“Addie…”
The arm suddenly dropped and the warmth disappeared from her back.
She turned slowly, and the pain on Noah’s face…it killed something inside her. He looked pained and angry and frustrated, and he searched her body like he was looking for injury. An injury he’d inflicted. He wouldn’t find one.
“You didn’t hurt me,” she whispered.
“I could have.” He scrubbed his hands over his face with shaking fingers. “Are you okay?” he asked when his hands dropped.
“I told you, you didn’t hurt me. How areyou?”
She stepped forward, but Noah mirrored her move, stepping away from her, keeping that space that felt too big between them.
She hated the distance. It felt like a wall she couldn’t cut through. An immovable barrier between them. “Noah—”
“I should have trusted my gut. Even Toby agreed with me.”
She frowned. “Toby?”
“I’m being selfish by keeping you. I’m thinking about me, not you or your safety.”
“Hey.” Another step forward, but again he backed away. “You’renotbeing selfish. We’re in this together. I want to go through this with you.”
“I’m dragging you into my shit. I’m trying to have you before I’ve done the work and made sure I’m okay. And if I’m not okay, you won’t be either. You won’t be safe around me.”
Fear started to weave through her bones. Fear of what was about to come. That he was going to hurt her, hurtthem, before they’d even given this relationship a chance.
“You’re not dragging me anywhere,” she pushed. “We’re both adults. We’re both making the choice to be here. To love each other.”
“It hasn’t been equal though. I’m your boss. I’m older than you. There’s a power imbalance.”
They were back to that? “I’m not a child. I’m an adult.”
“And I’ve come close to hurting you so many fucking times.”
Four. He’d come close to hurting her four times. Because he was struggling.
She wanted to fight for him, forthem. To tell him he would never hurt her…but he was right. It wasn’t an impossibility. And what if one day he did? What if one day he didn’t snap back to the present in time?
It would destroy him. And that would destroy her.
He rounded the couch so that it sat between them, big and immovable. “I need to go.”
“Go where? This is your home.” Her words were barely a whisper.
He turned.
“Noah, please stop.” The rational part of her brain told her to let him go. He needed space and time, and trying to keep him would be for her. It would be selfish. But there was also this achedeep in her belly…one that told her to grab onto him and not let go. One that felt completely empty without him.
“No, Addison. We can’t do this anymore.”
And there it was. The words she’d been waiting for. The words she’d feared. They sat in the air, and she was too scared to touch them.
“You’re breaking up with me.” She wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. It didn’t matter. The pain that burned inside her was the same either way.
And it all amounted to the same thing—she needed to let him do what he thought he needed to do…and trust and hope that he returned to her.
But it still hurt. God, it hurt.
