I brush past Loreena, heading for the basement stairs. She doesn’t rush after me. She doesn’t run or even take a step, but she does call out.
“Where are you going?”
“Out. I need air.”
It’s not the words that are unforgivable. It’s the fact that I’m going somewhere where I know Loreena can’t follow.
Chapter 15
Loreena
Was Maverick maybe slightly an asshole last night? Yes. But also… no. Everyone has a right to voice doubts and spiral a little. Or a lot. God, look at how much grace he’s given me.
It’s true what I said. While everyone has been paying attention to me, Maverick has gone through hell and back. Yes, hell can look like someone wearing a smile, toughing it through, and saying they’re okay. Maybe he is. Maybe he’s not. Either way, he’s allowed to be frustrated. He’s entitled to be scared, hurt, angry, and afraid.
The things he said? They were hard truths, but maybe that’s what I needed to hear more than soft platitudes.
Whether they were said in the heat of the moment or not, his words resonated with me for the rest of the night. I gave him his space even after I heard him come in. He didn’t drive away. I watched through the basement window. He just walked off.
I didn’t see him come back a few hours later, but I did hear the door open and close quietly, and then his steps echoing above.
His words percolated through me, bitter and bold. I stewed in them for hours, thinking them over fully, before I finally got up and went upstairs and made real coffee.
It’s a beautiful morning, the sun making a rare cloudless appearance, light streaming through the open blinds of theliving room’s bay window. After the rough night, Maverick is sprawled out, finally asleep, and obviously deep enough that the sound of the espresso hissing and gurgling in the kitchen didn’t disturb him.
I intended to wake him up, placate him with coffee, and tell him that he was right and I’d made a decision, but I can’t help going into full on creep mode instead. I just stand here, a mug of coffee in each hand, staring at the man before me.
Despite ten hard years, he’s beautiful awake, and even more so unguarded in sleep. His thick lashes rest against the darker smudges under his eyes. His cheeks always had a hollow to them, but at rest, in the sunlight, it’s even more obvious. His jaw is dusted with such a dark shadow of stubble that if he left it a few more days it would almost be a full beard. His lips are pursed as though he’s deep in thought, even in his dreams.
He only grows more handsome to me every day, but that’s because he’s allowing me to know all of him and see how wonderful he is on the inside. He’s not a man who needs masks or a hard exterior. He doesn’t lie to himself. He didn’t lie to me last night either. It might have been tough, hearing some of those things, but it was worse listening to him say horrible things about himself. He had every right to his truth, and it takes a big person to be able to churn that over, admit it to themselves, and put it out into the world.
He’s been willing to accept me since the first letter and the first moment of our meeting in person. I can accept the whole package of who he is, flaws included. That’s what I was trying to say last night, but I don’t think it came out right.
I don’t want to wake him after so little sleep, but I think his back and neck might thank me later. Guilt kicks me in the assbefore I remind myself that Maverick couldn’t sleep in the bed any better than he does on this couch. It was more than just us saying we wouldn’t do things, doing them anyway, and finding that confusing as fuck.
“Maverick?”
He’s normally a light sleeper, but exhaustion must finally have caught up with him. I nudge his foot with mine. When my bare toes make contact with his sock, my stomach flips. It suddenly seems like a strangely intimate way to touch a person.
He had his tongue in your pussy last night, and you think footsie is intimate?
My face heats up, and I clear my throat just so I don’t go back to thinking about that. I have something else I need to say first. “Maverick?”
He jerks awake, eyes opening, but there’s no panic or a mad scramble. He’s not backthere. He sits up slowly, blinking sleepily. He rakes a hand through his hair, mussing it further, butmygod. Even in a rumpled t-shirt, yesterday’s jeans, and after a hard couple of nights with very little rest, he has the exact sexily rumpled look that most men try to channel for photos.
I swallow thickly and hold out the coffee I made him. “I have something to say.” That’s about as awkward as it gets, but Maverick just takes the mug and sets it down on the coffee table.
He rolls his neck quickly and violently so that it cracks loudly, then scrubs a hand over his face and groans.
“I just wanted to say that I know you’re frustrated and not just with me.” I perch on the edge of the couch, keeping enough distance between us. I sip the coffee and give silent thanks that Scythe is such a coffee snob. This is the best java I’ve ever tastedin my life. “I know you weren’t trying to punish me last night. You just needed to clear your head. You were edgy and probably wanted to be alone, and I was the one who came to you and pressed you instead of giving you space. I thought I could help.”
He blinks slowly. That was too much, too soon. He’s probably still half asleep. I’m about to apologize, but his dark eyes sweep to me, soft and languid and shining with something so deep that I know he heard me just fine.
“I know you just wanted to help me,” he sighs.
I want to fold that sound into me, to store it up. Not because I think I’m going to have to let it go, but because there’s nothing about this man that isn’t a treasure.
“I know that too. About… you.” I swallow another gulp of coffee. I never imagined my heart as a thing with ropes or chains, but they’ve been there for a long time, growing link by link and letter by letter, forged impossibly strong, binding me to him. “I didn’t go back to sleep after you left. I thought about what you said. I realize that I might have been wrong all these years.”
