“You know…” I shrug. “So that way we remember that?—”
“That you can’t have feelings for me?” Rowan asks, acid and ice on his tone. “No, wait.” Another dry chuckle. “That you won’tletyourself have feelings for me.”
It’s too late to take back every stupid word I’ve said. Toerase the most idiotic idea I have ever come up with. A buffer for what? For who?
“Rowan—”
“Do younotwant me to exclusively fucking you?” he asks, his voice dripping sharp shards of ice. “I don’t get this.”
“It’s a fucking buffer! It’s what it means!” I try to reason.
He groans. “What the hell is a buffer, Nat?”
“A—A break? I don’t know?—”
“Why the hell do we need a buffer? I thought?—”
“Maybe if we?—”
“So, you’re going on a date?”
I shrug. I’m not, but I won’t tell him that. He deserves to enjoy other things, right? Other people. Explore and what not. I’m not a damsel he needs to save; I don’t want to be. It started as just sex and now it feels like he’s coming to my rescue all the time.
But he was doing that before the sex…
“Are you?” Rowan asks again. “Are you, or are you not going on a date too, Natalia?”
I swallow past the lump in my throat but it remains there, blocking airflow. “Yeah,” I lie. “It’ll be good for us.”
“Forus?” He laughs dryly, the sound scaring me just as the red in his eyes is doing now. “For.Us?For whom is it really good for, Natalia? Because it won’t be good for me.”
I blink at him, knowing his reaction is entirely valid. My reaction would be much worse if I’m honest. If Rowan came and told me he didn’t want to be exclusive and go on a date with a stranger, I think I’d lose my mind.
Because he’s mine.
But he isn’t, though.
“You don’t know that,” I say, digging a six-foot hole in theground for myself. “I already set you up with someone, actually.”
“So,it isonlymegoing on a date then,” Rowan says, but I’m not sure if it’s a statement or question.
“But it’ll be a good one,” I promise him. “She’s really nice; she’s one of my baker’s cousins. Her name is Shannon.”
“I’m sorry.” Rowan laughs dryly. “You set me up on ablind datewith the cousin of one of your bakers. And you expect me to go?”
I nod, dragging my bottom lip between my teeth.
“I don’t… Natalia, what the fuck?”
“Please, Rowan.”
“Please, what, Natalia?” he asks softly, his voice raspy and broken.
“I…Just…” My eyes sting, my throat tightening. Oh god, I think this is breaking me. That look in his eyes…
Rowan has always been a patient man with me—kind and caring, always knowing exactly what I need. And then I do things like this. I ruin good things for myself and I wish I could stop because this issogood.What we have is so good even if I don’t know what it is or where it’s going.
But it’s me who’s putting that look in his eyes, making them red around the blue waves that soothe me. I’m breaking his heart while breaking my own.
