Page 55 of Happy After All

I can see that it isn’t a lack of interest but an extreme amount of restraint that keeps him planted to the spot he’s in.

I can see the truth.

It terrifies me.

I haven’t touched a man in years. I’ve been protecting myself.

Sure, I stare at Nathan Hart from across the courtyard. I think about him when he isn’t around.

I do not make decisive moves toward him because I know I will end up getting burned by the heat between us.

I was able to keep myself safe by only acknowledging that he felt the same in moments. Small spaces of time between one breath and the next.

But now I see it.

I see it, and I am undone. Stripped bare. Rendered speechless. Absolutely terrified.

“That’s the problem,” he says. “If I treated you nicely, it would only lead to one place.”

My mouth goes dry. “Where ... where is that?”

“I think you know.”

I close my eyes. “I need to hear it.”

I open my eyes just in time to see his gaze burning right through me.

“It would lead straight to your bedroom.”

Chapter Fourteen

Slow Burn—a term used in discourse, generally around romance novels, to describe a relationship that takes a very, very long time to go from spark to ignition.

I’m stunned by this admission, and yet I’m not.

Iknewit.

I feel the same way.

But hearing him actually say it has me feeling overheated.

I don’t know how I’d write this, and I hate that. Because I have nothing to distance me from it. I have no way to save myself by imagining some fictional blueprint.

“I don’t treat you nicely because I don’t have anything to give you that you could possibly want, Amelia,” he says, his voice rough, using my name often and easy now, like he’s proving to me how well he knows it. “I am a hollowed-out human being. I would never lie to you. But what I can offer you isn’t something you’d want. I was doing you a favor.”

I’m desperate for him to say more. Craving it now like cake or cocaine. I’ve never had cocaine, but I imagine wanting it feels like this. Yearning, desperately. Even knowing it won’t end well.

He turns like he’s going to walk away from me, like he’s going to leave me standing there in the courtyard like he’s done before. I’m not going to allow it.

“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t say something like that and then turn away from me. Don’t say something like that and then wander off. You have no idea who I am or what I want. Once upon a time I wanted marriage, but that’s ... over.” My voice is hoarse, my whole body tortured from the pain of saying it, reliving it, admitting it. “That’s who I was then. I came out here, and there hasn’t been anyone since Christopher. No one. I’ve been by myself. All I’ve done is stare at you like some ... horny teenager who doesn’t know how to behave. You’re right, a hookup, that wasn’t what I wanted. Years ago. When I thought my life would look different by now. When I thought I would be different. We don’t get to control everything, do we? What if that’s the lesson of this place? I moved here to get away. I’m not sure that I did. My past is quite literally following me. But I’m different. For the last three years I have wanted something different. I have been happy with something different. I had nobody, not you, not anybody, protecting me these past three years.” I take a deep breath, my lungs aching, my head pounding.

“Whatever you want, or whatever you don’t want, own it. Just don’t put it on me. Don’t hold yourself back from me under the guise of protecting me, when you have no idea what I’ve protected myself from. I’m strong enough. The idea that you think you could break me with, what ... your penis? That’s hilarious. If you don’t want to sleep with me, that’s fine. Don’t pretend it’s an act of chivalry.”

“I’m telling you that I think you deserve more,” he says.

“Based on what? I didn’t even think you knew my name.”

“I have known your name from the first moment I saw you,” he says, something in his expression shifting, getting leaner, hungrier. It awakens something inside me. “Just like I’ve known that if I ever let myself touch you, it would ruin us both.”

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