God.
Sweet.
Someone kill me.
“I was into her,” he admitted quietly and my throat closed. “But that night, beer, bourbon and me tellin’ you I like the Bears was not about her. It was about you and me. Then you snuck away and I get that, Ally,” he said the last swiftly, his arms going tighter as he felt my body go solid. “I get why you’d do that. But I didn’t get it then. I thought it was something else, honey, and you know what I thought it was.”
“Yeah, you came over to my place in the middle of the night and made that perfectly clear,” I reminded him.
“I also apologized,” he reminded me.
Crap.
He did.
I shut my mouth.
“So yeah,” he continued gently as well as cautiously. “I had feelings for Ava and I had to work through those. But, Ally,” his arms gave me another squeeze, “she was with another guy. Deep in it with him. I had no shot. I knew that. We’d never been out on a date. I hadn’t even kissed her. I was definitely never in love with her.”
“You took her to Carmine’s,” I reminded him.
“That wasn’t a date, honey,” he told me. “And you know it. I took her to dinner and took her home to Stark. A man taking a woman to dinner and dropping her off with another man is not a date.”
Okay, I had to give him that.
“I thought we’d connected,” I found myself whispering then I found I couldn’t stop doing it. “We were naked. You were holding me. And you were thinking about her.”
“She had a lot of shit happening around her, and I was involved. So it’s not surprising that shit was swirling in the back of my head. But I wasn’t thinking about her. I wasn’t in control of my thoughts. I was unconscious.”
“You just said you were into her,” I reminded him.
“And I found another woman I was into, we had a great night, the f**kin’ best, and she blew me off. A man did that to you, you had no idea why, how would you react? What would you think?”
Oh crap.
That made sense.
And he thought that night was the best?
“Can we stop talking pressed to the goddamned door and move to the bed?” he asked.
“Let me go,” I demanded softly.
“Ally—”
“Please let me go, Ren.”
His arms got tight before they went loose and I stepped away.
I turned and saw him standing there, eyes on me, but they weren’t pissed. Not even close.
They were warm and concerned.
I closed my eyes against that beauty and dropped my head.
I had one way to explain this and make him let me go. Only one.
Was I going to use it?