Page 28 of Beautiful Betrayal

I tell myself he’s a man that already controls my job. I can’t allow him to become the man who controls my heart and yet, I don’t know what happens. I just—I get in the car.

Grayson sits back down next to me and hands me my glass of wine. “What are you thinking, Mia?”

“About you showing up in your fancy sports car and telling me to get in.” I reach up and stroke his cheek, the rasp of hiswhiskers on my fingers. “And then you brought me here, to your mansion in the Hamptons, in a chopper. But we had pizza as your way to prove to me that you were just a man. That we weren’t worlds apart.”

“We were never worlds apart,” he says. “From the day we met, we were a team.”

“And yet you fired me off that case without talking to me first,” I say, the words spilling out of my mouth of their own accord. “I don’t understand how that made us a team. It made you the man in control of my heart and my career.”

“And so instead of fighting with me, instead of giving me a chance to explain, repent, regret, make it up to you, you used Becky as an excuse to run.”

“I didn’t run.” I try to stand up.

He catches my arm. “What are you doing right now?”

Chapter nineteen

Mia

“What am I doing right now?” I demand, still on the barstool with Grayson holding onto my arm. “Giving myself room to fight. I don’t want to be trapped in my seat right now.”

He studies me for several unreadable seconds and then lets me go, but there’s something in the way he does it, in the way he withdraws beyond the physical that keeps me in my seat. “I’m not even thinking about leaving. I wish I never had. I wish I could turn back the clock and get back our lost time.”

He doesn’t immediately respond. He doesn’t agree. He doesn’t offer me the forgiveness I don’t deserve for leaving, and some part of me really needs to be forgiven, perhaps because I feel he never really will. Which makes the fact that he’s the one who stands up now and walks away, appropriate. He offers me his back and presses his hands onto the counter opposite the island by the sink. I’ve hurt him again, and in turn, I’ve pushed him away when I want him close. I stand up and quickly slide between him and the sink, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’ttouch me. “Is that how it is, Mia?” he asks. “I suffocate you? I make you feel trapped?”

My hand settles on his chest. “No. God no. You always made me feel safe in too many ways to name. Inus. In the rest of the world. In my desire to go bigger and further. You made me feel so many things, good things that I have missed. I just—”

“You just what?” he demands, his voice low, taut, and still he doesn’t touch me.

“I felt like that safe feeling was a lie. I was so hurt when I left that I think it’s hard to let down my guard again.”

“I didn’t cheat on you, Mia. I don’t deserve to have you put up that kind of guard again.”

“I know, but I pulled up a guard to protect myself and now I have to pull that wall down. Iampulling it down. The problem is that when I pull it down, what’s left is me leaving you over a lie that wasn’t yours. That makes us unsteady.”

“To me, unsteady was when we were apart. Steady is here, now. Together.”

“It is, but you own your world in a way that most do not. You own my world andmewhen I’m with you. With my heart on the line, that’s more than scary. It’s terrifying.”

“And you own mine, Mia. Youaremy world.”

He says the words with deep, guttural passion, but he still doesn’t touch me. “I think it’s hard to feel like your equal,” I admit, just wanting to say it, to get it all out once and for all.

“When have I ever made you feel less than me?” He pushes off the counter, his hands settling at his hips, withdrawing even further. “I talked to you about everything. I trusted you with everything. I needed you with me through it all.”

“But you have to know that there are few human beings on this planet that can stand next to you and not compare themselves and judge themselves unworthy. I always wanted to deserve tobe by your side. I wanted to have more depth to what I offer when you do ask my opinion.”

“And you thought you didn’t? Aside from being beautiful and intelligent, Mia, you, like my father, have a moral compass that keeps mine in line. He loved that about you just like I do. You keep me solid.”

“You don’t need me for that. Your father carved right and wrong into your very being. I want to be more than that for you and for me. That was something I was working toward when we broke up and it felt good. I need my own successes, so when you pulled me from that case without talking to me, I felt—owned, in the wrong way.”

“Mia—”

I hold up a hand. “Before you respond, I need to say a little more. The way you handled pulling me from that account was wrong, but I had insecurities that probably made me handle it just as wrong. Had Becky not pressed her damn naked breasts against you that day, I would have talked it out with you. That’s what I’m doing now. I’m talking it out with you. Not running.”

“I was protecting you,” he says. “That is what the man who loves you should do.”

“If I was at risk of your father firing me to set an example, I should be making the decision about taking that risk.”

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