Page 97 of Worth Every Risk

“Aries, would you wait a minute?” He grabs my elbow and spins me to him. “Where are you—”

“I had a perfect night with you. Perfect. The sex, the sleeping, your apology… all of it. Fucking perfect, and you went and ruined it. You swore at me in front of your family. Your brothers, who already think I’m ‘just the nanny’”—I raise my index fingers to air quote—“you happen to be fucking because you’re having a midlife crisis. Is that what this is?”

His irises move frantically over me, his chest rising and falling under his linen shirt. “Do you need to know what it is? Can’t we just enjoy it?”

“I don’t know. Can we?”

A flicker of something I think is guilt crosses his face. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re lying to your children.”

“We’re not lying. We’re protecting them from information they don’t need to know. Christ, everyone’s getting at me to define this thing between us even though it’s only been a few weeks. As if this is some life-defining relationship, when it’s not. It’s sex. It’s just sex. It’s not as though we’re going to get married.”

His last sentence is spoken with such disdain, such disparagement that I can feel the words scraping my heart.

Just sex?“Wow, Matt. You really know how to make a girl feel good. Well done.” I start clapping, slowly, mostly because I know it’s fucking annoying and I can tell by the look on his face that he thinks so too. But his expression shifts quickly.

“Shit. Aries, I’m sorry,” he says, reaching out to me, but I turn away and start walking quickly up the hill again. Away from the beach, the water. I don’t know why; my brain is too foggedwith anger to think straight. I keep marching until my legs ache. I’m practically running, and the sand is turning to tufted grass, prickling the soles of my bare feet. There’s no one else here. I ought to go back down, to find the others, to look after Lucie and do my job. Not fight with my boss about what ought to have been casual sex, but never was.

I spin back to find Matt right behind me, a worried, almost panicked expression on his handsome face. For a second, it gives me pause, but I have to say what I have to say. I can’t keep quiet. “Last night, you said it waseverything. Is it just sex, or is it everything? Which is it?”

“Everything.”

The word buries itself right inside me—a treasure to be unearthed later—but right now, it’s not enough. I haven’t finished.Not yet.“My parents used to fight. Before they got divorced. My dad would talk to my mother like she didn’t matter. Like he wasn’t thinking about anything other than his own temper. And I swore I would never,neverhave that in my life. When he left, I was relieved. I was six years old, and Irejoicedthat my daddy had gone. No more hiding under the stairs. Cowering under my duvet, waiting for the screams to stop.”

Matt’s eyes are on me, his expression so pained it makes the ache in my heart worse, but I’m not going to hold back to save either of us a little discomfort.

“When Alec told me about you and Gemma, and when I met her, I thought maybe it wasn’t your fault. Maybe shewasa bitch, just like you said.” My gaze lingers on the scar, that thin white line through his eyebrow. He watches me intently and, noticing where I’m looking, he rubs a finger along it.

“But you aren’t a victim. You aren’t the good guy, who got stuck in a bad marriage.” I shake my head. “Everything is a co-creation. Every relationship is two people muddling their way through. You were in it together, just like we are. And youaren’tthe good guy.” My voice is so quiet, I can barely hear it above the sound of gulls and the rhythmic thump of the waves on the shore. “And I so wanted you to be. I wanted it so badly. I wanted this to beeverything.”

His eyelids droop, and beneath them his dark eyes are full of sorrow. My heart is so wrung out with the pain of seeing him like this. I can hardly meet his gaze.

“I never said I was a good guy,” he says, and the words seem to break him. “I’m a lot of things, but that’s not something I can claim.” He drops his head into his palm, then drags his hand over the back of his head, pulling dark swathes of hair clear of his forehead. “Fuck, Aries. If you’re looking for some perfect man, some perfect prince, then that’s not me. And you might as well scrap the fucking illusion, because I don’t want to disappoint you. I hate feeling this way, like I can’t be good enough, like you’re another person I’m letting down. Another person I’m hurting.”

“Then stop doing stupid shit.”

The tiniest smile pulls at his gorgeous mouth, then he drops his gaze, looks to the ground. “I’m an idiot.”

“Yes.”

We stand, breathing, watching one another.

“You know what?” I say. “I like having sex with you. I like it so much, I’d put up with a lot of your crap. And I hate myself for it, because I know you’ll swear at me or yell like a madman or walk away from me when I’m bent over your desk, and in spite of all that, if you say one nice thing to me… If you look at me like that”—I wave at his face, where his eyes are so full of care, so remorseful, sotroubled—“I’ll do anything you want. Because to me, this is more than just the sex. More than the passion and the breathlessness… this is…”

My words trail off. I can’t bring myself to say ‘love’ because that would be insane.Wouldn’t it?

“Aries,” he says softly as he reaches out to take my hand, but I snap it away.

“Just give me one more minute being angry with you. One more. Before you tear it all down.”

His hand falls to his side, and he stands opposite me as I count in my head.One Mississippi, Two Mississipi… I count all the way to sixty before Matt moves.

Then, like he’s been counting too, he drops to his knees there in the grassy sandbank and looks up at me.

It’s so unexpected that heat blasts through my body. I glance around to check whether any of the others can see this ridiculous scenario play out, but no one is here. It’s just us and the breeze and the sand and the sea.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

---