Page 124 of Not in Love

Oh, shit. He knew the reason she’d wanted him here. She was going to spend the next twenty minutes dutifully spelling out her gratitude toward him for helping her fix her patent situation.

If she offered him a thank-you blow job, he was going to wail like a fucking baby.

“You’re welcome,” he preempted.

Rue’s glance was confused in the jagged silence.

“That’s why we’re here? So you can thank me for the patent.”

She bit into her lower lip, and Eli would have drained his bank account to buy the right to pull it from her teeth with his thumb. “I suppose I should do that, yeah. Can we . . . ?” She gestured at the ice.

Sure. Why not. If they skated side by side, he wouldn’t have to look at her while she told him how much she appreciated his helpful assistance.

“I should have texted you. I didn’t mean to ambush you.” They were already moving in unison. Like they were meant to be, or some shit. “But you wanted to skate together, and I . . . I thought you might appreciate a grand gesture.”

“Yeah?” He shook his head. “Not sure you and I are grand gesture types, Rue.”

“And yet you’ve done so many for me.”

“Have I?”

“Over and over.” She laughed, silent. “You pretty much stole all my options. I don’t know how to do something that is even remotely like returning your most prized possession to you. You’ve set me up for failure.”

This was nice. Lovely, even. But gratitude was the last thing Eli wanted from her. “I appreciate this, Rue. Really. But I didn’t do this to hear how thankful you are—”

“Well, it’s a lot. But since you already know, we can skip that part and move on to the next topic.”

Thank fuck. “Which would be?”

“An apology.” Her voice was limpid. She surprised him by flipping around and skating backward in front of him, as if eye contact with him was crucial for what she was about to say. “You asked me to trust you, and I treated you like you were the kind of person who’d screw me over, even when you’ve been nothing but truthful with me. My behavior never reflected that. So, I’m sorry, Eli.”

The apology was, if possible, more depressing than the gratitude. “Rue, you had just found out about Florence. I think some temporary lack of faith in humankind is to be expected.” He smiled reassuringly and stopped with a precise movement. So did she, just a handful of feet ahead. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to head home—”

“I do.”

He cocked his head. “Excuse me?”

“I do mind. I have more things to say.” Eli felt a burst of warm, tentative hope, until she added, “What you did for me, with my brother.”

He really needed to stop fooling himself. “That was the lawyers, but I’ll happily pass along your thanks. Have a good—”

“Stop.” Her fingers closed around the sleeve of his shirt, tugging at it. He felt her knuckles brush against his skin, her touch as electric as ever. “Please, Eli. Let me speak. Five minutes.”

She sounded more vulnerable than ever, and was beautiful in a way that made his lungs struggle to hold on to air, and—what the hell. Maybe being near her was a sharp ache, but loving someone and saying no to them didn’t seem to go well together. He could give her five minutes out of the rest of his life. He could give her anything. “Of course.” He began skating again.

So did she, this time by his side. “I . . .” She was silent. Opened her mouth with a couple more false starts that were not like the Rue he knew at all. And then, when he was about to prod her, finally said, “Can I tell you a story?”

“You can tell me whatever you want, Rue.”

She nodded. “I used to think that endings could be happy, or sad. That stories could be happy, or sad. That people could be happy, or sad. And I always figured that my ending, my story, me, would always fall in the latter.”

He itched to take her in his arms, but let her continue.

“But then I met you. And you made me wonder, for the very first time, if there was a flaw in my reasoning. Maybe people can be happy and sad. Maybe stories are messy and complicated. Maybe endings don’t always include solutions that tie everything together in a bow. But that doesn’t mean that they have to be tragedies.”

“I’m glad you think that.” He really was. She may have robbed him of his peace of mind, but he still wanted her to have hers. One more fault to add to the humbling business of falling in love, he supposed. Distracting. Fucked up. Self-annihilating. Sweet and excruciating at the same time.

“But you said that it was.” Her expression was solemn and serious, so intensely Rue, he felt it right in his bones.

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