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It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her just how much I want her, how much she means to me, words of love that have never crossed my lips bursting to come out, when her phone rings.
“Ugh, work,” she sighs, leaving me to grab her cell off the nightstand closest to her. She must have gone and retrieved it from her purse sometime during the night, her charger plugged into the outlet too.
“I’ll leave you to it.”
I slip on my boxers and hop out of bed to make my way into the adjoining bathroom to relieve myself, staring at my reflection in the mirror as I wash my hands afterward. There’s a shit-eating grin on my face, my body so fucking buoyant I can practically feel my heels lifting off the ground.
No matter what Dad throws at me today, how he tries to spin it as my fault, at least I have Mackenzie now. And like she said, I held up my end of the deal. He can’t blame me for that.
I walk back into the bedroom, about to renew my request for her to actually take a full day off for a change, only to find her sitting up on the side of the bed, feet on the floor and fully dressed again, staring at her phone.
She glances up as I approach, her sober expression sending a rush of ice through my veins.
“What is it?”
“That was Serena,” she says, her voice almost monotone. “She talked to her dad and… the wedding is still on.”
Those buoyant heels come crashing down, so much that I nearly stumble before reaching a hand out toward the wall to steady myself. “What?”
“You’re still engaged.”
It takes me a moment to process her words, each individual word making sense, but put together in that order… no, it can’t be right.
It’s only when her lower lip trembles for the briefest second before firming it that I know it’s real.
I stagger over to kneel in front of her, cupping her face as tears pool in those beautiful hazel eyes, the green and brown blurring until I can barely make out the color. Or maybe that’s just my eyes getting blurry. “This doesn’t have to change anything.”
“It does.”
She places her hands on my wrists and sets me away from her, slipping out from between me and the bed to stand on the other side of the room, wiping surreptitiously at her cheeks. “Last night was a… blip. We’ll go back to the way things were before.”
Is she kidding? “Which part of before? Where we admitted how much we actually want each other? Or where we masturbated in front of each other?”
She presses her lips together tightly, and I swear it’s not my intention to piss her off, but I need to make her understand. “I can’t go back to how it was before. You can’t deny what’s between us. Even when we try to stay apart, we find our way to each other anyway.”
I take a step toward her, but she holds out a hand, her arm shaky. “Gabriel, if we get caught, we’ll both lose everything. Your money. Your relationship with your family. My business. I’d bet anything your father will make sure of it. I can’t-” She pauses to sniff, then composes herself again. “It’s too risky.”
My heart tears to shreds with each word she utters, her reasoning perfectly logical, but I’m not in the realm of logic anymore. There’s more at stake now.
“I shouldn’t have come over here,” she continues. “I should have made sure it was a done deal before I-”
“No. Don’t regret what happened. I don’t. Not for one second.” The memory of last night is the only thing that’ll get me through the next couple weeks if she’s serious about staying apart.
She looks at me, desperate pleading in her eyes for just a moment before she clears it, bending down to grab her heels.
I reach out a hand to her and she finally lets me touch her, using me for balance to finish putting on her shoes. “Tell me you don’t regret it,” I murmur.
She closes her eyes, gripping my fingers tightly. “I don’t,” she admits. “I should, but I don’t.” She lets go of me, opening the bedroom door. “But it can’t happen again. I’ve said that before, and I hate seeming so wishy-washy, but I mean it this time.”
“Okay, fine. We can just go back to flirting, talking dirty to each other. That’s not hurting anyone.”
“Me,” she whispers, the fight leaving her momentarily. “It would hurt me. I know it was my idea, but the thought of staying on the edge like that, playing with fire… If I’m being honest, I can’t trust myself around you. It’s been so hard resisting you already.”
“You don’t have to resist me,” I growl. When will she realize I’m hers?
Her eyes narrow, glowering at me as she pushes my shoulder. “I’m trying to do the right thing here. Why won’t you let me do the right thing?”
“Fuck what’s right.Thisis right.” I take her hand again, squeezing her fingers. “What if I called off the wedding?” My gaze flicks between her eyes, searching for the smallest bit of acceptance, anything that might give us a chance.