Page 39 of Reclaiming Love

“Don’t know what?” He sounded hopeful.

“Sometimes you scare me.”

He moved closer to her and she fought the urge to slouch further into the wall. “I don’t mean to, Mel. I—I get so mad sometimes. I can’t control it. But I’ll work on it. Give me another chance, Mel, please. I promise to make it up to you.”

No, not after the last time. She couldn’t forget that.

“I don’t want to lose you, Mel. We can take a break, if that’s what you want—if you need some space.”

Space. It sounded like a good idea. She needed the space to think straight. When he was so close to her, like he was now, she couldn’t think clearly. But only an hour ago, she’d been ready to ditch him. To end it. And she’d been thinking it through ever since she’d been at home over Christmas.

Clearly, her heart knew what she needed to do. Only Matt wasn’t making it so easy for her to walk away. Maybe this was part of his game plan, part of his strategy for making her stay. She’d be silly to fall for it.

Right now, the option of agreeing to take a break sounded like a possible solution to get her out of this sorry mess. In time, she’d use that space and thinking time to slowly break things off because it was obvious he couldn’t take no for an answer. He wasn’t going to let her walk away that easily—not unless it had been his decision in the first place. And if that had been the case he’d have ditched her faster than a burning coal.

She watched him carefully, and her heart scrambled up her throat when he moved closer as though he was going to touch her lips with his.

Seeing her cold look, he stopped and took a step back. “A break it is then. We can talk when you’re ready. I’ll give you the time and space you need.”

She wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t raise his hopes, that a break for a while didn’t mean things could continue as they had, that it in no way meant she wanted things to continue. But it was useless. He wasn’t going to leave until she agreed and she’d run out of energy to fight him.

For now, it was better to keep quiet and hope that whatever it was he thought they had would slowly fizzle out for him.

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