Page 61 of By His Side

Felix’s smile was sardonic. “Right. Because I didn’t set out to seduce you.”

“Did you?”

His slight head tilt said “oh, come on!” without him needing to put it into words. “I wanted you from the moment I first saw you.” AndI’d wanted him and he’d known it. “And I set out to get you. Sexually, anyway. I didn’t manipulate the whole staying with you thing. I want to make that clear.”

“It’s clear. What are you trying to say?”

To give him his due, Felix didn’t point out that I’d already know the answer to that question if I hadn’t interrupted him. “That it was selfish of me. That I didn’t think beyond the sex part of the equation. I never imagined a scenario where I would open up to you and it would become more.”

“But you did. And it did.” My words were quiet.

“Yeah.”

“And that’s good. It’s great.” There was a note of pleading in my voice. Because I knew this was a breakup.Had we ever been together?No, we had. We just hadn’t put a label on it. If we weren’t together, I would never have gone to bat for him against Hayden the way I had.

“You were already putting yourself on the line with letting me stay with you. That was bad enough. But then what you did today…”

I tilted my chin up, refusing to take this lying down. “It was my decision to make.”

“It was. That doesn’t mean it was the right one. You made a decision based on emotion rather than logic.”

“And that’s a crime?”

Felix smiled, but it was decidedly wan. “No, not a crime. Just ill-advised. I’m not worth that.”

A scrape of chair legs said that someone had occupied the next table. I didn’t look across, all my attention fixed on Felix. “You don’t get to make that decision, and you’re wrong.”

Felix gave a slow nod. “Maybe. But I get to decide how far it goes and when we should bring a stop to it. Before you lose your job. Before things get any more complicated.”

My headshake was prolonged, like I thought that if I just kept going, Felix would have to see sense, eventually. “Don’t do this!”

“Don’t do what? Rescue you from yourself. I’m doing you a favor here, Darien. Without me messing up your life, you can be happy. I’m putting right the wrong I did. You can meet a nice woman and get married. Have some beautiful kids. Maybe one day you’ll be sat on a beach and you’ll tell her about the month you nearly fucked everything up, where lust got the better of you. And you’ll thank her for coming into your life when things could have been so different.”

“It’s not just lust and you know it.” I wasn’t even going to pay lip service to the rest of the stuff he’d said. That was all just too ridiculous for words. I’d used preferring women as a defense mechanism at the time, and now it was coming back to bite me.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters!” Remembering we were in public, I lowered my voice. “I made a mistake today. I admit that. I let concern for you… Maybe even belief that I could wave a magic wand and make everything okay get in the way of common sense.” I held my hands up. “I’m not perfect and I’ve never pretended to be.”

“You’re a good person. Thebestperson.”

“But you don’t want to be with me?”

“Darien.” There was a world of pleading in the way Felix said my name. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

I snorted. “Oh, excuse me for not just saying okay when I’m being dumped. It’s incredibly inconsiderate of me.”

Felix’s face twisted. “I—”

“I thought it was you.”

Both of us turned to stare at the dark-haired woman in her fifties at the next table who’d made the statement. It was her I’d heard taking a seat. She held a phone in her right hand, her gaze flicking betweenit and Felix, presumably having pulled up a picture. My heart did a painful little thud in my chest. In Felix’s rush to leave, he’d foregone his usual disguise of a baseball cap and sunglasses. And neither of us had exactly been keeping a low profile by letting our drama play out in the middle of the café. It seemed our poor choices had consequences.

“That poor girl. She didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

“He’s not who you think he is,” I said, the lie coming relatively easily to my lips.

Felix shot me a warning look. “Don’t. It’s not worth it.” He turned his attention to the woman. “I didn’t kill her.”

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