Page 11 of Made for You
She let out a soft, tight laugh. “Yeah. Here I am.”
A beat passed. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but didn’t dare. I also wanted to ask a dozen questions, but knew better than to launch them at her all at once.
So I went with, “Can I take you to dinner?”
Her brows lifted. “Now?”
I huffed out a laugh. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon. “No, not now. I meant tonight. Or tomorrow. This week. Sometime. Anytime.”
She shook her head, her faint smile dropping. “Gage.”
The way she said my name—her voice low and her tone sad and apologetic—made my gut twist. She was going to say no. I just knew it.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, her voice soft but certain as her gaze flicked momentarily away and then back again.
I blinked away my hurt. “Because?”
Dimly, I heard the sound of a kid crying a few aisles over and someone’s cart ramming into a display of cans somewhere behind me. I felt like the world should stop for what was happening, but it didn’t—it just went on, oblivious to my plans with this woman crashing down around me.
“It was one night,” she said, shifting the basket on her arm. “A great one, but I think we should leave it at that.”
I wanted to press, to shout from the rooftops that it’d been one of the best fucking nights of my life. It wasn’t just the way Siena had come apart for me. It was how I’d let myself go, too. I wasn’t usually like that with a hookup. That rough. That dirty. I hadn’t held back with her, and she hadn’t asked me to. Hell, she’d begged me for more. But what if she’d just been caught up in the moment? What if I’d crossed a line without realizing it?
What if I’d scared her?
The thought made my knees feel weak.
“Can I know why?” I asked, my pulse thudding in my ears. “Was I too much? Did I do something wrong?
She glanced down, then back up. “No,” she said, and her voice wavered just a little. “It’s not that. It’s just … I think it’s better if we don’t see each other again.”
I stared at her, searching her expression, desperate for some kind of explanation that made sense. But she gave me nothing—just cool detachment and polite finality.
So I nodded slowly, forcing myself to accept it even as I wanted to beg her to see me again. “Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I can respect that.” I blew out a frustrated breath. “Don’t love it, but I’ll respect it.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, wide and searching, like maybe she’d expected me to argue. Push. Make a scene.
But I wasn’t that guy.
And if I had hurt her, even unintentionally, the last thing I wanted to do was make it worse.
“Guess I’ll, uh … see you around. Or not.”
She hesitated, then gave me a faint nod before turning and disappearing down the aisle.
I stood there for a second, my fingers tightening around the handles of the bag.
It was just one night—she’d said so herself.
So why the hell did it feel like I’d just been gut-punched?
As soon asI stepped through the mudroom and into the kitchen, Colt raised an eyebrow from where he stood at the counter, shaking garlic powder into a mixing bowl.
“That all you got?” he asked, nodding toward the bag of apples.
“I thought you were picking up mayo,” my other brother, Nash, said from his stool at the counter. “And orange juice.”
“Forgot,” I muttered, tossing the bag onto the counter and grabbing Colt’s beer. I lifted it to my mouth and took a long pull from the bottle.
