Page 74 of Obsessed with my Temptation

Travis looked tense though, like he’d been grinding his teeth. His eyes were intense, the stare that made people want to look away, but that had always pulled me closer. His tension was obviously not because he’d known I would be here, but something was haunting him the same way it was haunting me.

He put it all aside for me.

“Are you okay? Is something wrong?” Travis watched me closely, holding my hands in his and brushing them.Jesus.

Don’t fall apart right now.

“No, I—Yes.” I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry for being here.”

“No, that’s—that’s not what I’m sorry for.” I swallowed the ball in my throat, and looking into his concerned gray eyes, I said, “I spent the whole night with my parents and his friends. They were trying to pair me up with a girl I used to be friends with.”

Travis took off his jacket, leaving it over the back of the sofa. He didn’t look at me as he asked, “I see.”

His voice was devoid of emotion. Dead. Cold.

I hated it.

“I didn’t stop them while they were doing it, but I talked to her after—”

“You should try it.”

My blood turned to ice in my veins. “Try what?”

“Dating her. Being in a relationship. Asking for what you really want.”

Travis was still not looking at me. It unnerved me but I was also grateful for it, because right now he waskilling me, and he would have seen it, clear in my face.

“Do you—” My voice was choked up, and I had to try a second time to get the words out. “Is that what you want?”

Don’t you want me?

“I want what’s best for you Scott, and this…This isn’t going anywhere.”

He didn’t need to clarify whatthismeant.

This. A fever dream.

I didn’t say anything to that.

Travis went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, doing anything possible not to look at me. “I know you’ve struggled with feeling okay with your sexuality, with your submissive desires, but you’ve come a long way. You deserve to be with someone who…lovesyou. Who’ll see you for who you are.” Why did it seem like it was hard for him to say? How could it feel that way when he was breaking my heart?

I wished I’d never come here. I wished I could erase everything that I was hearing.

Because I’d wanted to tell Travis that I was in love with him, and he was telling me that I deserved someone who wouldlove me.

Travis did turn right then. And when he looked at me, jaw set hard as stone, his cool expression broke. “Don’t look at me like that, Scott.”

“What am I looking at you like?”

“Like I’m breaking your heart.”

My nostrils flared as I tried my best not to fall to pieces in Travis’s living room. “You’d already told me this was going nowhere. That you weren’t my boyfriend.”

I should have seen this coming. I should have prepared myself for this as I waited outside, cold and with a tightening gut. But nothing could have prepared me for the pain I felt in my heart or the thickness in my throat, the sting in my eyes as I heard him say the words.

In a flurry of movement, Travis crossed the distance between us. He took hold of the hair at my nape and put his forehead against mine. “This is for thebest,Scott.”

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