I climbed out of the car and headed toward my building. The complex consisted of five separate buildings with two stories. There was an elevator in each that I rarely used, but tonight I was making an exception. My feet ached after several hours in my sexy shoes.
As I left the elevator and headed toward my apartment, I pulled my phone out of my purse and texted Seth.
Grier: I’m about to walk inside right now. Thanks for the company tonight.
Seth: I had fun, even if it wasn’t the sexy kind I was hoping for.
A breathless laugh escaped me.
Grier: See you next week.
Seth: Good night, Grier. Sleep well.
I sighed as I put my phone back in my tiny purse, shaking my head. I couldn’t force myself to feel something I didn’t, but I almost wished I could. Seth was a good guy. And I liked him a lot. But the spark just wasn’t there.
As I rounded the walkway that led to my apartment, I fished around in my bag for my keys. How I could lose an entire key chain in such a small bag, I had no idea, but I was having trouble finding it.
My fingers closed around my key ring when a small scraping sound caught my attention. My heart started to pound as my eyes snapped up. Shit. I should have been paying attention. I knew how dangerous it could be for a woman in this world. I should have been more alert.
The racing of my heart didn’t calm when my eyes landed on the man leaning against the wall by my apartment door. He still wore the same clothes from earlier, but his hair was messy, and his shirt was untucked and wrinkled. His face was haggard, as though he’d aged years in the past few hours.
Brilliant blue eyes latched onto me. I’d stopped walking when I saw him and stood there with my mouth open and my key ring dangling loosely from my hand.
We stared at each other in the shadowed walkway, neither of us moving or speaking.
Finally, I broke the silence. “What are you doing here?”
“I was hoping we could talk.”
My brows lifted at his words, and the anger that filled me at his presumption was the catalyst I needed to get my feet moving again. I walked toward him…well, toward my door. The click of my heels sounded loud and angry on the concrete walkway.
“I think we said everything there was to say last week.”
I stopped a couple of steps away. He was leaning right next to the door, on the same side as the doorknob and deadbolt. Close enough that my shoulder would brush his chest if I stepped forward to use my key.
“I said a lot of things last week that I probably shouldn’t have.”
I eyed him with skepticism. “Which parts specifically?”
He winced. “Is there any way we can have this conversation inside?”
I crossed my arms beneath my breasts and cocked my hip. “I don’t think so.”
His eyes dropped to my chest. The way my arms were crossed made my already prominent cleavage even deeper. I sighed and dropped my arms to my sides even as my skin heated beneath his gaze.
Finally, he looked back up to my face and spoke, “I realize I haven’t been fair to you. I gave you the wrong impression with my behavior without actually talking to you about what I thought about our…situation.”
The pause before his final word was the death knell of any hopes I’d harbored about him. The affection I’d built for him burned to ash in my heart. He couldn’t even bring himself to say the word “relationship.” Even if he’d thought it was casual, it was still a relationship. We didn’t just fuck. We talked, we ate meals together, we laughed. We connected on more than a physical level.
Looking at him now, without foolish hope or budding affection, I could see that the connection terrified him once he realized it was there. Whether he’d ignored it or had been in denial, that connection had grown between us, and it scared the shit out of him.
But his emotions weren’t my responsibility. I reminded myself of that even as I felt the urge to cave.
With a sigh, I closed the space between us, ignoring how my shoulder brushed his chest when turned to fit my key in the deadbolt.
“You should go home, Eli,” I said as I unlocked the door.
When I opened the door and stepped through, he put a hand around the jamb as he stared at me. “I don’t think I can.”
