Page 102 of Let Me Be the One

“I never meant to hurt you.”

The anguish in his voice makes me ache for everything we’ll never be. “I know that.”

“I’d do anything to get our friendship back and have you in my life again.”

Our friendship, because as much as we care about each other, he’ll never be over Amber. Despite that, it’s beyond tempting to give in and give us what we both want. I want to ask him in for coffee, breakfast, and sex. Not necessarily in that order. I want to know all the details about his stake-out, and whether it was exciting. It would be too easy to let him back into my life and heart right now. Too easy to go back to being friends and loving him in a way I know he’ll never love me back. But if I do that, I won’t stop falling for him.

“Maybe one day,” I say, my heart squeezing.

“One day,” he repeats forlornly.

“Yeah. I can’t now. Not while...”

His brown eyes are intense on mine as we both think about how that sentence ends.

“Even if we’d tried a relationship, Lainey, I never could have been what you wanted me to be. I would have disappointed you in the end. I would have let you down. You wouldn’t have been happy with anything more than friendship.”

I stare at the man in front of me, once again seeing how broken he really is. Once upon a time, we were both broken, but I’m putting myself back together. I did that with his help, and I want to help him now, but I’m not going to do it in a way that will break my heart all over again. He believes he has nothing to offer a woman. Because of Amber and because of his mother. I can tell him that that’s not the case until I’m blue in the face, but he needs to realise it’s true and start believing it himself.

I put my hand on his face, look him straight in the eye and tell him, “I never wanted anything other than the chance to love you and have you love me. All I wanted was you.”

“You had me.”

The way he’s looking at me, it’s as if he believes that. And maybe I had as much of him as he could give me. But it wasn’t enough. And I’m not settling for anything less than everything with any man again.

“Thanks for letting me know you’re okay,” I say. “I was really worried.”

“Yeah, I’m fucking great.”

The pain, the hurt, and the anger behind those four words wound me. I know how he feels, but we can’t heal each other this time around. Not like we could after Lucas and Amber.

“I guess I’ll see you around,” I say, going for light-hearted, but sounding choked and tragic.

He looks like he wants to do anything but leave, and I can barely breathe through the pain of seeing him look so miserable.

Eventually, he nods and walks away, looking back at me once before as he gets on his bike and rides away.

As I shut the door behind him, I do something I haven’t done since the conversation that ruined everything for us a week ago. I cry. And as I sit with my back against the front door, crying my heart out, I realise I still don’t have his bank details.

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