Page 89 of Holding Out

“She’s right.Let’s take a walk.”

He followed her out into the street, and the cold fear accompanied him.He tried to put an arm around her, but she pulled away, just far enough that she was out of his reach.

“Are you mad?”

She shook her head.

“Talk to me, Becca.Tell me what’s in your head.I need to know what’s in your head.”

He stopped, made her stop with a hand on her arm.Turned her so she was facing him, forced her to look at him.

She opened her mouth.He had a million ideas about what might come out, but what she actually said still managed to surprise him.

“I got the job.”

“The job—?”

The fatigue he’d felt, the weight that had threatened to pin him to the recliner earlier, suddenly descended over him like a heavy cape.His body and brain felt like they were moving at the speed of molasses.

“The salon receptionist job in Seattle,” she said wearily.She sounded disappointed, but not surprised, that she’d had to explain that to him.

“Oh.”His stomach clenched.“Congratulations, that’s—what are you going to do?”

She was walking faster; he had to speed up to stay by her side.

“I think I should take it,” she said.She was talking fast, too, like she could slide that sentence by him without him noticing what she’d said.

But there was no chance of that.The cold knot in his stomach doubled and redoubled.

“What’s this about, baby?”

The endearment made her flinch, which hurt somewhere in the pit of his gut.

“I just—I just think you were right from the beginning when you said that this would get more complicated than we wanted it to.”

It was his turn to flinch, hearing his words flung back at him.

“You’re my first, and I’m barely twenty-four, and, I don’t know, it feels stupid to turn down a job that’s perfect for me in a city where I already have a great apartment and a fabulous roommate, on the strength of a few weeks of—whatever this is.It’s been good, Griff.Sogood.But I’ve let myself think it’s more than it is, and I don’t think I should give up what’s right for me.”

“No.”

The word came out before he could stop it.

“You don’t get to do that.It’s not ‘whatever this is.’It’s more than that and you know it.”

He was going to tell her what it was.Dirty Taboo and filthy archery.The best sex he’d ever had.Conversations that helped him make sense of what he wanted and who he was.

The first time in two years that he had let himselffeel.

Like an idiot, the mean tight voice in his head said.

“What’s this really about, Becca?”

“I saw you.And Marina.Coming out of your room.I saw you, holding her.”

“Holding—?”Then he figured it out.She’d seen them coming downstairs after the last trip to unload furniture, when he’d hugged Marina goodbye.It had been a long, warm hug, because—well, because they’d cleared the air between them and it felt like they could be friends now.And honestly?Because he’d probably never see her again.

Becca’s lower lip trembled, and he saw that he’d hurt her.Badly.Damn, he’d been stupid and insensitive, but he was going to make it up to her now.For the first time, the knot in his stomach loosened, because he was going to explain and apologize and fix this.

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