Page 145 of Reckless
I was holding the ticket stub for it like a woman who had briefly left her own body and come back halfway through.
“Yes,” I said.“Sorry.Yes.”
She turned to retrieve it.
And that was when he found me.
No pounding footsteps, no wild public plea, no loud voice cutting through the restaurant.
Just Xerses appearing at my side in the foyer mirror first, then beside me in reality, all dark control and demolished eyes and the kind of stillness that only happened when he was very close to losing it and trying not to let anyone see.
The sight of him nearly undid me on contact.
Part of me wanted to turn and go right back into his arms.
I ached to go back into the private room, shut the door, let him pull me into his lap and tell me he understood now and didn’t need the folder and could just love me the right way if I explained it slowly enough.
I wanted to go back to his bed or to when he gave me the stupid tea glasses and the way he touched the back of my neck like even that was intimate.
I wanted, with humiliating force, to take whatever version of him he was still offering and tell myself it was enough.
“Kelly.”
His voice was low.Rough.
“Don’t,” I said without turning.
“Please.”
“That word is not going to work right now.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you saying it?”
“Because I don’t have better ones.”
I kept my eyes on the hostess’s hands as she brought my coat, mostly because if I looked at him before I was ready, I was going to crack.
“Thank you,” I told her.
Then I took the coat, turned to Xerses, and said, “I’m leaving.”
My voice sounded steady.
His face tightened almost imperceptibly.“I know.”
“Then don’t follow me.”
He looked at me for one long second.
Then said the thing that rattled me worse than anything else from the evening.“I ruined everything.”
I stared at him.I ruined everything.
The words hit me right in the center of my chest, because they were so nakedly miserable and so completely unlike the man I had expected him to be when this all started.
And because some part of me wanted to comfort him.
