Been There Done That (Leffersbee #1) - Hope Ellis Page 0,104

to do was comfort him. To make it better, even if it was twelve years later. “You were eighteen. You weren’t responsible for me and you weren’t responsible for your mother. You did the only thing you could.”

He looked away but I saw the flush along his neck. “I ruined us.”

“You idiot, you made a mistake by making the choice for me.” Indoor voice, Zora. “I never would have left you alone to deal with all of that, never—”

“Which is why I had to make the decision for you. There was no way you’d leave me, wherever I was. You deserved your own life. I’d do the same thing again.”

Now that pissed me off. “You really don’t get it, do you? That by making the decision alone, you took my choice away?”

“Isn’t what love is? Making a sacrifice? Being willing to sacrifice yourself?”

My heart skipped at that word. “Love is informed consent. It’s giving someone all the available information, all the potential risks and benefits, so they can make an informed decision. I don’t want anyone making a decision for me. If you don’t see how . . . arrogant and patriarchal that is—”

“We were both idiots at eighteen, Zora.”

I stood, whiskey in hand. “I don’t want to argue. It won’t help either of us at this point and I’ve got to at least pretend to be in a less feral mood to give away the damn check—”

“Zora.”

“Thanks for the drink, Nick. Let’s pick this up another time.”

He was quick, somehow cutting across a significant distance to capture my hand as I started toward the door.

“Zora.” He resumed his seat, gaze steady on mine as he retained his leading grip on my hand. My heart hammered in my ears. I gripped the glass of whiskey, fighting to not become unmoored, to not surrender to the insane pull. Seated, Nick’s head was flush with my chest as I stood within the widespread V of his legs. My lungs filled with the scent of clean male skin and expensive musk. Nick said nothing, his green eyes dark.

I stared down at him, suffused with contradictory impulses. I hurt from all I’d learned the previous week during his disclosure. But all I’d once felt for this man was still there. He still had a claim on my heart. I recognized the challenge in those vivid green eyes, saw the same strong-willed, headstrong boy I’d fallen in love with. The boy who’d wanted my dreams for me as I much as I’d wanted them for myself.

His grip tightened on my hand.

“What’s this charade you’re playing with Jackson James?”

“Is that what this is about? Your opinion—”

“Don’t play games with me, Zora.” His jaw tightened. “If I thought, even for a minute, that you were actually with that asshat, I’d have already taken his head off.”

“He’s not an asshat. I love him and you need to respect who he is to me, and the role he has in my life.”

His eyes never left mine. “You love him. But you don’t love him like you love me.”

My mouth opened, closed. I was mute, trapped in that unholy green gaze.

“You’re always a polite distance from each other. He doesn’t touch you like a lover. You don’t look at him like he knows your secrets. He somehow takes his eyes off you in that dress. Jackson James doesn’t know you, doesn’t love you like I do. He didn’t then, and he doesn’t now.”

I was hypnotized by the low pitch of his voice, the dark intensity in his eyes. His thumb traced the same circuitous arc along the sensitive crease of my thumb. The unbearably light touch shot streamers of sensation up my arm, agitating my nerves.

The air grew dense, heavy.

“You’re not with him.” Below the strong column of his neck, his pulse beat an erratic rhythm. “You never once asked for him or thought of him when I was with you. You wouldn’t have let me in your bed if you were with Jackson James.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“I’m not the same girl I was, Nick. I traded my love of fairy tales for pragmatism.”

“That’s not who you are.”

“What, it’s who you are? You’ve spent the last twelve years waiting for True Love’s Kiss?”

I startled as Nick’s hand closed over mine, secured my grip on the snifter. Slowly, ever so slowly, his eyes hot on mine, he brought the glass to his mouth and took a healthy swallow. My fingers glanced against the silken skin of his lower lip and