Love Proof (Laws of Attraction) - By Elizabeth Ruston Page 0,75

back away and never try to love me again.”

Sarah bowed her head with a grief all her own. It was like reliving her own death, and hearing now how he’d orchestrated it, how he set out to hurt her so much she would never come near him, felt like a blow upon a blow. So cold, so deliberate, while meanwhile her heart had been disintegrating into a thousand miniscule pieces.

Joe’s voice sounded dull now, empty. “It’s amazing how good it feels to self-destruct. I thought it would be harder, but it was easy once I started. It helped that I stayed drunk most of the time—”

“You did?” She hadn’t noticed that. Then again, she avoided him as much as possible that last semester.

“First thing in the morning,” Joe said, “some Jack in my coffee. Couple of beers at lunch, then the really serious drinking started in the afternoons.”

It explained so much, Sarah thought. The stony, expressionless look on his face whenever she passed him. The reckless way he’d grab some girl and grope her if he knew Sarah was watching. The complete and deliberate destruction of their relationship.

“Joe, all this time, I’ve . . . ”

“You’ve hated me,” he said. “I know. You should have. It’s why I never tried to contact you, even after I sobered up. I know I hurt you, Sarah, and I’m so sorry for that. It’s eaten away at me for years. Then for whatever reason, I got the gift of you walking into that deposition in San Diego. It was like you just dropped from the sky. And ever since then . . . ”

“Your strategy is to be nice to me,” Sarah said.

Joe nodded.

The two of them sat apart for a long time, while Sarah took it all in.

“Can I tell you now?” she finally asked, getting up from the couch and going over to him again. She climbed onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m so sorry, Joe. You’re a good man. I’m sorry all of that happened to you. It must have been so awful . . . ”

She held his face between her hands and began kissing his cheeks, his jaw, his temple. Treating him tenderly the way she would have back then. Then she brought her lips back to his mouth where they belonged.

Joe deepened the kiss. He shifted her so that she faced him, and she sat astride him on the chair. He threaded his hands through her hair and kissed her with a kind of need different from any he’d shown her so far.

He left her mouth and began kissing a trail down her throat. She undid the top two buttons of her blouse so he could continue following the line down.

There was nothing frantic or playful about how quickly their clothes fell away this time, it was more of a necessity, Sarah thought, one steady, continuous movement from where they had been to where they needed to be. He lifted her and carried her into his bedroom. Then laid her down gently on his bed and continued the slow, steady course toward reminding her why she fell for him in the first place, and how she might find her way back there again.

“Sarah—”

But she silenced him with a kiss. She couldn’t hear any more—not tonight. She needed to be in her body now, to feel his, not to think or hear, but just shut out the world and be with him.

She kissed him the way she used to, with a kind of sweetness she had been careful not to show him since they began again on her birthday.

Joe seemed to know the difference, too. He pulled back and looked into her eyes.

“That’s it, Red,” he said. “That’s what I’ve missed.”

Thirty

Sarah’s phone rang far too early. She had retrieved it from her jacket some time during the night and plugged into the outlet beside Joe’s bed. Now she regretted not letting the battery die.

“What,” she answered irritably. She saw who it was on her display.

“Morning, killer. They want a meeting with you as soon as possible. I volunteered to wake you up.”

“Mickey . . . ” Sarah batted away Joe’s hand, which was already creeping up her torso. “I got in late. I need sleep.”

“Then you shouldn’t send out e-mails with the tantalizing subject line of ‘How We Will Win Our Case.’ People get excited.”

Sarah pressed the phone closer to her ear. She wasn’t sure if Joe could hear Mickey’s side of the