Page 2 of Embracing the Change

“I believe in the little you’ve said already that you’ve made yourself abundantly clear.”

“I disagree,” he replied.

“That’s a problem for you,” I returned.

“Damn it, Nora,” he clipped. “Now, after what just happened between us, is not the time for you to get stubborn.”

In that moment, I hated he knew me so very well. I detested that I’d let him in so thoroughly. I abhorred the fact, over the last few years, I’d given him everything he would allow me to give when I knew he had no intention of returning the favor.

Yes, our kiss had given me hope I’d been wrong about that last part.

And then he’d dashed that hope.

“I don’t believe we have the kind of relationship where you’re at liberty to tell me how I can behave.” I paused, but not long enough for him to have the opportunity to speak. “No, wait. You’re never at liberty to tell me how I can behave.”

“What we have?—”

I interrupted him. “We have nothing.”

I felt the arrow I’d nocked in the bow myself pierce my heart at my words—words (in my defense) that were coming from place of deep hurt—because I knew I took things too far even before I watched him flinch so fiercely, his head jerked with the gesture.

“Nothing?” he asked softly.

Not nothing! my mind shouted.

We were friends. We were very good friends. The best.

That had grown recently.

But we’d been something to each other for decades.

Something important.

Something beautiful.

I fumbled to walk that back. “Jamie?—”

“No, Nora.” His voice was a sheet of ice forming between us. “Now I believe you’ve made yourself perfectly clear.”

Damn it!

He turned to my door and didn’t hesitate to walk to it.

I stood rooted to the spot, experiencing something the likes of which its occurrence in my life I could count on one hand.

A moment of indecision.

I had no earthly idea what to do, at the same time I knew I had to do something.

It was agony.

He opened the door but twisted back to me, his wide shoulder in his sublime bespoke suit jacket swinging with that mixture of strength and grace that was so inherently him, something about him (among many others) I found ludicrously attractive.

“Grow up, Ms. Ellington,” he ground out after his eyes fixed on mine. “It was just a fucking kiss.”

I blinked in shock, which was, apparently, what happened when you experienced a spasm of profound pain.

While I was still processing the strength of his blow, the door snicked shut behind him.

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