She bites her lip.
My. God.
“It’s not a good idea. It’s never a good idea when it comes to you.”
I take the blow and remain standing.
“Don’t do it again.”
“What?”
“Come into my life and then disappear.”
Her words open a gash in my heart capable of sucking everything around us into it. Every table, chair, sofa; every person and every damn sigh that escapes her mouth.
I’d like to take all of it and make it more luminous and more perfect for her, because Riley is simply perfect and everything else is tarnished by comparison.
I am nothing in comparison.
“Riley…” I breathe hard and let out the strangling thought that has always been within me – and it’s time to tell her. “I’m the one who wants you to come back into my life,” I say, without considering the consequences of what I’m saying, the effect they could have on her.
The moment my words make contact with the air, her eyes find mine, penetrating so deeply that I’m afraid she may have hit my soul and may now understand how worked up I am for her.
“I’m not what you want, Ian O’Connor. We both know that.”
I swallow, trying once again to send away this feeling that’s trying to make its way up to my lips, transform into words and fly to her. Trying to diminish all of her insecurities, and to show her that she’s perfect, that she hasn’t done anything wrong, that I was the one who screwed up.
“You don’t know what you are, Riley.”
I’m panting. My heart is going crazy. It’s like you’re falling off a cliff, and no one hears you screaming, no one reaches out to help you. I’m going to shout as loud as I can for her to hear me.
“Give me a chance.”
“You had your chance.”
“I was an idiot.”
“You still are, Ian.”
“You’re right, I know.”
“I’m not going to let my heart be broken by someone like you.”
“But what if I wanted to put it all back together?”
“That’d be rich, seeing as you’re the one who crushed it in the first place.”
“Just one chance. That’s all I’m asking for.”
She looks at me doubtfully.
“You’re a bastard, O’Connor.”
“I know what I am and I know that I’m not going to change but I want to beyourbastard.”
She shakes her head but can’t hide a little grin.
“One chance,” she says, stirring her coffee. “But you’ll have to earn it,” she says, serious. There’s a wrestling match going on in my stomach.
