Page 118 of The Secret

I didn’t want to turn around as I knew he was watching me leave, instead I smiled weakly at Joan as I left, earning a wink as I passed and called the elevator, heading out of the building.

I sat down on the leather seats of the coffee shop, cooled from the unnecessary A/C. I sat there crossing and uncrossing my legs, lining up the sugar cubes from the bowl in front of me, piling up the packets of Sweet N Low… anything I could do to speed up the time or slow down the time or do anything to stop me thinking about what I’d just witnessed or the emotional battle taking place between my brain and my heart.

Last night he’d told me he loved me, and I loved him.

Both these things I knew to be true and uncontestable.

Except less than twelve hours later, I’d found a naked woman on his desk and my muscles had seized up as quickly as if I’d been thrown into an industrial deep freeze, my brain screaming at me, reminding me of everything I was trying to be cautious about. We needed to slow down, the pain lancing through my chest only confirmed that.

True to his word, it took him less than thirty minutes to get to me and I didn’t envy anyone who’d been within the blast radius of his temper. He rushed into the coffee shop looking much less put together than he had when he’d left this morning, but still as devastatingly handsome. When he’d left this morning, I’d been certain in my decision. We loved each other, I was his girlfriend, I’d figure out my job, life, everything on the way… but now? Now I felt like I’d been slapped in the face with a heavy dose of reality.

We’d been moving too fast.

Lighting fast.

Warp speed.

Supersonic.

For the first time ever, I was thinking clearly in his presence, my brain not fogged by his nearness, his perfect bone structure or his green eyes – today’s shade resembling the tops of the Douglas Firs during an Oregon summer.

“Hi, darling. Are you okay?” His lips pressed softly against mine, when he reached my table, taking my hands in his as he sat down next to me. “I’m so sorry, Kit.”

I looked at the pain etched in his face.

I still wanted to be his girlfriend. I still loved him. Ihadfallen in love with him; I was on the way to falling so hard it would leave permanent scars. The only way to ensure our survival was to slow it down before we ended in a collision neither one of us would live through, which meant I couldn’t move in with him yet.

I cupped his cheek, trying to give him reassurance by raising as much of a smile as I could muster.

“I know, it wasn’t…” I was about to say it hadn’t been his fault, but I actually didn’t know that. I didn’t know whether he’d done anything to discourage her further after she’d turned up at the apartment. I only trusted that he had. “I know nothing happened.”

“She’s gone. The cops just left with her, if you want to come back to the office.” His expression was still marred with guilt. “Rafe is heading over too, so we can go through the contract business and draw a line under it. Start our lives fresh; you, me, Bell, and Barclay.”

I wanted that, I wanted to start our lives fresh more than anything, but I didn’t want to do it the way he wanted. I needed him to understand I wasn’t saying no to us living together at any point, I was only saying no to right now.

I prayed he would see that.

I took a deep breath, pushing away the clogging that had built in my throat again, along with the pressure in my heart. “I’m not going to come back to your office.”

His face fell. “Oh, okay, I understand. We can do it at home instead. Our home.”

I bit down on my lip, hard, trying to quell the emotions bashing through me and bruising every one of my organs. “It’s your home, Murray.”

“What?” The worry lines which had been there since I’d burst into his office darkened. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not my home, it’s yours.” I squeezed his hand that was still holding onto mine. “I’ve been staying there as part of my job, but it’s your home.”

His fingers flexed. “Kit, what are you talking about?”

“I want to start our lives fresh, like you said.” I sucked in my cheek, chewing on it, but nothing was going to stop the anxiety flushing my body. “In order to do that, I need to move out.”

He scoured my face, searching for any type of sign that I was joking, that I didn’t mean what I was saying. “Kit, baby, I don’t understand.”

I took a deep breath, speaking aloud the words which had been going round my head on an endless loop. “We need some space from each other…”

“I don’t need any space from you,” he argued before I could continue, pulling his hand away.

“Murray, please…” I rubbed my clammy palms down my jeans, “let me finish.”

---