your words were, reminding me I was a badass. And that I could do it alone.”
He hesitated, and I looked up at him. He looked… super nervous. He was staring into my eyes. I’m sure they were a site to behold—all runny mascara and puffy, swollen eyes. He had no luggage to speak of and I still only had my carry-on which I’d been lugging beside me all this time. “I should probably get going. It’s late enough I can check in and I could really use a nap….”
“Can we… can we go sit on that bench over there? For just a minute.”
“I think I’ve had my share of overwrought emotional confrontations for the day.”
His face fell. “I don’t have anything to confront you with. I just—”
I sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll sit there and hear what you have to say. You’ve had a long trip, and it doesn’t even look like you brought any luggage… Did you have a plan?”
He turned and walked to the bench without answering my question. I tagged along after him, rolling my bag behind me. He sat, and I gave him some space, scooting away to the end.
He noticed, his jaw bulging where he clenched his teeth. You bet, I was still pissed at him. He was here, and that was great and I was grateful but had it really changed anything?
“I need to admit some things to you.”
I folded my arms over my chest and cocked my head toward him. “Okay.”
“I’m not falling in love with you.” I blinked, acknowledging the stab of hurt that sliced through me but before I could say anything, he kept on talking. “Because I already fell for you long ago.”
My brows scrunched so closely together they threatened to form a permanent unibrow. “Uh, what?”
“Kat, I think I fell in love with you the first week I met you. I didn’t know it then. I didn’t acknowledge it because I was so dead set against ever trusting my feelings again. They’d failed me once. And it had been a critical failure that had cost me a lot.”
I opened my mouth to interrupt, but he held up his hand. “Please, just let me get this out. Then you can say whatever you want.”
I snapped my mouth shut and waved my hand, urging him to continue.
“This entire time we’ve known each other, I pushed you away. I was an obnoxious prick at times, but it was full on self-preservation mode. I knew you’d destroy me if I let you get close to me.” Man, it was hard not to interrupt him or to talk back, but I did as he’d asked.
I thought through those times he was talking about, his gruff, sometimes mean behavior. The insult ping pong game we constantly played. I gave as good as I got—and sometimes better. But all that time, I’d been so sure he hated me—or merely tolerated me out of necessity.
Except those few times I’d caught him looking at me with something other than hate. It wasn’t lust, though I’d caught that few times, too. Sometimes he’d looked at me with that same expression I’d seen so much on his face lately. Admiration, respect and sometimes even pride.
I shook my head.
“I know it’s hard to believe. Believe me, I’m the textbook poster boy for lying to myself. And that’s exactly what it was. I… built these huge walls around myself and I was safe there. But I had to keep you away because you’d beat them down like they were never there. Not a wrecking ball, not a steam-roller but a fucking one hundred megaton bomb wrapped in a supernova.”
I blinked, those tender feelings from all the emotions I’d felt throughout these past few days, were sore. And like anything that was sore, they didn’t want to be poked and prodded any further.
I drew back from him, hugging myself. He wanted to talk about walls? Well, I needed some protection right now because I was feeling naked and vulnerable and…
Without another word, he stood up from the bench, took a step away, ran his hand through his hair, then pivoted, right in front of me. He sunk to both knees on the bench where I sat.
“You are, without a doubt, the best thing that has ever happened to me. And I was a fucking idiot and pushed you away hard because I was so afraid of what you were doing to me without even trying.”
On that bench I stared at him, wide-eyed and stunned.