Page 133 of Phishing for Love
“I don’t know what to think.”
In a low, rough voice, he says, “We are not doing this while I’m driving, where I can’t even look at you.” With a quick movement, he makes an abrupt left into a sideroad and pulls over, cutting the engine. He twists in his seat to face me. “You arenotAshley. Not by a long shot. The way I felt about her doesn’t even come close to what I feel for you.”
You could drive a truck through that opening. The obvious question—how do you feel about me?—hovers between us. I can’t ask it. Not yet. Not when I’m feeling so exposed and vulnerable. And I need to confirm something else first.
I stare straight into his eyes. “Do you deliberately take on short-term contracts so you don’t form attachments?”
He lets a beat pass. “Yes.”
I look down at my hands twisted together in my lap. They’re as twisted as my emotions. I take in a shaky breath. I can’t look at him when I ask my next question. “Is it because you haven’t gotten over her, the woman who was your fiancée, Kayla?” I force my next words out past the tightness in my throat. “I guess, what I’m asking is, are you still in love with her?”
“Tess, look at me.”
I shake my head, still staring into my lap.
“Please.”
I lift my head, my eyes meeting his.
“I want to come clean with you. And I want to apologize,” he tells me, regret bleeding from his voice. “I should have been honest with you.” He squares his shoulders, as though preparing himself for his next words. “Kayla and I were a whirlwind romance. We’d known each other for only eight months when I asked her to marry me. She died two weeks later.” He stops for a moment, then carries on. “I think Kayla will always hold a piece of my heart and I want to be honest with you about that. But I’m not still in love with her. Because, even though I’m fighting it with every fiber of my being, I’m falling in love with you.”
I am utterly and completely still. I think the only part of me that is in motion is my pulse, which is going crazy.
I open my mouth, but he shakes his head. “I’m not finished. I don’t want to be in love with you. Not at all. It goes against my better judgment, against all the policies I’ve put in place for my life.”
“Well, I’m in love with you too,” I tell him. “And I don’t want to love you either. You’re too secretive. Your life is too complicated.” And I’m truly terrified you’re going to break my heart.
Without taking his eyes off me, he reaches across the center console and gathers my hands in his. His smile holds a bleak edge, but he doesn’t let go of my hands. “As declarations of love go, ours takes the cake.”
I swallow. “The way you live now, jumping from place to place, not forming attachments, it’s not a life you’re living. It’s a shadow of a life.”
It’s not the kind of life I want to be living with you is the subtext here.
And then, so very casually, he drops his bomb. “But at least the people around me get to live.”
Alarm sets in. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
He watches me for a long moment. “There’s something about me,” he says, his voice ragged. “People die around me. My sister. My fiancée.” He lets go of my hands, drags his palms down his face. “My parents are alive, or at least their bodies are, but their minds are gone. I only ever owned one pet, a cat, and I couldn’t keep even her alive.”
I bite my lip in sudden understanding. “She died of lily poisoning, didn’t she? That’s why you knew how to help Ash.”
“Yes.”
I’m thinking frantically, trying to gather my scattered thoughts. “You said Lucas and Nina are your closest friends?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing’s happened to them,” I point out. “They’re still alive.”
His gaze pins me. “Because I purposefully keep my distance from them. I stay away to protect them and that’s why they’re still alive.”
“No, you can’t think that.” My throat is raw with pain for him. “You’re not, like, Doctor Death or something. You’re not cursed.” When his face tightens, I press, “Is that what you believe? That you’re somehow cursed?”
It takes him a while to answer. “Yes.” At my indrawn breath, he says in a low voice, “Not in the sense that someone’s placed a curse on me, just...generally. It’s like there’s a darkness around me that consumes whomever I’m close to.”
I stare at him. The torment in his eyes. The pain etched in the lines bracketing his mouth. The soul-deep belief he holds that whoever he loves will die.
Fear presses itself against me, whispering insidiously in my ear that I will never reach him. Never convince him to take a chance on us.
