Page 81 of When the Walls Come Down
The waitress chose that exact moment to walk over and refill our coffee. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Just the check, please,” Heath replied without tearing his eyes off me.
“Oh, the gentleman who was with you earlier paid for it.”
And just like that, the dam I’d spend twenty-four years crafting inside me cracked wide open.
My chin hit my chest, and a loud sob broke free.
Of course he’d paid. Of course he had. That was Shane, shattered and hurt and still so Goddamned thoughtful that he’d paid for a breakfast he hadn’t even eaten.
“Jesus Christ,” Heath said, moving around the table and folding me into his strong arms. “What the hell is going on? I’ll keep my opinions to myself, but you gotta open your mouth and tell me some of your own. I didn’t even know you were serious about this guy. You’ve only been out here a month.”
“Things have moved…fast with Shane.”
Hello, understatement.
Things had been moving at warp speed since he sidled up next to me on that stool at Two Ships. Did I even have a right to be upset? I knew he’d been married before; presumably, it was something he would want again someday. Not to mention that he’d told me all about how much he loved his nieces and nephew on our very first date.
And truth be told, I wanted a husband and kids one day too. I even kind of liked his idea of a house and a picket fence. But not today. Or tomorrow. Or even next year. I was twenty-four with the whole world in front of me. All of that seemed like the distant, distant future. Say, possibly when I was thirty-three.
Maybe age wasn’t just a number. Maybe it was a place in life, and in the last hour, it had become blindingly obvious that Shane and I were in completely different places on that timeline.
The tears continued to slide down my cheeks as his voice ricocheted inside me like a stray bullet. “Don’t you love me?”
Yes. I loved him. I didn’t know his middle name or even his birthday, but I knew with my whole heart that I loved him. I also knew that was exactly our problem. As I’d stared at him on that sidewalk, pure destruction showing on his face, the impossibility of being who he needed had struck me hard.
Love wasn’t going to give him the life he wanted.
Love wasn’t going to solve our differences.
Love wasn’t going to suddenly make me ready to jump into a life he’d planned without even consulting me first.
However, if I’d uttered those four simple letters to him, it would have changed everything. He’d have put me first. He would have sat outside on that balcony, an entire fucking brick wall between us, allowing everything he’d planned to pass him by simply because that was what I needed. He was such a good guy he probably would have smiled while he did it too.
I’d worked my ass off to make sure I wasn’t my mom, stuck in a life full of regret.
But one day, if he knew how I truly felt, Shane would become that.
I couldn’t live with that on my conscience.
Someone as incredible as Shane Warren deserved to have it all.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be part of that equation. Not for him.
As that reality threatened to split my chest in two, I hated it all that much more, knowing that soon enough, he’d be feeling it too.
I scrubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and leaned into my brother’s chest. “Oh God, this hurts.”
Heath glided a hand up and down my back. “Just breathe, babe. If shit’s been moving fast, maybe you need to slow it down for a while. What if you come with me to LA? I’ve got a suite for the week. You can hang out during the day while I’m in meetings. We’ll tour the city at night.”
“I have to work on Monday.”
“Fuck work. Take a personal day.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Casey would understand if I told him I needed a few days off. If I took my computer, I could even work from the hotel.
Breaking up with your neighbor who you were still in love with was definitely going to pose a few obstacles for us over the next few months. If I went to LA now, Shane and I could both have a couple of days and a few hundred miles of space to clear our heads. Maybe when I got back, we could sit down and have an adult conversation about why this was never going to work.
Maybe with enough time, we could even be friends again in the future.
And yes, I knew all of that was a load of shit even as I thought it. I had to hold on to hope though. Otherwise, I would have fallen apart.
