Page 94 of Manhattan Secret

Slipping on a robe, I follow him out of the bedroom, into the living room where I watch him fist his cell phone and keys.

“All these weeks I’ve been showing you what you mean to me and how much I want this, Laney, and you wait until now to tell me it’s not what you want.”

“It’s not that. God, Lachie, it isn’t. But…”

“But.Yeah. That says a lot.” I hate the hurt look in his eyes, and I know though it needs saying, addressing, talking about, I won’t hurt him for anything.

He won’t let me approach. Won’t allow me to touch him.

The Lachlan coldness is right here in my house.

“You love me, Laney?”

My tongue locks and won’t allow me to speak. Oceans and rivers of emotion clogs my throat, tightening every nerve ending I have in my body.

Strangling me.

All I want to do is tell him I love him. I’ve fallen permanently in love. Every inch of his angry-self glaring at me is loved.

And yet, no words come.

I’ve explained it all wrong, made him angry.

I’m terrified of loving him, losing him down the line.

He sighs, shaking his head and gets his jacket.

“You have some thinking to do and a decision to make while I’m with my family. You know where my house is if you change your mind about coming.”

He doesn’t kiss me on the way out like he usually does.

He doesn’t nuzzle his nose into the hollow of my neck or squeeze my hips.

He doesn’t do any of the cute, loveable things, and my pain for hurting him triples.

Just because I don’t want to hurt him, doesn’t mean I haven’t with my inability to explain all the confusing thoughts going on in my head.

Do I jump in and risk being destroyed a little way down the line when he inevitably moves on, or do I set him free now?

Is it our age difference making him not able to see what I do?

How we’re in two different places, literally after tomorrow.

A long-distance relationship will no more work for him than it will me.

I’m already obsessed with him.

And I never want it to get to a place of resentment or worse, where something happens we can’t come back from.

I fell in love with a boy who feels like a man. Who treats me as a man should.

I fully acknowledge my culpability in all this.

I went in with my eyes and heart wide open.

It’s how I know it’s real, because I hurt so badly listening to his car start up and drive off.

But some mistakes are worth making.

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