Page 106 of Make Me Want it Too

“And I…didn’t hate it.” A smile pulls at the edges of my lips.

He returns my smile with a grin of his own. It disappears again. “So… Are you getting back together with him, then?”

“What? No. Why would you think that?”

His eyes meet mine. “I saw the letter he wrote you. And then the way you stayed back with him…”

“Oh. I—no, it wasn’t like that.”

“Oh, okay.”

Silence again.

I want to ask him if I can stay. But I don’t want to stay in the loft. I want to stay with him. In his bed. Indefinitely.

But I don’t know how to say the words. Afraid I’ll be rejected. Scared I’ll sound desperate. Or like I’m begging.

I’ve spent the last two, maybe three years, begging for a man to love me. Trying so hard to be exactly what he wanted. To be enough.

I won’t ask for scraps anymore.

I clear my throat. “Jake is going on his and Bex’s honeymoon, alone, to Hawaii for two weeks. He said I could stay at his apartment while I look for a place. So I don’t have to be in your hair anymore.”

I smile and try to play it off casually. But inside, I want him to tell me I was never in his hair. No, that he wants me in his hair.

That he’ll ask me to say. Beg me to stay.

He doesn’t.

He nods.

Oh.

“I’ll help you get your stuff,” he says.

“That’s all right. It’s not very much. I can manage it on my own.”

I expect him to protest. To say that he knows I can do it but insist on helping me anyway. My chest tightens with how much I wish he would.

But he doesn’t. He just says, “Okay.”

We stand here, him in the kitchen, me two steps inside the door, for another beat, staring at each other. Then I walk past him to go up to the loft, and he lets me.

He lets me go like he’s completely fine with this scenario. Like this last week really didn’t mean anything to him. That all the feelings were just as fake as our relationship—at least, on his part.

So, I go up the stairs and pack up the rest of my things.

And then with a curt goodbye, Wood holds the door open for me as I leave his apartment.

CHAPTER 22

WOOD

Ialways thought the saying “stabbed in the heart” was metaphorical. But there’s nothing metaphorical about the sharp pain in my chest.

Watching her walk out of my apartment shreds my insides into jagged pieces. Ripping me apart in a way that feels like I’ll never be whole again.

It took everything in me to choke out the few words I said to her without breaking down, dropping to my knees, and begging her to stay.

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