Page 81 of The Perfect Mistake

They compliment each other very well. Two people who have the right combination of similarities and differences.

It feels like a distant dream, to find that myself someday.

She asks about her niece and nephew, but only briefly about Alec, and I’ve never been more grateful for that. I don’t know if I could keep the frustration out of my voice if I had to talk about him.

Your brother’s great, except he’s got the strongest self-control of anyone I’ve ever met, and I’m a professional ballerina.

A part of me aches for what he might be feeling. The mention of his guilt… I can’t imagine being in his position. But that doesn’t make being in mine any easier.

Connie wants to focus on me instead, and that’s almost worse. I don’t have solid career plans, but I lay out the options I have, and she analyzes them with as much care as I suspect she brings to her job. We leave the bar shortly after eleven. Neither of us is a night owl, and she hugs me goodbye outside the establishment’s front door.

“You’ll solve this,” she tells me. “I know you will, even if the future will look a bit different from the one you wanted.”

I hug her back. Maybe she’s right. There is a solution out there… I just have to reach the stage of acceptance.

Mac drives me home and I return to a dark apartment. Alec’s not sitting on the couch like the last time I was out, and he’s not in the kitchen. And why would he be? He made his stance clear.

We can’t go there again.

I close the door to the large room and the en suite that’s become my home. Removing my makeup takes no time at all, and then I crawl into bed, luxuriating in the softness of the mattress. And cursing Alec. He hasn’t read my Kindle, but he still has it, and now I can’t get any reading done before falling asleep.

I’m lying on my back, considering marching over to his room and getting it back myself, when there’s a knock on my bedroom door.

Isabel

Two sharp knocks, and then silence. I swing my legs out of bed and walk to the door with a pounding heartbeat. It can only be one person.

I open the door.

It’s him.

He’s standing at the threshold in nothing but a pair of gray pajama bottoms. They hang low on his hips, and the rest of him is on full display. The broad shoulders and chest, the smattering of brown hair, the flat stomach with well-defined abs, and the happy trail disappearing into his pants. Seeing everything up close, the strength of a body honed by decades of consistent workouts… and it’s him. It’s Alec.

Standing shirtless outside my door.

“Can I come in?” he asks. His voice is low, a bit hoarse, and his hair looks mussed. Like he’s been running his hand through it.

He’s holding my Kindle in his right hand.

My heart stops in my chest, but I nod and step back to let him in.

He stops in the middle of my room. His eyes land on my unmade bed, and then on me, and the oversized T-shirt I’m wearing. I’m suddenly very conscious that a pair of simple black cotton panties is the only thing I have on underneath and my otherwise bare legs.

I cross my arms over my shirt. “Alec?”

He shakes his head slowly, a pained expression on his face. “I tried. I… fuck it. I read what you left for me,” he says. “It was… very enlightening.”

He’s read it all.

I can’t believe I showed him. The books I’d chosen… they’re all some of my favorites, but they’re not anything that could be considered tame. A non-romance reader would call it straight-up porn.

But he said he wouldn’t read it.

He’d drawn a line in the sand.

“I don’t understand you,” I say. “You said you wouldn’t look at it. You were the one who said we couldn’t do this!”

“We shouldn’t,” he says. His face looks strained. “I shouldn’t… but I can’t stop thinking about you. Every minute since we talked, I’ve hated that I put a stop to things. You’re stuck in my head, sweetheart, and I can’t get you out. It’s only gotten worse after being with you the other night. After reading this. Fuck, I’ve been replaying the sounds of you coming, and wanting nothing but to hear them again.” He closes the distance between us and cups my face. It’s a tender movement, at odds with the frustration etched on his features. “I shouldn’t be doing this. But fuck it, I can’t seem to stay away.”

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