She barks out a cathartic laugh that verges devastatingly close to a sob.
“It’s heartbreaking,” I finish, no damn clue if I want to smile or scowl. Laugh with her, or smash something. The only thing Iknow for sure is that my heart hurts. And fuck,that’s new. “I want you to want me even when youcanbreathe. Not only when you can’t.”
“I want you to want me so desperately that life ceases to exist until we’re together again,” she counters on a crackling whisper. “I want you to be crawling out of your skin because you need me right there in front of you. Like, even in the absence of trauma, the risk of losing me makes it hard to think. I want you to make me feel like youcan’tstay away. And if this is just a distraction from my grief and not real? If I wake up eventually, and you’re walking out the door because what I thought we had was just me and a hefty dose of dissociation, then that’s the price I’ll pay.Later. When my lungs have healed, and my head no longer swims.”
Giving up on my search, I set the watch down and beside it, my elbow, so I can lean over my arm and rest my face in my hand. “So, you want something, even if it’s fake, and you don’t care if it ends later, because by then, you’ll be healed enough to walk on your own?”
She wants to throw herself into a fucking romance and forget the real world. Which is literally everything I need to get my job done and Aster off my back.
Why should I care about her reasons?
Because I give a fuck about the woman too pure for this life, that’s why. Because using her up and walking away when I’m done may become the worst sin I’ve ever committed.
And I’m a man who’s known a few.
“You willingly toss yourself into a fantasy?”
“Right now?” Her voice rattles, thick with emotion. “I’ll go literally anywhere, with anyone, if it means I can escape thispain I feel. But to go toyou? To be with you?” she whispers. “That’s a fantasy I might enjoy, even when it’s over and you leave.”
“And you’re so sure I will?”
“Everyone does.” She sniffles. “It’s my curse.”
Fuck. Me.
Shoot. Me.
And put me in a deep, dark, unmarked grave.
It’s where I deserve to be.
“Maybe we could start out slow?”Who the fuck am I? “Dinner, maybe? Something Ryan wouldn’t throw a fit over. No fully fledged sex maniac fantasies while you’re still crying at the drop of a hat.”
“Lincoln—”
“I’m just saying, if we’re messing around and you start crying, I’m not sure I’ll recover. It’ll be like the dude with the small dick. We could create one of those groups.If Nova Nichols has personally emasculated you, we meet on Thursdays and Sundays at noon. BYO coffee.”
She chokes out a snotty laugh, sniffling and drawing in a jerky, despairing breath.
“It’s a genuine fear! I would never recover from that kind of rejection.”
“I’ve never cried during sex.” She snickers. “I don’t know if that brings you comfort, but in all the years and all the men?—”
“Don’t tell me their names,” I growl. “Don’t tell me how many there have been or where you fucked or how often you did it or if you loved them. Dammit, Nova. I assure you, I don’t wanna know.”
She snickers again. “Okay.”
“Dinner? Maybe we could hold hands or something. Risk it all and kiss you on the cheek when I bring you home again.”
“You heathen. You only want me for one thing.”
I’m smiling. Fuck knows, I forgot I was standing in Ryan Nichols’ bedroom, searching his things, and preparing to steal from a woman who deserves so much better. But her words, so innocently spoken, bring me screaming back to reality as gently as a brick to my face.
To theone thingI want from her.
“Did you, uh…” Pushing off the drawers, I snatch up the watch and slip it into my pocket, then I tuck his notebook back in the top drawer. There’s nothing in it except a list of groceries and what might be random song lyrics. Or poems, maybe. He wouldn’t be the first soldier to settle in during the quiet hours and put pen to paper. “You said you needed to call about my loan, too?”
“Oh. Yeah.” She goes back to crinkling her paper bag. “That was a smooth conversation transition. They teach you that in the military?”
