Page 12 of Gentleman Wanted
Yet, we couldn’t seem to look each other in the eye.
I broke first. “Your back must be hurting from sleeping against the door. Why don’t you go and have a shower or a bath or something?” For a second, he caught my gaze, and I looked away guiltily.
I could imagine him naked and soaking wet so easily. It made me blush. Heat crept up my neck and over my cheeks.
“Gem….” His voice was strangled as if I had said something suggestive, and my already scarlet cheeks flamed further.
The way he was looking at me. The heat in his eyes. It spoke volumes.
“I wasn’t saying we should have a bath.” My words were coming out in a jumbled rush. Even staring down at my sleeping son, I could feel his eyes on me.
“I wouldn’t mind ifwehad a bath, Gem.” Gent’s voice was so quiet, so soft that I almost didn’t hear it. I almost thought I had imagined it.
“Do you want me to put him back in his crib for a while?” Just like that, he changed the subject. Almost like he could tell I was uncomfortable.
“Or…”
“Or what, Gent?” I didn’t mean for my voice to come out like it did. “We are home now and….”
I didn’t even know how I was going to finish that sentence, but I didn’t get a chance to find out. His eyes blazed. “Don’t say that you two aren’t my responsibility, Gem. You never were. I didn’t look after you both because I had to. I did it because I wanted to.”
“Why are you angry with me?” Tears flooded my eyes. I wasn’t sure what had happened. We had gone from our first, chaste kiss to him talking to me with so much venom in his voice it was actually scary.
“Shit.” He froze. His hand tugging at his hair. “I don’t know, Gem. I don’t know what the hell I am feeling right now, you know. It’s harder being home than I thought. I thought we would go back to the way things were.”
His words ripped through me, back to the way things were meant barely talking to each other. It meant not watching movies together on a Sunday evening. Or laughing together… it meant not being together.
“We can go back to the ways things were.” Strangely my voice came out firm. “Hell, you already did. Have you even washed the smell of club slut off of you?”
Gent recoiled back like I had slapped his face, and then slowly, he stood. Drawing himself up to his full height, he rolled his shoulders.
“I think you should leave.”
“Gem.”
“I can never thank you enough for everything you have done, Gent. But I think if we are going to get back to normal, then we shouldn’t see each other for a while.”
For several long seconds, he stared at me. “Is that what you want?”
No. I wanted to scream the word at him, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t beg him. Space was what we needed. The feelings I was feeling weren’t real. They were the result of living with him for so long.
“Yes.”
Gent paused, his eyebrows slammed down and then, without another word, he walked out the door.
