wanted to hold you back from everything you deserved.”
“And yet...somehow you still did. We both deserved love, Dani. You rejected me back then, and you’re doing it all over again, and I’m a fucking masochist who can’t seem to stop coming back for more.”
His words sear into my heart, and the pain behind his eyes absolutely kills me.
It’s seeing my daughter’s eyes, and if anyone ever made her feel even an ounce of the pain I’m causing him, I’d find that person and destroy them.
I want to take away the pain. I don’t know if it’s for him or for me or for the daughter he doesn’t even know he has, or maybe it’s for all three of us. But before I can stop myself, I lean up on my tiptoes and brush my lips to his. As soon as our mouths connect, the knots in my stomach flip over and take flight.
It’s gentle at first. Just lips brushing softly across lips, and then he presses a little more firmly as his fingertips dig into my flesh and he thrusts his hips to mine.
The action takes me back to the first time we had sex on my desk.
We’re fire together.
I’ve had good sex and mediocre sex and bad sex, and with Ford it mostly falls in the good category, but with Tyler, it’s a catastrophic inferno. Every single time...and the number of times I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing it is far, far too few.
Even his kiss lights a new fire unlike anything I’ve felt since the last time he kissed me. He deepens our connection, his tongue sweeping into my mouth as his fingers dig into my back. It’s intense and hot. The connection between us is still there, maybe even stronger than before.
The memories of everything we shared come rushing back. Not just the sex, but the conversations we shared while he rode a tour bus and I sat at home. The silly chats where we reminisced about the tequila shots we’d sneak at Carne’s, and the serious talks about our families and our fears and our hopes and dreams and where all those things intersected for the two of us.
The memories threaten to take me down with him. They threaten to lead me down a path that wouldn’t be appropriate.
Even this kiss is inappropriate. It feels good, and it feels right, but it’s neither of those things. It’s only going to lead somewhere that will hurt the people who are most important in my life.
And it’s with that thought that I finally unclench my fists where they hold onto his shirt. I fight my way out of his arms because as much as I want to be there, it’s not my place. Not anymore. I turn away from him. “I can’t do this.”
“Why are you here?” he asks for the third time.
I chance a glance at him, and I wish I hadn’t. The lust is written all over his face. His lips are swollen from our kiss, and he’s panting lightly—much like me. He wants this, wants me, and maybe he would’ve taken me right here on the patio if I hadn’t pushed him away.
But it’s not just that written in his eyes. It’s the disappointment...in me. I keep hurting people I care about, and I can’t seem to stop. I can’t seem to do much of anything right these days, and at this point, I don’t even know what right is.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. That hangs between us for a beat, and then I add, “I just had to see you. I had to know if it’s real and if it’s all still there so I can make the right decision.”
“You know what the right decision is,” he mutters, turning away from me and toward the fire. He says it so easily, like there’s not even a question.
That hurts more than it should.
He doesn’t get it. Yes, it should be him. The answer should be easy. But there’s someone else in the picture who’s thinking the exact same things: my husband.
“It’s not that easy,” I say.
“Yeah, it is.”
The way he says the words so flippantly only serves to piss me off. My reaction is unfair since it’s through my own failings that he isn’t aware of the whole picture. “It’s complicated,” I finally say.
He lifts a shoulder. “Seems pretty simple to me.”
The way he’s short with me now, and the way he’s nearly pouting because he isn’t so easily getting his way...well, it reminds me