Page 33 of Always

She gasps. “No! Where did that come from?”

“You begged me to take you to New York last week.”

“Yeah, and we all know how that turned out.”

“Yes, we do.” It’s always on my mind. All of it. The distraught look on her beautiful face, the pleading in her eyes, in her voice.

“Why is everything black-and-white with you, Braden?”

“What makes you say that?”

“I asked you for something you didn’t want to give me. Instead of working it out, finding a compromise, you ended our relationship.”

“I wouldn’t have ended it if you could have answered my question.”

She pauses a moment. “Maybe I need your help to find the answer.”

“Do you?” I ask.

“I…don’t know. Maybe.”

I shake my head. “You don’t. If you needed me, you wouldn’t have come here. To your hometown. You would have come to me.”

She doesn’t need me to find her answers. She needs to look inside herself.

But the irony is that for my answers, I do need her.

And I hate that I need her. It disturbs me. It perplexes me.

“Stop fighting yourself, Braden,” she says.

She reads me so well. It’s unnerving, but also warming, in a way. “I don’t know how to.”

She lifts her brow. Clearly my response surprises her.

It surprises me as well.

All my life I’ve been fighting against my past. Leaving it in a small part of my brain, safely hidden so I can do what needs to be done. I’ve built a fortune by anyone’s standards, but I still haven’t dealt fully with my past.

“Will you come up with me?” I ask once again.

“My father—”

“Your father knows you’re an adult.”

“True, but—”

“Please, Skye. Come up with me. Make love with me.”

“You just said you weren’t asking me to have sex.”

“I’m not. I’m asking you to make love.”

“Meaning…?”

I draw in a breath.

I need her. I need her so badly. And I want to be with her. Just the two of us. I want to experience something with her that I’ve never felt the need to experience with anyone. Ever.

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