proud of it. I’m ashamed I didn’t notice that’s how it was until it was over.”
Cassandra’s voice flickered through my mind: I thought you were more than hockey, Oz. I see now that you weren’t.
I didn’t want to think about Cassandra. Not with Emma staring at me with hurt in her eyes. It was a blow to see her disappointment. But I couldn’t lie to Emma. “I don’t want a repeat of that.”
“Good, because you wouldn’t get that with me.”
“Believe me, Snoop; I know. Thing is, I am pretty much a walking wreck right now. I make mistakes all the time.”
God, it was as though I’d slapped her. Emma leaned away from me like she needed to put as much distance as she could between us. “You regret what we did.”
“No! Fuck, no.” I reached for her, but the hard look on her face made me hesitate. “I want you, Emma. More than I’ve wanted any woman. And that’s the problem. If we have each other, it will be intense. And you might expect . . . forever.”
Slowly she nodded, but it was as if she wasn’t really there. Some part of her had retreated in a way I hadn’t seen before. I hated it.
“You’re right,” she said. “Not about forever. I’m not sitting here waiting for you to profess your undying love or anything. But I did expect more than ‘just messing around.’” She huffed out a flat, pained laugh. “I thought that we’d . . . I don’t know, at least try for something real.”
“Em . . .”
“But that’s on me. I’m always building castles in the air, only to find out there’s nothing solid to rely on.”
Laid out in those stark terms, I couldn’t disagree. Hell, it was what I’d been trying to articulate. Didn’t stop the disappointment from eating at my gut. I was an idiot for talking about it. I should have taken her to bed and worried about the particulars later.
And because I was a guy, a greedy-ass moron who had just realized his mistake, I made an even bigger one. “We could still—”
“Fool around?” she supplied, lips pursing. “Screw each other, knowing it’s not going anywhere.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Shit. Shut up, fuckwit. But I didn’t. “Sex doesn’t have to mean everything.”
Her expression soured. “But it will, Lucian. With you, it will.” She lifted her chin, her body unyielding, and angled away from me. “I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable—”
“It doesn’t.” Christ, she was a gift. And I’d gone and thrown her away. I took a step toward her, a little desperate knowing that I was losing her.
But she was already backing up. “And it might be easy for you to keep emotion out of it—”
“That’s the point, Em. I can’t either. Not with you.”
A sad smile played on her lush lips. “No, that is the point. You know this can be something more, and you don’t want it.”
I want it. I just don’t deserve it. I’ll break you. Like I’m broken.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Her smile twisted into something pained. “Don’t worry. You stopped it before that could happen.”
With an audible inhale, she ran her hand through her hair, as though gathering herself. “I’m going to go.”
“No.” I flexed my fingers, trying to figure out how to salvage something between us, trying not to reach for her. She’d been mine for such a short time. Not enough.
It’s for the best. Do it for her.
“We can still hang out,” I tried, cringing even as I said it. “Be . . .”
“Friends?” She shook her head, looking at me as though I was dull witted. “I’m afraid I can’t be friends with someone I want to fuck.”
“Hell, honey, you’re killing me here.”
But she didn’t smile; her eyes were dull, that pretty mouth I hadn’t tasted enough a flat line. “Somehow, I think you’ll survive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Emma
I didn’t take Lucian’s rejection well. One would think that the years of struggling to make it in the toughest business in the world would have rendered me immune to rejection. I’d been told no in so many ways, in such harsh terms, it should have been easy to hear one more.
But it was expected in acting. You took your knocks and kept going. You held your head up when they said you were too short, too fat, too flat chested, too young, too old. You told yourself that you put up with the shit because there was gold at the end of the