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“Jessica.”
Electricity went through me at the voice I recognized despite all of the other noise around me, and I froze.
“Jessica?” Paul gave me a confused look.
“I’ll take it from here,” Derrick said, putting his hand on my arm. “Thanks.”
I didn’t look at him as my heart pounded against my rib cage. What was Derrick doing here? Not once in the time we’d been together had we come here.
To his credit, Paul didn’t move away just because Derrick said to. Instead, the blond man asked me, “Are you with him?”
That was a loaded question that I didn’t know how to answer, but I did know that it wouldn’t be fair to Paul to put him in the middle of things between Derrick and me, especially since I couldn’t seem to get Derrick out of my head.
Instead of trying to explain, I smiled at Paul and said, “Thank you for the dance.”
He looked back and forth between Derrick and me, as if judging whether or not I was safe, before nodding and heading off through the crowd.
Derrick pulled me around to face him and began to dance. We weren’t as close as I’d imagined we would be, but there still wasn’t much space between us. He kept my hand in his as we moved together. The only indication that he was feeling anything but calm was the way his thumb made back and forth movements across my skin.
“Did you know I was here?” I asked. “Or are you here with someone?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Would I be dancing with you if I was here with someone else?”
I wished I could say that I believed he wouldn’t do something like that, but the monogamy clause of our contract no longer applied. He was a man with certain appetites, and I didn’t know what he’d been doing or with whom since I’d walked out. And it wasn’t my business anymore.
“Amelia told me a group of you were coming here tonight,” he said when it became clear I wasn’t going to answer his semi-rhetorical question.
A flare of hope went off inside me, the hope that he’d come to tell me that he’d made a mistake keeping everything business and sex between us. Hope that he was going to tell me that he felt the same way about me that I felt about him.
Because I couldn’t deny it, not with him holding me as we danced. Not with the way he was looking at me.
I still loved him.
“I wanted to talk to you about something face-to-face,” he continued. “I think we rushed into getting married. If you’re willing to back up a bit and date me again, I’ll honor the rental agreement I made with your parents.”
Something inside me shattered and it took everything in me to keep from showing it on my face.
I was just something else for him to buy.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t trying to give me actual money or that he was talking about resuming a business agreement I’d already agreed to once. It was clearer than ever that a relationship with Derrick was just another business transaction for him.
I didn’t know why I’d expected anything different. It wasn’t as if he’d hidden any of this from me before. Hell, all anyone had to do to find out his opinion of women was pick up one of his books. I hadn’t even needed to do that though. He hadn’t once expressed an interest in me or an attraction to me before presenting me with his little social experiment proposal.
And he’d made it quite clear that, for him, sex was just physical release.
Thinking we could have something more was all on me, and I couldn’t fault him for that.
But that didn’t mean I had to accept that arrangement again.
Even though I loved him, I couldn’t be with him under these circumstances. Or rather it wasbecauseI loved him that I couldn’t do it. I refused to put myself through that heartbreak again. It wouldn’t be fair to me or to Derrick. I’d rather not have him at all than only have part of him.
All of these thoughts went through my head in a matter of seconds so when I finally came to my conclusion, Derrick was still patiently watching me, waiting for my answer.
I took a step back, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, Derrick. I can’t.”
And then I fled, praying no one could see the tears streaming down my face as I went.
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