Page 35 of After Hours

She sat up straighter. “Is that true?”

Zachary considered that for a moment. Or rather, he considered how to say what he wanted to say to her.

“Not really,” he said after he’d thought about it. “I don’t like random broken things. Sometimes, when I meet a woman who has some stuff going on in her life, I think I can fix it. I’m pretty sure that’s just part of who I am. My mother only sees the bossiness. I’ll even admit to arrogant. She liked to call it mysavior complex. But it’s not a compulsion. It’s individual. And there’s usually a deeper element than that.”

“So what you’re saying,” Romily said quietly, “is that you fix a number of broken women. That it’s a habit. Not a compulsion, but… common. For you.”

“No,” he said, and it was a challenge to keep his voice steady and calm, “I’m not saying that. Because there are some kinds of broken that can’t be fixed. Not by me. Not by my magical cock. Not by my demands, my kinks, or anything I have to give. For a long time, I got entirely too involved with that kind of broken.”

“Zachary,” Romily said, and she sounded almost frantic, though her golden eyes were steady when she looked at him. “I don’t want to be one of your projects. Some puzzle you solve and then smash.”

“You’re not fucking broken,” he threw back at her.

They were somewhere in San Francisco. He didn’t care where. He pulled the car over to the side of the road—eventhough it was steep and now it was almost as if they were lying down, or stalled going up one side of a roller-coaster.

Probably a decent analogy, but that didn’t stop him.

He turned to look at her across the center console. “Have you been through some shit? Clearly. But nothing about you isbroken,Romily. You’re strong as hell. You’re tough. Not only that, you’re not fucking selfish like every single person we’ve just been talking about. Pete. My mother. The so-called projects she was referring to. Every single one of them was and is completely self-centered. That’s not you.”

“I don’t know how you think —”

But he needed her to listen to him. “Believe me, I’ve met entirely too many women who look at a man with my particular obsessions and think that all they have to do is lie around and come their faces off. And yeah, that’s fun. That’s what the Club app is for. But this?” He moved his finger between them. “This is real, Romily. You don’t just follow my commands so that you get off. We’re in this together and that’s what it’ssupposedto be like. That’s how I’ve always thought it ought to be between two people like us. A give and take, though that’s not always simple. Today I was telling you stories you tried to soothe me. Take care of me.” He leaned in a little bit closer. “No one ever does that. Ever. I’m supposed to be in control of everything.”

“What ifIthink I’m broken?” she whispered.

He reached over and put his hands around her face. “Baby, you might have been trampled on a little bit. It happens to all of us. But you’re not broken. Look at you. You shine so bright and you give so much, it shouldn’t be possible. Yet here you are.”

“I don’t know what I want,” she told him then in the same rough whisper. “I don’t like thinking that I’m not special to you, but at the same time?—”

“Romily,” he said, very deliberately, “I haven’t introduced a woman to my mother in too many years to count. If you’re aproject for me, you’re the kind of project I intend to be working on for the rest of my life.” She sucked in a breath at that and he nodded. “Are you beginning to understand where I’m coming from here? I’ve already broken every rule I have for you.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that,” she said, her eyes wide.

“You didn’t have to ask me to do that. Iwantedto do that. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted those rules.” He stroked the sides of her face. “I want this. I want us.”

“Zachary.” And he was sure that he could see tears glimmering there in her eyes. “There are so many things that you don’t know about me.”

“No shit,” he retorted. “And I’m never going to know, little bird. Unless you tell me. Are you ready for that? I just stripped myself naked in every way possible and showed you everything there is to see. All of me. Can you give me that in return?”

Chapter Nine

Romily didn’t know what to do with herself for the rest of the ride home.

When Zachary got back to the marina and parked in his usual spot, she had the very strong urge to fling open her door and run for it.

But she suspected that he would catch her. Not only that, it wasn’t like anyone would intervene. Not in this neighborhood.

Besides, the last thing she wanted to do was cause a scene. She wasn’t sure she had that in her.

They walked across the lot towards the gym and he glanced down at her, looking as forbidding as he had way back at the beginning—it seemed like a lifetime ago now.

“I would’ve bet the whole gym on you bolting,” he said.

She made an offended sort of sound. “I’m not going to run.” But this was Zachary and it wasn’t his fault that she was… not at all who he thought she was. “Though it’s true that I thought about it.”

“Thank you for your honesty,” he said, very politely.

Too politely.

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