Page 79 of Sacred Vow
His hand tightens on my thigh. “I’m not good for you.”
I shake my head, resisting the urge to scoff. He has no idea what’s good for me. “I should have known from that very firstnight at Vixen, before you’d even touched me. I could feel it then. There was a connection, and you can’t deny it. The way you looked at me, and the way our eyes met across the room. It was like a collision.”
“We can’t do this, Tilly.”
“But what if we could?” I push. “Nothing has to change.”
“Everything has to change.”
I fall forward onto his chest, his arm locking around me as he pulls me into him, holding me as though he’ll never let go. “Don’t say that,” I beg him, my heart beginning to shred to pieces inside my chest. “This is what I want, and you can’t deny that you want it too. I see it every time you look at me. Every time you touch me. I can feel it. When you kissed me last night, thatmeantsomething.”
“You don’t understand what you’re asking for,” he tells me. “You might think you want this, but you don’t. Please don’t push this, hellcat. When I tell you that I am not a good man, I mean it. No matter how I might feel, I am not the man for you.”
“Don’t—”
“No,” he says, cutting me off as he rolls us again, hovering over me and staring directly into my soul. “Hear me, Tilly. The last thing I want is to hurt you, but this is exactly why I laid out our ground rules from the start. You have your whole damn life ahead of you. You’re only twenty-two. You should be dating idiots like my son, not getting wound up with a man like me. And while you think you might want this, you don’t.”
Tears spill over my eyes again, and as I look up at him, every piece of me breaks. He simply stares at me, watching the wreckage unfold before him. “Would falling in love with me really be that terrible?”
A softness creeps into his eyes, and he drops his head, gently brushing his lips over mine. “No, hellcat,” he murmurs. “Falling in love with you would be the best thing I ever did.”
My arms twist around the back of his neck, pulling him down into me, and he holds me as the tears continue to spill. “This is goodbye, isn’t it? I have to walk away.”
Caesar lets out a heavy, broken sigh, sounding just as crushed as I feel. “Believe me, if I could hold on to you forever, I would, Tilly. You’re the only one who’s ever made me feel as though I might have a chance at seeing past my demons. I’d give you the world, but I can’t. I can’t pull you down into me, and I know you don’t understand this now, you may never fully understand it, but believe me when I say that I’m doing this for you.”
Everything shatters, knowing just how close we could have been, and how easy it would be for me to tell him that I already know. That I know about his past and what’s keeping him at arm’s reach, but I won’t do that to him, not when he’s clearly not ready to open that door.
“But what about you?”
“What about me?” he asks as though what he feels doesn’t even matter.
“You feel this, too. I know you do, you can deny it all you want, but I know it’s there,” I tell him, willing him to hold on to this, willing to give it just the slightest chance to see where this could go. “When do you get to be happy?”
The softest smile pulls across his face, and when he brushes his fingers across my jaw and trails them up into my hairline, I see it clear as day. He doesn’t just have feelings for me. He’s in love with me, too. “Baby, just knowing you exist in this world is enough for me.”
The heaviest weight constricts around my chest, and I lift my chin just a fraction, closing the gap between us and pressing my lips to his with a brief kiss. “But that’s not enough for me.”
“I know.”
“So, what now? Am I supposed to just go on, pretending that I don’t already belong entirely to you?”
“Yeah, hellcat,” he tells me, his chest vibrating against mine. “That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.”
22
TILLY
Spaghetti bolognese drops from my fork and splatters across the front of myDon’t be afraid to get on top. If he dies, he diesshirt, but honestly, it’s Friday afternoon. I’ve been wearing the same clothes since Monday, too depressed to get my ass off the couch and back to reality.
It hurts too much.
I gave up too easily. I let him slip right through my fingers. I should have put up more of a fight, shouldn’t have taken no for an answer. Instead, I crumbled and let his demons rule his decision, just as they’ve ruled his whole damn life.
He doesn’t believe that he deserves happiness or is entitled to love, but in that belief, he’s stripping me of my right to love him in return, and it guts me.
Dropping my fork back into the take-out container, I grab my stained shirt and lift it to my mouth, licking the dollop of bolognese sauce right off the material, not giving a damn about what other filth might exist on my shirt right now.
I’m a slob, and nothing anybody says is going to change that right now.
