Page 82 of Crash

Blake stepped into the room, and the air seemed to thin. “Tessa, I’m really sorry.”

“Let me stop you right there.” I held up a hand, hating how my voice wanted to shake. “I don’t need thesorry for giving you the wrong impressionspeech. Message received. You work long hours; you don’t do relationships. Done. See? We never have to talk about it again.”

Something flashed in his eyes. Pain? Pity? So help me if it was pity.

“Don’t leave. We can work something out where you never have to see me. I’ll be like a ghost.”

I looked at him then, really looked at him. At the tension in his jaw, the shadows under his eyes, the way his hands kept clenching and unclenching at his sides. And suddenly, Ineeded to reclaim some dignity from this mess, dignity that had absolutely nothing to do with living arrangements.

“I want to make one thing clear.” I crossed my arms and approached him, chin up, shoulders back, like I was facing a difficult vendor instead of the man who’d turned my world upside down. “What happened on the terrace was a mistake. Just hormones. Nothing more.”

His jaw ticced, and something darkened in his expression. The words hung between us like a gauntlet thrown, but eventually, Blake swallowed hard—hard, mind you—a muscle working in his cheek before he nodded.

“Good.” I turned back to my suitcase, pretending to reorganize things that were already perfectly arranged. “We’re both adults. Let’s just pretend this never happened.”

“Does that mean you’ll stay?” The hope in his voice made something crack inside my chest.

“No.”

I stared down at my half-packed suitcase, mind spinning through alternatives. My place with its possible mold. My brother, who would immediately take over my medical care and probably my entire life, and the energy I’d spend fighting with him every second to stop it from happening. Scarlett’s tiny new apartment with no parking. Each option felt like choosing between different flavors of terrible and, more importantly, options that would ruin my chance to pull off this wedding.

“I can stay at a hotel,” Blake offered quietly.

A hotel. God, if only my credit lines weren’t maxed out, that’d be the perfect scenario for me to go to.

But no matter how mad I was at Blake …

“I’m not kicking you out of your home.”

He was doing a lot for me, and he didn’t deserve to have to uproot his life even more than he had. Nor did he deserve to be loathed this much.

Goddammit. That inconvenient guilt charged back through my chest like a wrecking ball. Why couldn’t my heart just pick a team? Team Be Furious with Him or Team Blake Has Done More for You in the Past Few Days Than Anyone Has Done in Their Life.And even after you were mean to him, he’s still doing nice things for you, so be grateful and kind.

He studied me, and when he spoke, his voice was … God, it was awful, hearing the hurt in it.

“Just … think about it until morning?” he pleaded.

I looked up at him then, and for a moment, I saw something in his eyes that made my breath catch. Something that made me wonder if Scarlett was right, if there was more to this story than I knew. His bruised knuckles flexed at his sides, and the gesture was so perfectly Blake—violence wrapped in control, passion hidden behind restraint—that it made my ribs tighten.

“Fine,” I said, the word barely a whisper. “I’ll think about it until morning.”

I didn’t wait for his response, just grabbed my toiletry bag and retreated to the bathroom, but suddenly, I stilled. Turned. And kept my voice softer, void of all the hurt and anger.

“No matter how this turns out, I want you to know that I really am grateful for everything you’re doing for me, Blake.”

I met his gaze, his empathetic, impossible-to-stay-mad-at-him-forever gaze.

“If there’s anything I can ever do to return the favor,” I continued, “don’t hesitate to ask.”

His head slanted into the world’s sexiest tilt.

“All I want is for you to get better, Tess. So, please, stay.”

I bit my lip, then pushed the handle. The door clicked shut behind me with a finality that felt like the punctuation on everything we’d just said.

I pressed my back against the cool wood and slid down to the floor, drawing my knees to my chest.

Seven weeks. Could I survive seven weeks of this exquisite torture, of wanting something I couldn’t have, of living with a man who’d drawn a line I hadn’t even known existed until we’d crossed it?