Page 58 of The Shy Waitress and Her Boss

"Because you love her?"

"Yes." The admission was swift and hard, the gaze that met Catherine's unflinching. "I love her. I probably even loved her before she fell in love with me. And even if..." A muscle ticked in his jaw. "Even if she doesn't take me back, I doubt it would make me stop loving her. I've always been an all-or-nothing kind of guy, andKady..." He breathed deeply, the mere sound of her name driving a terrifying point home, now that he had accepted she was everything to him.

Maybe, maybe one day Kady might be able to find someone else to love. It could happen. Because she had loved Slade with all she had, and that kind of love was what made people tough and enabled her to move on.

But it wouldn't be the same for him.

Because he had been the one to fuck up.

And people who fucked up...

The way he had fucked up with her...

If she never came back, then he was lost. Fucking lost without her, and he would never find his way back.

****

Kady heard the dooropen. "Mom?"

"Who else?" Catherine's voice was its usual tart tone, but there was something a little off, like a faint tremor in the end, and Kady bit her lip, remembering how she had caught her mother crying in the bathroom, thinking that Kady wouldn't see her.

"The room service we ordered still isn't here, so I'm going to speak with reception."

The words startled her into turning on the couch, and she was confused to see her mother hurriedly zipping her purse shut. "You could just call reception—-"

"But I don't want to." Catherine's tone was weirdly petulant, and even weirder was how her mother couldn't quite meet her eyes. "So will you please just stop asking me these things?"

Alarm bells started ringing inside her head when she saw Catherine practically run towards the door. She jumped to her feet. "Mother—-" But this only made her mother pick up her speed, and her suspicions grew. Laramie might not be the nation's most dangerous city, but what if someone had managed to sneak inside the hotel and threaten her mother at gunpoint?

The door slammed shut behind Catherine, the sound making Kady jump.Oh no.She broke into a run and threw the door open—-

Slade.

Kady stumbled back a step.

"Your mother says she'll be at the lounge downstairs," he said quietly.

Just seeing him, just hearing him...oh God, justknowingthat he was under the same roof as she was...

She backed up another step.

Anything to place more distance and stop her heart from breaking.

But then he followed her inside and closed the door behind him, and she realized there was just no escaping this.

"What are you here?" she whispered.

"I thought you'd appreciate the chance to throw all my words back at my face."

"I don't understand."

"I was wrong. You were right."

Kady only stared at him.

"You were - are - everything you said you were. Different. Special. The whole nine yards and then some." He was hoping it would make her lips crack with even the slightest smile, but Kady only kept staring at him, and his chest constricted.

Please. God. Please.

---