Boss in the Bedsheets - Kate Canterbary Page 0,106

He paced between his desk and the door. "You've never once backed down from a fight with me, but that guy"—he waved toward the reception area—"that guy, he—"

"What are you looking to hear from me?" I cried. "Tell me what would make you leave this alone and I'll say it."

"I want—" He shoved his fingers through his hair as he stared at me. "—I don't know what I want. Just tell me how it happened because you should know I have the worst explanations going through my head right now. I need to know if I should've decked him when I had the chance."

"It happened the way everything happens. It's a series of tiny steps and little things that aren't okay but there's no sense making big issues out of them. It's expecting things to get better once you reach a certain point or when difficult times have passed. It's inches and inches and inches that add up to miles in the wrong direction but once you realize it you're so far down that path you're not sure how to reverse course." I crossed my legs and glanced out the window. "It's complicated. Maybe it's not actually complicated at all but it feels that way to me and I don't want to explain the rest of it right now. I just can't, Ash."

Ash returned to the seat and took my hands in his. "That's your call, love. I won't demand anything from you unless you give me that permission first."

I hadn't known the importance of respect until upending my world and claiming Ash's as my starting-over site. I'd only known respect in name—real respect, the kind rooted in wanting another person's joys and successes and journeys as much as your own—but never in practice. Respect didn't leave space to owe each other anything, it didn't tally the gives and takes, it didn't allow for unequal footing. No one held all the cards in a relationship founded on respect.

"One of my sister's best friends is an attorney. Mostly real estate but she's very knowledgeable in other areas. She'll be at the wedding but if you want to talk to someone about a restraining order, we can call her now."

I shook my head. "He won't come back."

Ash slid off the chair to kneel in front of me, dropping his head onto my lap as he went. "You are far too important to take that risk and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to let you out of my sight again without some assurance you're safe."

"It's not like that," I argued. "He's just a spectacularly lazy person whose only accomplishments in life are getting other people to pay his way and do his work because he fundamentally believes he's deserving of such things and others owe it to him."

"And he stalked you across the country," Ash said to my skirt. "Where he openly and repeatedly attempted to intimidate you. I was damn close to dropping his ass to the floor."

I ran my fingers over the nape of his neck. "Why didn't you?"

"You had it under control," he said as if it was the most obvious fact known to humanity.

I'd wanted my new life—the one with a windowsill herb garden and a place that felt like home—to be free of the histories I'd left behind. Denis, my family, my failed attempt at grad school. I wanted to sever it all like diseased limbs and then continue onward as if I didn't have a collection of wounds in varied states of healing.

Even with all the best decisions, I was beginning to see that wasn't how it worked. "I haven't always had it under control."

"Neither have I," he admitted.

Sanding my fingers through his hair as I searched for the next right choice, I said, "Look at us. A pair of cool cats who can't keep it all together."

Ash lifted his head to meet my gaze. "Can I keep you? That's all I need to know."

Yes. Yes, of course. I wanted to give him that but I needed a minute. I just needed a minute to glue the pieces of my life back together one more time before I could do anything else. "I don't know," I admitted.

Ash leaned back, nodding. "Then tell me when you do."

I could feel Ash's gaze on my skin, his watchful if not wary stare following me as we closed up the office, returned to the apartment, and then piled into that spiffy little Porsche of his. I was aware of