He slips the strap of my top off my shoulder, kissing from there to my collarbone. “I’m waiting.”
“Would you still want me back if I wasn’t with him?
“Hell yes. I came back before I even knew.”
I nod. He moves to the other shoulder.
“And, I need you to stay. No matter how hard things get—what demons invade—I need to know you’ll let me help you through it. That you’ll help me through mine.”
Finally, he looks back into my eyes. “I can’t promise that I won’t need a break, but I promise that I’ll always come back. Every day, I work through it, and every day, it gets a little better. We both just need a little patience.”
I nod again. I can live with that.
He untucks my shirt, running his fingers along my bare stomach. I grip his wrist before he can go any further. “There’s one more piece.” My heart aches just thinking about it. “I need to talk to him first. I never wanted to be this girl, and if I don’t stop this now before I have a chance to talk to him, the guilt is going to follow me.”
“I want to come with you.”
“This is something I just need to do.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to,” I admit.
His hands fall away from me. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
He scrubs his hands over his chiseled jaw, and I imagine them all over me … where they should have been all along. “I’m going to stay here tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t stand the thought of going back to that apartment and not having you in my bed.”
I’m at a loss for words. I can’t imagine what it will be like to be with him again. It’s surreal.
The only sound is a train close by. I came here tonight for one purpose, and it turned into something else. How do I walk away from this?
“It’s getting late. I should probably be going.”
“Let me change, and I’ll give you a ride.”
“Thank you.”
His hand rests against my cheek as he presses his lips to mine one last time. “I’m the one who should be thanking you.”
After he slips away, I wander around the warehouse. The painting he did the other night is perched against the wall. Even in the dark, its beauty is evident.
I wonder if the picture of me still hangs after everything we went through. With bated breath, I walk to the corner where it was hanging the last time I was here.
Arms wrap around me from behind. “That one was never going anywhere.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It shows exactly what I see when I look at you.”
His words are making it harder to be here with him like this without going further. “Should we go?” I ask, consciously breaking the perfect moment.
“Yeah, it’s getting late.”
Our fingers entwine as he leads me out to his old Trans Am. It just brings back more memories. “I almost forgot about Frank,” I remark as he holds the passenger door open for me.
He leans over, smiling. I missed that smile. “How can you forget Frank? He’s me with wheels.”
I laugh as he shuts my door and runs along the front of the car to jump in the driver’s seat. “I missed that laugh,” he says before putting the key in the ignition.
“I missed your smile.”
“I missed having something to smile about,” he adds before taking off down the dark street. The car purrs the same way I remember it, filling the silence between us. I’m still not completely sure how we got here, but it feels real.
I hope it’s still real when I wake up in the morning.
THINGS DON’T ALWAYS GO as planned. I should know that better than anyone.
Pierce’s car waits in front of the building as the Trans Am pulls up. If a million scenarios flashed through my mind for how this would all end, it wouldn’t be like this. This is not how I wanted him to find out. It’s all happening too fast.
Blake grabs my arm as I reach for the handle. “I’m coming with you. There’s no way I’m leaving you here alone with him.”
“No. I need to do this … I owe it to him.”
He doesn’t let go, and I spot Pierce walking toward the car out of the corner of my eye. Tiny little spots impede my vision. My hands go numb.
“Please, Blake. I’ll call you after he leaves,” I promise. Blake is fuel. Pierce is a match. I’m not letting myself get caught in the fire.
“I don’t trust him.”
“You don’t have to. Just trust me.”
I practically see the wheels turning in his head before he loosens his grip. “If I don’t hear from you in the next hour, I’m coming back.”
Without another word, I step out onto the curb just as Pierce reaches the car. Blake revs the engine, speeding down the street before he can witness anything that follows. This is the most awkward place to be. I kind of understand why some choose to just run. It’s the coward’s way out, but it’s so much easier.
One look at me—the paint that covers my clothes—and the look on Pierce’s face tells me he knows something isn’t right. I’ve never ended things with anyone before, and I’m going to start with a man who didn’t even do me wrong.
A man who helped me out of some of my darkest times.
A man I love.
“We need to talk.” My voice shakes as the words tumble out.
He glances up at the night’s sky then back to me. “Where?”
“Not here. Let’s go upstairs.”
He follows me in silence, his shoes hitting the steps in the same rhythm as mine. The hallway seems too short, and my hand shakes uncontrollably as I attempt to unlock the door.
“Here,” he says, taking the key from between my fingers.
It opens too easily. I walk in first, setting my bag on the counter and slipping my sandals off. I do everything possible to give myself an excuse not to look back. He has to have an idea of what’s to come; the air around us has completely changed from what it was earlier today.
My mind is so foggy that scripting what I want to say is impossible. Predicting how he might react is even harder. If I could just have one more night, I think to myself.
“Are you going to start talking?”
I turn to him, my lips part, but nothing works its way out. There’s no way to do this without hurting him. The last thing I want to do is hurt him.
“Lila,” he begs, shaking my shoulders. “You’re scaring the hell out of me. Say something.”
“It’s him,” I whisper, my eyes misting over.
“What did he do?”
I shake my head, the first tear carving a path down my cheek. Knowing what my heart wants doesn’t make this any easier. “I love him. I tried to convince myself I’d fallen out of it, but he’s the one.”
He steps back, hands falling away from me. “What are you saying?”
“Do you really want to hear it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I love you, but I love him more. I love him differently.”
His fingers tug at his hair as I watch his face turn red. “He left you.”
“And he came back.”
He lowers his head, rubbing his hand along the back of his neck. “He’ll do it again. You don’t know him like I do.”
“That’s the thing, Pierce. I know he could leave again tomorrow or the next day, and I’m willing to take that chance. And you don’t know him like I do.”
He’s silent, and there’s not much more I can say.
“Have you thought this through?” he asks. “Because it didn’t seem to be on your mind this afternoon.”
There’s the proverbial knife to my heart.
Pierce became my everything because I convinced myself for a few short months that Blake wasn’t. There are a bunch of what ifs. What if I’d never moved to Chicago? What if Blake had never left? What if he’d never come back? What if he hadn’t forced me to see him the way he sees me?
That’s all life is—a series of what ifs. There’s not a fork in the road … there’s a whole freaking maze of silverware.