“I don’t have time.”
“Don’t have time to discuss you have a whole other life? Of course not,” I scoffed.
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
My eyes bulged. “Are you insane?” I screeched. “I’mbeing dramatic? After your fiancée shows up at my door at six o’clock in the morning after we spent the entire night making love. A fiancée I had no idea even existed?”
His eyes closed briefly. “What do you want me to say?”
“Something!” I briefly closed my eyes, then opened them to meet his gaze. “Is she really your fiancée?”
“Yes,” he answered flatly.
My knees went weak and I had to hold onto the dresser to keep myself upright. “D-do you love her?” Why that question even mattered, I didn’t know but it did.
His lips tightened. “There are far more important reasons to marry someone than love.” He tossed the last word as if it were garbage.
I swallowed, finally seeing, for the first time, the hardened, scowling, cold-hearted son of a bitch everyone else saw when they looked at him.
“You really believe that?”
“Doesn’t matter what I believe. Look, I have to go.” He started for the door with a suitcase in one hand. He’d left that same suitcase here one night after coming straight to my place after returning from an overnight business trip. He’d torn my clothes off as soon as I opened the door, barely giving me time to close it behind him.
“Aaron.” I reached for his arm just before he exited the bedroom. “Wait…” I didn’t know what to say. I was pissed but also felt like my entire heart was walking out of the door.
“Patience.” His voice was soft, almost the same way he’d called my name the night before when he came inside of me, not for the first time. But then he turned and his face was the typical mask he wore for the world. “You’re being too sensitive. What we had is done.” He pulled his arm from me and walked away without a backward glance.
I flinched when I heard my apartment door slam shut.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Patience
“Why, Aaron?” I stared at Aaron as we stood in the middle of our hotel suite, the bitter taste of that last day still on my taste buds.
“Alicia was business,” he admitted. “Her father’s company was beneficial to Townsend Industries at the time. He made a deal with us in exchange for protection.”
I frowned. “Protection?”
Aaron nodded. “His family crossed some very powerful people. The Townsends were able to come to an agreement with said family, and in exchange, I was to marry John’s daughter, Alicia. I would’ve gone through with it, but after you…” He blew out a breath and pushed his hand through his hair. “I never loved her.”
I snorted as he answered the question I’d asked him six years earlier. I already knew that. I probably knew that the same day she showed up at my apartment, but I’d been too concerned with the breaking of my own heart to see what was in front of me.
“I know.”
His eyes widened, surprised.
“You’re not the only one who watches. I see you, too. The way your eyes light up around me and the kids. The parts of your history you’ve shared with me that no one else knows about you. Even your jealousy. I knew you never had that type of bond with anyone else. Even your tattoo.” I pointed at his chest.
For a man who wasn’t easily surprised, he was shocked again for the second time.
“I read it…in a book.” I grinned. Our eyes connected, and I knew he remembered our first time together when I’d made the same statement. “When did you get my name tattooed on you?”
“Six months after. I went back to your apartment to find you’d moved, no forwarding address.”
I nodded, wiping a tear away.
“I’m scared,” I whispered.
