needed was time and space. Without you. It ceased being about you, what you wanted when your side-chick messaged me. Dammit,” I bite out. Closing my eyes, I sink my teeth into my bottom lip and turn away. “Jess, I don’t want to do this, okay? Not now and not here.”
Not ever.
I slide off the bar stool, but his hand shoots out, gently wrapping around my wrist. I glance down, again waiting for that… something. The desire that used to stir in me for him. The love that used to bind me to him. But again… nothing. I imagined this day and had always wondered if that adoration would swell in my chest, would make me a slave to my emotions.
But no. I’m free.
And I’m both relieved and strangely, sad.
“India, please,” he whispers. “You said you don’t hate me. Maybe we can start there.” His green gaze searches my face, touches on my eyes, lips, chin then back to my eyes. “I’m so incredibly sorry I hurt you, baby. I’ve never forgiven myself for it. And I’ve never stopping thinking about you, wondering where you were, if you were all right. India, maybe I don’t deserve it, but I’m still asking. Us being here tonight…” He shakes his head. “I refuse to believe it was a mistake. Please, give me a chance to do what I couldn’t two years ago. Make things right between us. What we had—you can’t convince me you don’t feel anything for me. Not after who we were to each other.”
There’d been moments after I left Pike’s End that I would’ve caved and gone back to him if he’d appeared on my friend’s apartment doorstep and uttered these same words to me. Just to stop the pain. But I’m not that woman anymore. I’ve crawled through to the other side, and the truth is, I’m scared. Scared to trust, to be vulnerable and dependent on another person again.
Especially one who’s already betrayed me.
“Who we were, Jessie,” I murmur, gently twisting my arm to extricate my wrist from his grip. “There is no going back. I’ve moved on. You should, too.”
I turn and walk back to the table with Lena, her cousin and brother. What started as a fun night has soured, and it sits on my stomach like curdled milk.
“You okay?” Lena asks, as soon as I sink down onto the chair, her hazel eyes concerned behind her blue-rimmed glasses.
“Yeah, I’m…”
Movement snags my attention out the corner of my eye. Asa pushes off the far wall, and even though he’s half-enshrouded in shadows, I feel his gaze on me like a heavy palm. Over my face, my throat, my suddenly tingling breasts, and lower, to my achingly empty pussy. That quick, he lights a fire in me that only he can extinguish, but he refuses to do it.
And after talking with Jessie for the first time in two years, I understand why.
I do. But it still doesn’t change the stark truth that crouches between us, rattling like an agitated snake.
The man I want won’t allow himself to have me because I’m Jessie’s girl. In his eyes, I always will be.
“I’m fine.”