“This isn’t a place for someone like you,” he said.
Her lips parted. “Someone like me?”
He gripped the steering wheel harder than he needed to. “Someone who still believes the best in people. Who doesn’t know when to quit caring.”
She let out a short, incredulous laugh. “So your solution is to kiss me and then push me away?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and the words hurt coming out. He’d brought her tonight for selfish reasons. That morning, she’d called him “Mr. Hale,” her voice clipped and formal, like they were back to being strangers. He should have let her go and made it easier on both of them. But he couldn’t. It was already too late for him, and sadistically, he wanted one night where he could pretend that was okay.
“Are you being serious right now?” she asked. “You’re just going to kiss me, say that, and that’s it?”
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Because you’re still married?”
“No. No, it’s not that.”
“Then why?”
“Damn it, Honey. There are things in my life you don’t understand.”
“And you are incapable of explaining them? Or do you think I’m incapable of understanding?”
His hands ached with the grip on the steering wheel. He flicked his eyes to her, then back to the road. Brimrose Lane disappeared in the rearview mirror, its cheerful colors fading into the dark. They rolled onto the long stretch of two-lane road, until there was nothing but shadowed trees on either side.
Her gaze didn’t waver from the side of his face. “Why would you kiss me if you didn’t mean it?”
That was the problem. He had meant it. He kissed her because he couldn’t not kiss her. Because he couldn’t feel what he felt for her and spend the rest of his life not knowing what it would be like to be hers for even a second. For one long, reckless moment, he let himself believe they could stay right there forever.
Then the bells shattered it.
“You couldn’t understand,” he said.
“Certainly not if you don’t try.”
He couldn’t possibly explain what he felt for her. Being around her, even when she was driving him mad, maybe even especially then, made him feel hope when he had no right to it. The truth of the matter was that he was a single dad to three beautiful, wonderful girls, but he was failing. He was so far underwater financially he hadn’t hada second to breathe in what felt like years. His heart was a mess. His temper was short. His life was not suited for someone like Honey. She deserved better than what he could offer.
“Mr. Hale,” she said, her tone clipped. Then softer, pleading in a way that burned his throat, “Ethan.”
Her voice scraped something raw in him. Frustration tightened in his chest. “Damn it, Honey. The bells.”
“The what?”
“The bells tolled when I kissed you.”
She blinked, startled, before her expression hardened. “That’s what you’re panicking about? One kiss, and you’re afraid I’ve fallen for you?”
“I know you have.”
Her chin lifted, eyes flashing in the dim dashboard light. “You think I don’t know my own feelings? I am in perfect control of my faculties, Ethan Hale.”
He huffed a humorless laugh. “The bells don’t care about control.”
She finally looked away from him then, facing forward and looking into shadows before the front windshield. Ethan should have let it go then, but he didn’t.
“People in town like to talk about the bells like they’re some kind of blessing,” he laughed humorlessly. “But believe me, they don’t mean you get forever. They mean you get one perfect moment, and then you lose it.”
She shook her head like she couldn’t believe him, but he wasn’t done.
