Page 106 of Forced Into Your Arms
“Act like everything has a simple answer when you don’t want to talk about how you really feel.”
I rubbed a hand across my jaw. “You came here to talk about my feelings?”
“No. I came because seeing you caught me off guard.”
That answer was honest enough to make me stop.
Simone looked down at her hands before continuing. “I knew I’d run into you eventually. Atlanta isn’t that big, especially when we know half the same people. I just didn’t expect the first time I saw you again to be while you were having lunch with another woman.”
“We been broken up almost a year.”
“I know how long we’ve been broken up.”
“Then why would that bother you?”
Her eyes came back to mine. “I didn’t say it bothered me.”
“Then why the fuck you here asking about her?”
“Okay. Maybe it bothered me a little.”
At least she admitted it.
I leaned back in my chair, watching her more closely now. “Why?”
Simone looked at me like the answer should’ve been obvious. “Because I spent three years with you.”
“I know.”
“I loved you.”
Something in her voice changed when she said it. The words came out quieter than everything else had, and for the first time since she walked into my office, I could see past the confidence she always carried. There was still some hurt there, even after all this time.
I held her stare. “I know that too.”
Her face changed almost immediately, and she let out a short laugh as she shook her head. “See, that right there.”
“What?”
“I know.” She repeated the words like she was tired of hearing them. “You always knew how I felt about you, Kaiden. I told you. I showed you. I spent three years loving you and waiting for you to figure out what you wanted, and half the time, all I got from you wasI know.”
I looked away for a second, rubbing my hand across my jaw. There wasn’t much I could say when she wasn’t wrong.
This conversation was starting to sound familiar, except sitting here almost a year later made it harder to brush off the things I hadn’t wanted to deal with when we were together.
Simone and I had been good. For a long time, I thought good was enough. We didn’t argue every day. We enjoyed each other. She had her own life, I had mine, and somehow we always found our way back to each other at the end of the day.
The problem was, eventually, Simone wanted more than good.
She wanted marriage. Kids. A house we picked together instead of spending half the week at my place before she packed her shit and went home because I never asked her to stay for good. She wanted to know that the three years she’d given me were leading somewhere, and every time she tried to talk about the future, I found another reason why right then wasn’t the right time.
I’d cared about her.
Probably more than I ever said, and definitely more than I knew how to show.
Looking at her now, I could admit that maybe that had been part of the problem. I knew Simone loved me, but I’d gotten too comfortable believing she would keep loving me without ever asking me to do anything with it.
Then it was like, every time she started talking about forever, I felt like I needed more time. More time to get my businesses where I wanted them. More time to handle family. More time tobecome whatever kind of man I thought a husband and father was supposed to be.
