Page 123 of The Billionaire's Demand

‘It’s okay. I’ll wait.’

‘We can ride in the same elevator together, Libby, for God’s sake.’

She bit down on her lip, blinking away from him. It was only the possibility of people staring, speculating, that had her taking a step inside the lift and she wished she hadn’t as soon as the doors zipped closed and the air seemed to spark with awareness in a way that threatened to pull at all the threads of her sanity.

She tapped her security card to the lift console then pressed her back as hard to the wall as she could. Mercifully, the lift was swift and the doors had opened again before she knew it, onto Raul’s floor, but he made no room to leave.

‘This is you, isn’t it?’ she said woodenly.

‘I’ll see you home.’

She almost scoffed at the stupidity of that. As if he cared. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of arguing. She simply shrugged, kept staring straight ahead, and a moment later the doors pinged open once more, this time into the penthouse apartment they’d once shared.

As Libby moved to step past him, Raul put a hand out. Not to Libby, but rather to keep the doors open.

She slowed a little once in the foyer, knowing she had to say something, to at least acknowledge and farewell. She turned, and her heart thumped.

‘How are you?’ he asked, the question gruff, his eyes raking over her as if the answer lay in her appearance.

‘Fine,’ she lied. ‘And you?’

His smile was bitter. ‘Also fine. But then, I am not growing a human inside of me.’

Libby lifted one shoulder. ‘Half the time I forget I am. Except at night,’ she added, babbling because she was nervous. ‘At night, he or she is very active.’

‘Are you finding it hard to sleep?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and she was glad that he would presume it was because of their somersaulting baby, and not the real reason: that she was tormented by thoughts and memories of Raul and what might have been, to the point she found sleep untenable. Their eyes held, yet both were silent. The atmosphere pulsated, and then Libby took a step backwards.

‘Well, nice seeing you,’ she said quietly. ‘Take care.’ And she spun away from him quickly, as though her life depended on it.

Raul rode back down to his own apartment with a scowl on his features and a strange feeling in his gut. A feeling that he was going in the opposite direction, like swimming upstream or pushing a magnet against an equal pole. It was really stupid.

He strode into his apartment, changed into his gym gear and left the building, determined to run until he understood himself once more.

Understanding didn’t come. The more he ran, the less anything made sense.

Oh, he knew what he should want, what was right and smart and safe, but the thought of living two floors below Libby and their baby now seemed preposterous. Two weeks ago, he’d convinced himself it was the right thing for everybody, but how could that be so?

It was clearly not right for Libby—she looked exhausted and shell-shocked. She looked hurt and betrayed.

And for him?

He couldn’t analyse his feelings, only he knew everything was wrong. The instincts that had kept him safe for so long, the instincts that had taught him to run at the first sign of connection, to preserve a solid amount of space around himself as though his life depended on it, were pulling him in a different direction now, making him want things that were counter to every goal he’d ever had in life.

He pulled to the edge of the sidewalk and stared across the street, closing his eyes for a moment and letting himself step fully into Libby’s rosy dream for them. The family she’d described. The love. The warmth, the promise to always love him, no matter what. When he stepped into that vision of his future, he felt a want that was greater than any he’d ever known. For a moment, he let himself imagine it was real, that he could trust her, that Libby would protect him, that he could trust her not to hurt him, that loving her wouldn’t mean one day he would have to suffer the most immense loss of his life.

But it was only a fantasy, just like he’d told her. Because at some point the dream would crack. She’d leave him, like everyone else ever had. Or worse, he’d leave her. He’d hurt her, more than he had already, and he’d never be able to forgive himself for that.

Raul began to run once more, but it didn’t matter how far he went: he couldn’t outrun the tortured nature of his indecision and finally, as he approached the apartment, he stopped running, not just physically, but also mentally.

Libby scared him. She always had.

Right from the beginning, when she’d been willing to put her own life on the line to save his.

But this was different.

She was offering a future that he’d never allowed himself to hope for, because he’d been trained to believe it was beyond his reach.

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