Page 16 of Just Between Us

“No!” I spat. “No, I don’t want you to fuck off with someone else, okay? I don’t think this was just some suck and fuck that can be thrown away, but I’m trying to do the right thing here, Lucy!”

She was pushing my buttons. She was making me confront my feelings for her and say things I wasn’t ready to say to a woman who was half my age.

“What about what I want?” she spat back.

Well, fuck. That was a loaded question. “Whatdoyou want?” I asked flippantly.

She reached across the table and touched my hand. “I want you, Rich.”

I looked at her in confusion. What the hell did she mean?

“I want you,” she repeated. “I want to fight for us. I want to convince Annie that it’s okay for us to be together. I want to be with you.”

This isn’t real.

I swallowed hard and stared at her in complete disbelief.

“Why?”Really, brain? That’s your choice for right now?

Lucy smirked at me. “Isn’t that obvious?”

I shook my head. Not because I didn’t know what she was going to say—I wanted to say it too—but because there was a surreal feeling to this. Was this really going to happen? Was she going to say those words to me?

“Okay, I’ll say it. I’ll be the one to make a complete idiot of myself.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, psyching herself up to utter the words. “I’m in love with you, Rich.”

My heart flipped at her declaration; I had been longing to hear that from her. I stood and walked out of the room and into the kitchen.

I could hear her mumbled curse to herself as I left. She thought I was fleeing at the news, and in part, I was, but I needed to get up and move my feet before I put my foot in my mouth and somehow fucked it up.

I paced back and forth, trying to absorb what she’d just said. She stood as I approached her again. Taking in the pained expression on her face, I went straight over to her. Crushing my mouth against hers, and cupped her face tenderly, kissing her with everything I had. She had to know how I was feeling about her, so I poured my emotion into her. I felt her stance soften, and her hands reached around me and touched my back.

“I love you too,” I admitted when I finally pried my lips from hers. “I think I have from the very first time we made love.”

She smiled at me and laughed softly. “I felt it too. Ever since then I’ve wanted to say something but couldn’t.”

I pulled her tighter against me and kissed her hard. My hands grabbed her arse and encouraged her to cling to my frame, wrapping her legs around my hips. With her perfectly entwined around me, I started up the stairs for my bedroom.

The woman I loved, loved me back. While this might be the bumpiest relationship in history, I knew it was what we both wanted.

The future was going to be rocky, especially when our families found out. But in that moment, all I cared about was making love to my woman and showing her just how much I cared about her.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

LUCY

If I hadn’t knownabout Annie’s mum, I would have wondered why such a magnificent man would ever doubt how sexy and loveable he was. But I did know.

I saw how she broke him. I saw how he reacted to it, how hurt he had been, and how long it had taken him to piece himself back together again after it. As if the pain she had inflicted on her own child wasn’t bad enough, she had wounded him too. He had been her partner, and she had thanked him by leaving him for another woman.

She hadn’t given him a second thought, and she certainly hadn’t considered the life he might have wanted for himself beyond her. She was selfish, cruel, and had abandoned both him and my best friend.

My best friend.

Dear God, what would she think about this? Would she hate me? Worse still, would it damage the relationship she had with the only parent she still had a connection with?

My heart was heavy. I couldn’t give him up. I had never felt like this about anyone else in my entire life. But Annie was the sister I never had. Was Rich really a good enough reason to risk losing that? I didn’t even need to think about my answer.Yes. Yes, he was, and I knew — eventually — Annie would come around. It was all I could hope for.

Rich’s arms wrapped around me and my sullen thoughts were forgotten.

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