Her body was responding to what he had asked, carrying her down the steps, bringing her out to her car, starting it up and putting it in drive; she was going through the physical motions of leaving, but her mind felt like it was on a time delay. It was such an abrupt and jarring shift to go from swimming in desire that potent to drowning in rejection, and her thoughts were still scrambling to catch up. And she knew that when it happened, when she finally began to process what had just transpired between them, she would want to be as far away from this place as possible.
Leah cranked the radio, trying to put some noise in her head. She just wanted a little more time before she was forced to think. With the unnecessarily loud music eradicating any possibility of it, she focused only on the curve of the road, the white and yellow lines rushing toward her windshield, the taillights of other cars, and she sank into the comforting numbness of it all.
When she pulled into her parking space and cut the engine, somehow the sudden silence seemed even louder than the music it had replaced, and she sat there staring out of the windshield, trying for a few more minutes to keep her thoughts at bay.
The double beep of her phone snapped her out of her daze, and she reached into her purse apathetically, pulling it out and glancing at the screen.
One new message from Danny.
I’m so sorry Leah. That wasn’t about u, it was about me.
A breathy laugh fell from her lips as she tossed the phone back into her purse. He’d had almost an hour, and the best he could come up with was the “it’s not you, it’s me” routine?
She shook her head as she exited the car, and a rush of cold air hit her in the face, pulling her from her fog and forcing her to feel. And then it all hit her at once.
Confusion. Rejection. Embarrassment. Resignation.
As she entered her apartment and walked straight back to her bedroom, she was certain of two things: she had feelings for Danny, and his issues went far deeper than she initially thought.
In another time, in another life, she may have been able to tough this out with him, to ride out the storm and let him figure himself out while she sat on the sidelines, rolling with the punches and taking a few hits every now and then. But Leah knew she didn’t have it in her to do that now. She promised herself that she would never let a guy screw her around again, and while she knew Danny and Scott weren’t even close to being cut from the same cloth, the bottom line was, he obviously wasn’t ready for what she wanted.
The back and forth, the push and pull, the mixed signals—she had thought they were past all that after their conversation last weekend, but apparently that wasn’t the case. And she valued herself too much to be treated that way, even if she knew it wasn’t coming from someplace malicious. She wouldn’t allow herself to settle for something less than what she wanted, or to wait around hoping for something she might never get.
Life was too short, and she’d already wasted so much time.
Holly had been right; she had gone too fast with Danny. There were things he needed to figure out, broken pieces of his life he needed to fix. And she needed to walk away and allow him to do it. It would be best for both of them at this point. And maybe when he figured everything out, when he could give her one hundred percent of himself, they could try again.
Leah kicked off her shoes and pulled the blanket up over herself, not even bothering to change out of her clothes.
She knew what it felt like to care about him, what it felt like to want him so badly it erased all rational thought from her mind.
And as she closed her eyes, she began dreading what it would feel like to miss him.
He couldn’t believe he was doing this.
Danny closed his eyes and shook his head as he grabbed the pen, scribbling down Leah’s address before he closed the lid on his laptop.
It was bad enough to look up a girl’s address online, but to do it so he could show up at her place uninvited? It didn’t get much creepier than that.
He ran both hands down his face as he exhaled, because in the past twenty-four hours, he’d managed to be both a tease and an asshole, so creep wasn’t really that far of a stretch.
He had texted her twice last night after his initial apology, once asking her to let him know she made it home okay, and the other a few hours later, asking if he could call her in the morning so they could talk. She hadn’t answered either one, and he’d gotten the worst sleep of his life because of it.
He just wanted to explain what had happened the night before. Even if she decided she never wanted to speak to him again, she still deserved an explanation.
He’d already had plans to go in to work late that morning, but now he was debating going in at all. It wasn’t just the fact that he was exhausted—he could work through that. It was because he was completely miserable, and he didn’t feel like dealing with Jake or Tommy or anyone else who would try to get to the bottom of what was up with him.
Instead, he spent the morning lying on his couch, running through all the ways he could have handled things differently last night. He’d heard the saying hindsight was twenty-twenty, but that wasn’t accurate.
Hindsight was a stupid motherfucking asshole.
At around ten o’clock, his phone went off with a text message, and despite the hours he spent warning himself not to get his hopes up, he couldn’t help but feel defeated when he read her words. She told him she wasn’t mad at him, but she just needed some space—that it would be best for both of them if they took a break for a while.
As much as it killed him to do it, at first he complied. He didn’t text her back, figuring that after disrespecting her the night before, the least he could do was respect her wishes now. After all, she didn’t say it was over; she just said she wanted some distance for a while.
But the problem was, he didn’t know if he had a while to give her.
Which ironically brought him full circle, because that was exactly why he shouldn’t have started anything with her in the first place. It was as if the universe was sending him a reminder: Hey, asshole, you should have left her alone to begin with, but since you apparently have no self-control, I’m making the decision for you.
About an hour later, he finally decided to get up and go to work; he needed a distraction, and working in the garage was something that always succeeded in clearing his head.
But when Danny got to his front door, he noticed her jacket, still hanging where he had draped it the night before, and he stopped with his hand on the knob.
Did she realize she’d left it there? She hadn’t mentioned it in her text. But then again, her text wasn’t exactly conversational. Should he message her and tell her he had it? Or would she think he was just making a pathetic attempt at trying to speak to her? Although, how could it be a pathetic attempt if the jacket really was at his place?
Danny closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
He couldn’t do this—this overanalyzing every fucking thing until his head was spinning. And he definitely couldn’t look at that jacket every time he walked in and out of his apartment for the next few weeks.
And just like that, his decision was made. There was an easy solution to both of those problems.
He was going to go to her. He would give her back the coat, and he would tell her everything. Not just why he did what he did last night.
Everything.
He was going to lay all his cards out on the table and deal with the consequences, and if her desire for a temporary break turned permanent, well then, wasn’t that what he had been expecting from the beginning? There was no point in prolonging the inevitable anymore.
So he looked up her address. And then he sat on his couch, staring at the floor with the piece of paper in his hand and a lump of foreboding in his stomach.
He’d never had to tell anyone what he was about to tell her. The people who were important to him already knew, and those who weren’t read about it or heard about it second or third or fourth hand. But he’d never had to say the words—and he knew that somehow, saying them to her was going to make it a thousand times harder.