Page 166 of The Trouble With Bad Boys

He smiles, even though my question wasn’t anything nice or funny. “I just said that hoping you’d get angry enough to open the door. I know I have no right to even be here.”

I hate that he knew just asking me that question would work. He’s right about one thing. He has no right being here or expecting me to be kind of him after what he did.

As he looks into my eyes, he says, “I missed you, Tia. Not a day has gone by that I didn’t think of you.”

So now he misses me? Where was he all those nights I laid in bed crying?

I push past him to walk out to the living room. “So you were a terrible boyfriend to another woman. How nice.”

Behind me, he says in a low voice, “There was no girlfriend, Tia.”

Spinning around to face him, I snap, “Don’t insult my intelligence. I remember you saying there was someone else.”

His face is expressionless when he answers, “I lied.”

“What? Why?” I ask, my head swimming with so many other questions.

When he doesn’t answer, I ask, “Why would you tell me that? You broke my heart. I wanted to die when you dumped me. Now you stand here telling me you lied? Why? Did you just want to be away from me?”

Still, he refuses to answer me, so I pound on his chest, needing to make him hurt like I hurt right now. Like I hurt when he left me.

“How could you do that to me? I loved you, Jaxon.”

He grabs my wrists to stop me from hitting him, so I turn my back to him. “Don’t. You deserve whatever I do to you,” I sob, unable to hold back my tears any longer.

Jaxon rests his chin on my shoulder and quietly says, “I loved you. I still do. I’ve never stopped, Tia.”

I can’t listen to this.

Turning in his hold, I try to yank my arms from him but he won’t let go. “Well, I have.”

“No, you haven’t. A love like the kind we have doesn’t go away.”

“Maybe not for you, but I got over it,” I lie, but it’s no use.

He has no idea how much I wish I could have moved on. It’s all I wanted for months, but it never happened.

“I don’t believe you. You couldn’t get over me any more than I could get over you.”

I shake my head, desperate to not let him see how much he affects me. “I don’t care if you believe me! I want you to leave. Now!”

He pulls me to him and kisses me, and in a flash, it’s like he never left. Like always, his kiss takes my breath away. I’ve missed him so much, and I can’t fight that truth anymore.

When I begin to cry harder, he holds me tightly to him and whispers against the top of my head, “I’m sorry, Tia. I left because I wanted to keep you safe.”

I don’t understand and look up at him, confused. “You broke my heart, Jaxon. Is that the kind of safety you meant?”

He dries my tears by gently dragging the pad of his thumb across the tops of my cheeks. “I stayed away, even though it killed me not to be near you.”

“Every night for months, I cried myself to sleep. I didn’t want to miss you, but I couldn’t help it.”

Leaning down, he presses a kiss to my forehead and whispers, “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

I want to say I can’t forgive him. I can’t lie, though. I’ve never stopped loving him.

Four

TIA

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