Page 46 of You Complicate Me

Men sucked, she decided instantly. Maybe she should have taken Nick’s suggestion to give girls a try a little more seriously after all.

Chapter Twenty-three

Twenty minutes later, Grace was standing in front of the minibar in her room, contemplating scarfing down a king-sized Snickers bar and chasing it down with a little bottle of vodka, when Nick knocked on the door separating their rooms. Her heart leapt up in excitement (Let him in! Let him in!) while her brain immediately went into self-defense mode (He’s an ass! Ignore him!).

With one last look at the minibar—maybe she’d chase that Snickers bar down with two little bottles of vodka. Hadn’t she earned the right after the day she’d just had?—she walked over and leaned against the door, crossing her arms over her chest.

“What do you want, Nick?” she asked, putting as much “suck it, asshole” into her tone as possible.

“Can we talk, Grace? Please?”

The “please” was a nice touch, but it wasn’t enough to take the chill off what he’d said to her earlier. “Sure. Talk.”

“Will you open the door so I can see you?”

“No.”

She heard him sigh. “I deserve that. I’m so sorry for what I said earlier, Grace. I didn’t even mean it. I was just so…jealous and fucked-up about the thought of you being with that asshat. I wanted to tear him apart for even thinking he deserved to breathe the same air as you, and all I ended up doing was treating you like shit. Do you think you could ever forgive me?”

She wanted to tell him he was forgiven, because what he’d just said was probably the best apology she’d ever heard. Hell, Brad had cheated on her and hadn’t delivered half the apology Nick just had—and all he’d wrong done was talk out his ass for a minute! Who hadn’t been guilty of that at some point?

But while her heart wanted to immediately forgive him, her brain cautioned against it. That very apology—and her gut reaction to it—was proof that Nick was dangerous. Brad’s betrayal had hurt. But if this thing she had with Nick went further, when he left her (because let’s face it, everyone left eventually), she’d be destroyed.

How could she knowingly hand that kind of power over to anyone?

Grace let out a sigh of her own. “I’d like to forgive you, Nick. But…maybe this all happened for a reason. What you said was true. I did get involved with you really quickly. Too quickly. Maybe it’s time we step back and re-evaluate this thing.”

He was quiet for so long Grace started to wonder if he’d walked away or if he even planned to respond at all. Then he said, “Are you telling me that you want some space? Are you giving me an it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech?”

Grace blinked. Wow, he was right. That’s exactly what she was doing. She’d been on the receiving end a time or two, but hadn’t ever delivered one herself. And if she had to guess? She’d be willing to bet Nick never had a speech like that aimed at him, either.

Well, there was a first time for everything, she supposed.

With a nod that was entirely useless because he couldn’t see it, she said, “Yes. I suppose I am.”

She was pretty sure her heart face-palmed, all while her brain patted her on the back and offered platitudes about how there were plenty of other fish in the sea.

Grace flinched as there was a thunk on the door. It was a fairly distinct thunk, too. The thunk of a forehead dropping to the wood in defeat.

“Grace,” he said in that low, gravelly tone that never failed to reduce her knees to mush. “Don’t do this. Please let me in.”

There was more to that request than the obvious. He wasn’t just asking her to open her door. He was asking her to open her heart to him. To take a chance. To let her heart do the thinking for once.

And, God, how she wanted to. It’d be so easy to let Nick in. To lose herself in him. It’d be good, too. For a while, at least. But then…

“I’m sorry, Nick,” she choked out past the lump of emotion that had settled in her throat. “I can’t. I’m done talking about this. Please just go.”

Grace didn’t even wait for a reply. Instead, she shut off her light and threw herself down on the bed, wrapping her arms around her middle in an attempt to ward off the chill that had settled into her bones.

She’d done the right thing. Nick was too…everything for her. They didn’t belong together. It didn’t matter that he turned her on and made her laugh and had a huge heart. Letting him go now, before she got too attached, was the right thing to do.

But you already are attached, dumbass.

Jesus, had that come from her heart or her brain?

Okay, stay calm, she told herself, sucking in a deep breath. Think this through logically. Look at the pros and cons.

Pro number one for letting Nick go before things got any more complicated between them: Nick lived in Chicago and she lived in LA. Even if everything worked out between them (and that was a giant, massive, life-sized if) the best they could hope for was a long-distance relationship, because she couldn’t leave her practice in LA to follow him to Chicago (she was on track to be the youngest partner in the firm’s history, for God’s sake), and she wouldn’t ask him to uproot his life to follow her to LA.

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