Eliza looks at me with a slightly nauseated expression. “Tell me she didn’t.”
“She found out I haven’t kicked the bucket and wants back in on the Rawlings money.” It surely wasn’t for me.
“Do you want to get back together?” she asks in a voice so small it twists my insides.
“It would have ended anyway. She knew it wasn’t serious.”
Eliza nods but a dark cloud passes over her face. “Even if you’d have ended things at some point, it’s still not OK for her to ditch you when you were at your worst.”
Her righteous anger on my behalf is amusing. What would she say if I told her about the rest of my dating history? Would she look at me the same or as the stupidest man to walk this earth?
My focus is solely on Eliza. After I found out what it feels like to have her, I’m obsessed.
“Everything is a mess,” she mumbles into the pillow after another day of rotting in front of the computer for hours at the shop.
“I know how to make you relax. I saw these in the drawer the first night I arrived.” I fish out a box of condoms from my pocket.
“Go and buy some yourself. Just in case I poked holes in those.”
So, she’s still angry about how I reacted. I know I screwed up, but I couldn’t sleep as a wave of panic washed away any rational thought. The nagging paranoia tortured me until I jumped out of bed and called one of my security men to find the nearest pharmacy.
Eliza pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. That was unnecessarily mean. But seriously, you should. For your peace of mind.”
How can she be so kind and considerate? I’m certain I offended her on so many levels.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It’s the truth.” She takes a deep breath and decides to let me see another hidden part of her. “I don’t want somebody to be stuck with me. I want to have a family with somebody who chooses me,” she says, her small palm pressing on the middle of her chest.
The admission weighs heavy in the air between us. I cup her jaw and kiss apologies into her skin. Touch her until she’s panting, and I get drunk on the small noises coming out in heated breaths.
I cram her into the small shower and show her the filthy things I imagined doing to her.
The red marker crosses out another day with an annoying scratch I hadn’t noticed before. Six more weeks to go. It occurs to me I’ve thought less and less about returning to the office.
“If you keep glaring, it might catch fire.”
“I was just checking—”
“How much longer you have to stay here.” She gives me that small smile I’ve come to recognize. The one putting people at ease. The one that covers her sadness or worry. What she’s not saying out loud is I’m using her and running at the first chance. Am I? Isn’t this what we agreed on?
I told myself I wouldn’t stay the night in her bed. There needs to be a clear line in the sand.
Eliza never says anything. She watches me go, all spent, wrapped in crumpled sheets, cheeks flushed, and lips swollen.
I find it harder and harder to leave.
These mornings with Eliza are something I’ll take to the grave with me. I pack and store for old age the sounds in the kitchen, the smells, Eliza telling me stories about the town, little snippets from her childhood, the endless teasing and kissing her against the pantry door.
I never intended to cross this line, but now the urge to taste her lips is all-consuming. The push and pull, the nips and licks, her soft tongue tracing my sensitive inner lip until want is all consuming and my skin burns too hot.
The cold shower comes in the form of my little sister dropping by unannounced. The crunch of tires in the driveway brings me to the front door in a flash, geared up for a confrontation in case it’s one of the people Eliza doesn’t want to see.
My steps falter when I spot a dark SUV and one of the Rawlings guards I recognize moves to the back of the car and opens the door.
My sister steps gingerly out of the backseat and smiles brightly when she notices me in the doorway, sprinting to launch herself in my arms.
“I gave you space for weeks so you wouldn’t bite my head off. I see I was worried for nothing.” She pirouettes and takes in the place. “You seem to have settled well enough. It’s cozy.” Jackie walks into the kitchen and spots Eliza. “Oh, hello!”
