we were wrong for each other, that we had different needs, different lives. We’re both stubborn.”
“There’s news,” she snapped. “Get on with this, will you? I’ve got work. I get it, okay? We’re ships in the night, peas and carrots, not going to work. All the clichés. Whatever.” She tugged at her hand, trying to gesture, but he still held her fast. “We had fun, it was real, blah, blah, blah. Let go of me.” She yanked at her hand, fighting the terrible urge to cry, but he refused to release her.
“No. I’ve done too much letting go,” he said, never taking his eyes off her face. “On the other hand, I’ve held too tightly to the past, living in Dav’s shadow, surviving, but not really living. This—” He slid his free hand around her neck, the heat of it firing her skin, sending a flush of desire straight to her innermost self, despite the way he’d treated her. “This. You. What we have together is something I want to hang on to.”
She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I screwed up, Ana,” he said.
She wanted to pull away. Where was the Ana who would stand up for herself, not be walked on this way?
The door opened behind them, and Ana caught a quick glimpse of Dav in the mirror before he retreated and the door clicked softly closed. Smart man.
That glimpse of Dav, of a man who’d faced adversity, who’d made money as a way to make friends in a new town; it gave her courage.
“Yeah, you did,” she said, meeting his gaze squarely. If he wanted her back, he was going to have to grovel. “You fucked up big time. And I don’t know if I can forget. I can forgive you,” she said, but stopped him from speaking or moving when he would have drawn her in closer, tried to use the attraction between them to persuade her. “I don’t know if I can forget though,” she finished, stepping back. She didn’t pull loose from his confining hand, but she did give herself distance. Her heart felt like it was in a vise. She wanted him, but would that ever be enough? Wanting wasn’t loving. Wanting wasn’t trust.
Gates looked both devastated and determined. “I get that. I know I have to earn your trust back,” he said, hitting the issue dead on. “Ana.” His voice was caressing now. “I don’t know how we’ll work this out. I don’t know if we can, but I want to try. All that thinking time?”
“Yes?” she managed to say, her gut quivering with need, with anger and fear, with everything that welled up to choke and confuse her.
“I realized that I’ve been looking for you all along.” He lowered his head to plant a kiss on her cheek, a tentative brush, as he had the first time they met. “If I beg,” he whispered, as he kissed her cheek again. “Plead, maybe.” Another kiss, a mere whisper of lips and tongues. “Get down and grovel, even.”
He was seducing her with his mouth, his words. Her hands were gripping his arms now, hanging on instead of bracing to push him away. “If I do all that, do you think you can forgive me?”
If only it were that easy. She wanted to, God knew, she wanted to, but she had the feeling that her life was finally her own again, and that if she gave in now, if she let him off the hook, she’d be right back in the dungeon again.
“Gates,” she said, pulling back, desperately seeking some solid emotional footing. “I don’t know. I just, I just…” She couldn’t voice the turmoil in her mind. She was an agent. Career wise, literally a hundred options lay before her. None of them would be easy, nor would any be a stable, nine-to-five sort of existence. Not one of the options in the envelope she’d been given had room for a personal relationship.
Not one.
“I understand,” he murmured, resting his forehead on hers. “I’m not good at this, Ana. I suck at talking, at relationships.” He shook his head. “I’ve had more practice shutting people out than letting them in.” With that admission, he shuddered, closed his eyes. “Even if I try, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get past that.”
“I don’t know if I’ll even be here, Gates. Not with my job.”
He nodded. “I know. We’ve got a lot of stuff to figure out and this isn’t the time. But