No sign of her.
For half an hour, I try to keep busy paying bills and catching up on paperwork. Willing my mind to focus on anything but her and what the real reason is she’s refusing to see me. It’s after five when I finally decide to check the balcony one more time.
Instantly I don’t like what I see.
Addison is staring out at the ocean, a distant look on her face. She looks slightly haunted and there’s a near empty wine bottle next to an empty wine glass. She has a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and she’s so lost in her own thoughts, she has no idea I’m standing here.
“Addison?”
She turns, startled.
“You okay?” I ask.
Tears well in her eyes, and she quickly wipes them away as she nods, finally realizing it’s me standing in front of her. “Yeah, I’m good.”
I instantly jump the rail dividing our two balconies, my feet pound down on the hard concrete shaking the table and making her smile a little bit wider. I take a seat across from her, close enough that our knees are touching, my hands cupping her sad face.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, watching her eyes for any sign it’s me, that I possibly did something to upset her.
She shrugs, “Just stuff.”
Smiling I shake my head. “Not gonna fly, Green Eyes. What’s wrong?”
“He came back when you left.”
“The asshole?”
She nods. I’m going to kill him. If he touched her, if he hurt her, he’s a fucking dead man.
“Want to talk about it?”
Her smile fades and she goes back to staring at the Pacific Ocean in front of her. “You know all there is to tell.”
I have to wonder if that’s true. She told me how he left her the day they graduated college with a promise to return. And she’d believed him. But after a few months he stopped all contact, and she had become so busy caring for her father, she never tried to find him. That part of the story alone tells me this guy is a cowardly motherfucker. But when she told me he came back married and didn’t tell her, took her to bed without so much as giving her the chance to decide if this was the right thing to do, I wanted to rip the asshole’s head off with my bare hands.
I place both of my palms on her legs, feeling her muscles tense underneath her gray sweat pants as her eyes lock on mine.
“Did he hurt you?”
She shakes her head.
“Did he touch you?”
There’s no response and my insides blow up at the idea of another man having his hands on her. That she allowed him access to her body enrages me and I want to hunt him down and make sure he never comes near her again.
Concern moves across her face as she takes in my expression. The anger I’m feeling escaping through every pore on my tense body. Leaning forward, she places a palm on my cheek. It’s warm and soft and I want her to touch me more, move her hands over my entire body. “Nothing happened, Damian. I promise.”
“Do you still love him?” I’ve asked her this before. I need to know if her answer’s changed. I can’t move us forward if she’s in love with another man, it’s not my style.
Her body startles and her eyes widen. She shakes her head. “No. No, I don’t think I do. But he’s begging for another chance and it’s confusing.”
“He’s married.”
“Separated,” she corrects.
“He’s still married.” I argue.
She smiles. Finally, she genuinely smiles at me. “I don’t want to give him another chance, but I don’t know how to get him to leave me alone.”
I have a few ideas how I can get the asshole to never come near her again, but I’ll deal with that later. Right now, I need to focus all my attention on her.
Running my hands from her knees up to her stomach, my fingers sliding underneath the hem of her baggy shirt, she lets out a slight gasp as I wrap each of my fingers around her bare sides, her skin heating at my touch. Pulling her forward in her seat, her legs captured between my own.
“So we’re clear, Addison. If you were mine, I’d never let you be sad. I don’t want to ever see your eyes like this again.” I kiss her forehead and I don’t want to pull away. Her skin is so soft, her fresh scent intoxicating. Closing my eyes, I let my lips linger on