Page 72 of The Choices I've Made
“Look,” he finally said, “if it’s a problem—me being here—I can leave again. I don’t want to cause any strife between you and your sister.”
I turned, leaning against the counter to face him. He’d taken a seat at the kitchen table, a place I’d seen him in often. When we had been together, he’d often sneak over here in the mornings for my mother’s world-famous pancakes. Or whatever else she’d happened to be serving. He’d loved his mom to the moon and back, and he would be the first to admit that her cooking left something to be desired.
“It’s no big deal,” I said. “You need a place to stay, so you can stay here. We’re adult enough to make this work.”
His eyebrow cocked in pure denial of my statement. “But are we?” he asked. “I’ve been here for less than a week, and we’ve had our tongues down each other’s throat twice. And I’m not going to sit here and lie, saying I don’t want to do it again.”
I gulped, trying not to replay those particular memories in my head or create new ones.
“It’s just leftover lust,” I said. “It will pass.”
“See, that’s what I think, too,” he said. “I sat in bed last night, trying not to think of you in nothing but a flimsy nightgown—nothing separating us but a single set of stairs. It was goddamn torture.
I gulped trying to keep a clear head as I thought about my own torturous night. The aching pain I’d awoken with as my body and brain remembered the soul-sucking moment he’d left.
“I don’t want to talk about this, Jake,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
“You do. You just don’t want to admit that you feel the same way.”
My teeth dug into my bottom lip as I tried to deny it. “So what? So what if I feel the same way? Who cares, Jake? You want me, I want you, but nothing has changed. You still have a life in Chicago, and mine is here. Don’t tell me that somehow doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Only if we let it,” he replied.
His eyes were fixated on mine so intently, I could feel them burning all the way down to my very soul.
“What are you saying?”
He stood, leaving his coffee on the table, and took several long, slow strides forward. It was like watching a lion out in the wild. Every lean muscle in his body moved, flexing, as he came toward me.
God, he was beautiful.
“I’m saying, I want you, Molly.”
My breath hitched.
“And maybe I can’t have you forever like we planned all those years ago, but I won’t deny the chemistry we still have, that we’ll always have. Nor will I demean the life you’ve created and ask you to change it. But I will say this: give me a night, one night, to get this out of our systems, to say good-bye properly. Because, let’s be honest, we never gave ourselves the chance before.”
“One night?” I found myself repeating.
“One night,” he confirmed.
My mind reeled with his proposition. On one hand, I knew in the depths of my soul that one night would never be enough with this man. That one more night would probably destroy me, leaving me just as broken as that eighteen-year-old girl on the pier. That dream last night had reminded me of how much it had hurt, losing him the first time.
So much that I’d vowed I’d never do it again.
But seeing him standing here…I couldn’t deny the pull.
The need.
How I wanted to say yes. How I wanted to give in to this burning ache inside me, to quench the fire for this man who’d once been my everything.
“No,” I finally said, breaking eye contact as I made a run for it.
As much as I wanted to say yes, I’d made a promise to myself.
For myself.
For my sanity.
