Up in Smoke - Tessa Bailey Page 0,31
for two days and already she’d frustrated him, hurt him. Made him hate himself. She needed to get away from him before she did any more damage. Really, it was selfish of her to have stayed in his magnetic orbit this long. But she could be merciful to them both now. Cut and run. It’s what she did best. After he got over the initial sting of failure, he would be grateful.
She almost laughed when she saw herself in the glass. Hair a rat’s nest. Leather bustier twisted above her stupid You Wish thong. Yeah, he probably did. Probably wished he had a girlfriend who didn’t have a panic attack from being in his arms. She might as well be a ghost.
“Maybe I am.”
“What’s that, sweetheart?”
His sleep-roughened voice didn’t fail to heat her insides. She may have made the decision to leave, but that wouldn’t make her attraction to him any less intense. “This isn’t going to work.” She spoke to his reflection in the glass, but it still hurt. Especially when his eyes blazed open at her words. “What were we thinking? I spend my life avoiding being tied down. You need to control and fix and manage. It’s a fucking countdown until you start to resent me. Let’s cut this short, shall we?”
“Don’t.” His voice vibrated. “Don’t do this when we’re both upset. Please.”
She spun around with a laugh, searching the floor for her shorts. “One or both of us has been upset the entire whopping two days we’ve known each other. We’re a couples counselor’s wet dream.” Having found her shorts just inside the door, she shimmied them up her legs, gasping when Connor growled at her action. Ignore him. Move faster.
“It won’t happen again,” he promised quietly. “It was an accident. We shouldn’t have—”
“What? Slept in the same bed? Isn’t that something you want to do with your girlfriend?” She realized she was shouting and reined herself in. “Look at you. You’re dying to pick me up and shake me, tell me I can’t leave, but you can’t do it. Not without more guilt. More failure. I will ruin you.”
“No.” He strode toward her, stopping a foot away. “I was ruined before we met. You didn’t do that. I did it to myself.” She didn’t have a chance to respond to his impassioned speech before he continued. “Or maybe I don’t even know what being ruined means yet. I’ve already decided you’re mine. If you take yourself away from me, I might find out.”
“You can’t put that on me,” she whispered. “Maybe you’re too noble for your own good. Maybe you can’t see it, but I’m doing what’s best for us both. You need something I can’t give. And I need something you can’t give.”
The wind left his sails right before her eyes, breath whooshing past his lips. She barely kept herself upright at the guilt driving spikes through her gut. “What can’t I give you?”
“Freedom. You’ll want to tie me down. Inside bed and out.” She swallowed a sob. As much as it would hurt to say what came next, she had no choice. “‘Don’t you dare go out the window, Erin.’ ‘Don’t get yourself off, Erin.’ I can’t live with the threat of my independence being taken away. I can’t live with you.”
Her words fell like a boulder between them, lodging into the floor and sending cracks to split the room in half. His half. Her half. She wanted to leap over the divide, crawl up into his warmth, and apologize until her heart gave out, but she wouldn’t. This was why she didn’t get nice things. She broke them. Connor was the nicest thing she’d ever had. That’s how she should have known it couldn’t last. Unable to witness the regret, the guilt, in his eyes another second, she darted from the room, snatching up her boots where she’d kicked them off by the couch. She shoved her feet into them and tied the laces way too tight.
“No. You can’t leave right now,” he said from right behind her. “It’s not safe this early in the morning.”
She straightened. “How are you going to stop me?”
“I’ll go. You stay.”
Tears threatened once again. She actually had to press both hands to her eyes to keep them from flowing. This was bad. Leaving after two days should have been easy, but her organs felt like they might rupture if she walked away from him. “Stop trying to help me. Just stop. I can’t stand it.”
He moved