Page 78 of To Believe In You
“No. It’s a ploy to moveyoualong.” She kissed the corner of his mouth, and his eyes sank closed.
Her breath traced across his lips until her mouth met his.
He lost himself in the moment, and when he pulled back, his hands cupped her face. He tried to make eye contact, but she never lifted her focus. Her next exhale swept cool across the moisture on his lips.
When he kissed her again, he only meant to linger another second. But she smelled so good. She tasted even better. Her sweater, her curls, the skin of her neck were all velvet soft. When he deepened the kiss, she moaned quietly. If he opened his eyes again, she’d have him completely, all five senses.
Intoxicating. She was intoxicating.
The word sobered him. Reminded him of what was happening and why. The stakes were too high for this. When she learned his secret, she’d feel used that he’d let it happen.
His biceps shook as he pulled back, smoothing his hands down her arms so he could keep her from advancing again. “This has to stop.”
Pain flashed in her eyes. “You can trust me.”
He almost blurted out the reason she shouldn’t trust him, but this was too intimate a position. She’d want space as she processed his announcement, and when she left him, it would hurt less if she didn’t have to escape from his arms to do it. He motioned for her to sit on the couch. He sat only after she did, leaving an empty cushion between them.
No. Too close. Watching her eyes shutter against him from here would be nearly as bad as feeling her slip from his reach. He paced to the other side of the coffee table.
Lina sat with her feet close together on the floor, her knees angled to one side, her hands clasped. Her shoulders had gone rigid, and her focus seemed flighty, like she was watching for danger.
Not knowing was clearly its own kind of torture.
“All these years, Tim knew where Nadia went. Or, why anyway.”
“The girl you almost loved.”
He shouldn’t have mentioned her when Lina had asked about his romantic history. His time with Nadia had been a tug-of-war of wills, each of them behaving poorly to get what they wanted from the other. Without knowing it, they’d both missed the key ingredient of love—sacrifice. A willingness to put the other person first.
In his long history with women, Lina marked the first whose needs he wanted to honor above his own desires. He didn’t want anything to leave her questioning her unique importance in his life.
If only his old ways weren’t still haunting him. If only he deserved her.
“Tim paid her to go.” The words scratched out. He cleared his throat and pushed on. “She was pregnant, and Tim thought Gannon would fire me. He didn’t want the band to fall apart. We’d already lost Fitz, our second guitarist, early on, and maybe Tim’s right that another dispute of that magnitude would’ve …” He ground to a stop. Safeguarding the band’s success didn’t justify what Tim had done.
“She was pregnant.” Lina took agonizing time with the sentence. Her face lowered, and he could see her tracing the fact to a more complete understanding of his relationship with Nadia. She’d known before—she had to have known he’d slept around, but maybe she’d glossed over it. And now, his history—one chapter of it, anyway—was real. Now, his choices impacted her.
A pit of shame opened in his gut. “I’m sorry. I just found out yesterday, and I …”
She brushed the knee of her jeans as if to wipe off dust. “You don’t owe me an apology.”
Her tone contradicted her statement, and though he didn’t relish causing her pain, at least it meant she cared about him, their relationship, and their future.
“I lived in the moment, not realizing the only lasting part of my pursuit of happiness would be the consequences, which would hurt people I hadn’t even come to care about yet.”
She ran her fingers over her curls, moving them back from her face. Her eyes were as glossy and deep as a winter pond with a thin layer of ice. “What now?”
Now, you say you forgive me. He swallowed his desperation. He couldn’t voice his plea. It was too much to ask. “I don’t know.”
* * *
Lina had envisionedMatt making a great father, given how well he related to the kids at Key of Hope. Her own father had never chatted with her about things she cared about or taken the time to teach her a skill. He hadn’t even bothered to show up for her recitals, concerts, and games.
She’d been attracted to Matt because he was different.
Yet now, he didn’t know what to do about his own child. He studied his hands, fingers straightened, as if considering which of the words tattooed there he would choose to live by. Love or hate?
“There are only a couple of options,” she said. “Either you go find them or you leave them be.”
