He turned his head and watched her for a beat. “Thank you. I don’t often care what other people think. But your opinion has always mattered. Always.” He grabbed her hand and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “I know you mean it. Not many people say what they mean.”
Wasn’t that the truth? Her job required a modicum of political know-how in the environmental circle and hardly anyone said what they meant. She thought of her proclivity to speak her mind rather than be careful. And thought with a smile about how she’d make a horrible mayor’s wife.
Wife?
She dropped her spoon with a clang. Where the hell had that thought come from?
“You okay?” The mayor of Dallas crunched into his sandwich, concern darkening his eyes.
“Yeah. Yes. Fine.” Oh sure, she sounded totally fine. The mayor’s wife. She hadn’t had a thought like that since...
Since he’d worn nothing but her cheap bedsheets in her ratty apartment. Since he’d been standing in her kitchen making a lunch not dissimilar to this one. It might have been ham and cheese with potato chips, and they’d dined on her tiny twin bed and ate off paper plates, but this felt the same.
Or do you feel the same?
The sandwiches were gourmet and the plates were breakable this time around but there was a lot about Chase that hadn’t changed. A lot about her that hadn’t changed. Like the fact that she still wanted a family and a husband. She wanted an adventure, and a life beyond success at work. She’d imagined a man would fill that role eventually, but she hadn’t been looking. And for some reason, sitting here with Chase now made her wonder if she hadn’t been looking because she knew what she wanted couldn’t be found here.
Because he’d always been in Dallas.
The days they’d spent together had snapped seamlessly against the days back when she’d first fallen in love with him. As fast as those days seemed to pass by that summer, being here with him was like being frozen in time. Like they’d been trapped inside a snow globe and given a second chance.
Her stomach flipped, her mind along with it. She couldn’t act on those feelings—not a single one of them. She’d made that decision the moment she let him slip her out of her clothes. The moment she’d allowed him to make love to her, she’d promised herself she couldn’t and wouldn’t allow him access to her heart.
Not again.
“Excuse me.” She practically ran from the kitchen to her bedroom, shoving ideas about time-freezing snow globes out of her head. This affair was completely separate from their past—not an extension of it. No matter how much it seemed that the present had fractured and allowed the past to seep in, it hadn’t. Remembering moments with him was normal, and definitely not a sign that they could’ve been more or still could be more.
She lifted her half-full suitcase onto the bed and began packing the rest of her clothes and shoes into it. Her mind volleyed arguments that she was overreacting, but her heart was too tender to spend another moment in this house—or with this man. She rerouted her thoughts on work. Her to-do list waiting for her tomorrow morning. She needed to return to normalcy. To pop this bubble that bent reality and made it seem as though Chase and she belonged together. In reality, and outside of this snowstorm, he lived in Dallas and she lived here. He worked in politics, and she fought for funds from state heads. Once she returned to her own reasonably sized apartment, had a semblance of normal after three fantastic, but abnormal, days, everything would go back to the way it should be.
“Was it something I said?” Chase hovered in the doorway.
“Rodney will be here to clear the driveway soon.” She unfolded a shirt and rolled it instead, shoving it into the corner of her suitcase.
“Yes, but there’s no rush.”
“I know.” But even that sounded defensive.
He stepped deeper into the room, knocking her equilibrium for a loop. “Was the soup bad?”
She shot him a quick warning glare. She didn’t want to joke around right now. She didn’t want to likehim right now. But she did. She did like him, dammit. She liked the way he took care of her, the way he kissed her and the way he’d followed her in here to make sure she was okay.
Which was exactly why she needed to leave.
“I’ll finish lunch. I just... I want to get this done. Maybe grab a shower before I go.”
He came closer, his breath in her ear when he gripped her hips from behind. The move reminded her of the other night, when he’d followed that move with a kiss, his fists squeezing her flesh possessively.
“I can join you if you like,” he said, his voice gruff.
“No.” She couldn’t allow more blurred lines. “It’s better if I go. Let’s call that last bout on the library chair the end.” She turned to face his stormy expression.
“The end?” he boomed.
“It’s been fun, but we agreed that time would run out. The snow has stopped. It’s time to return to reality.”
“Which is what, in your opinion?” He sounded as angry as he looked.
She licked her lips and forced out a version of the truth she used to believe. A version before she’d been sealed inside a bubble with a Chase who was both like and unlike the Chase of her memory. He was realer, better, more grown-up. More stable in his life and more solid about his decisions. But she couldn’t trust in what she’d learned over the past few days, could she? She had to trust in the ten years separating them and the lesson she’d learned during that time.