Page 32 of My Trainer Neighbor
"I don't know."The admission came out broken, desperate."I don't know what you are or what I am or what any of this is supposed to be."
I studied her face, seeing the confusion and fear she was trying so hard to hide."Is that what this is about?You're scared because you don't know how to label what's between us?"
"I'm scared because I'm falling apart."She laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound."My entire life is falling apart, and the only thing I want is to run to you.And that scares me."
"Why?"
"Because I don't run to people.I handle things myself.I fix problems and I make plans and I stay in control."She was pacing now, her hands gesturing wildly."But today, when everything went to hell, the first thing I wanted was to come home to you.Not to my apartment.To you."
The admission hung between us, raw and honest and more vulnerable than anything she'd ever shared.
"What happened at work?"I asked gently.
"The Carleton account fired us."She stopped pacing and just stood there, looking lost."Three million dollars.Six months of work.Gone because they said our campaign lacked passion."
I winced.That had to hurt, especially after what her boss had said about her forgetting how to feel.
"And David, my boss, he called me into his office and told me I'm being reassigned.Moved off the senior VP track."Her voice broke on the last words."He said maybe I'm not ready for that level of responsibility.That maybe I need to focus on finding my passion again before I can help brands find theirs."
Fuck.No wonder she was falling apart.
"I'm sorry, baby.That's bullshit."
"Is it?"She looked at me with eyes that were too bright."Because maybe he's right.Maybe I have forgotten how to feel.Maybe I'm just a cold, calculating machine who's good at spreadsheets but awful at understanding what makes people want things."
"Stop."I moved toward her, but she backed away.
"You want to know the worst part?The only time I've felt anything real in the past year was with you.In your bed.In your arms."She laughed again, bitter and self-deprecating."So what does that make me?A woman who can only feel something when a man is fucking her?"
The crude words coming from her mouth should have turned me on.Instead, they broke my heart.
"It makes you human," I said."It makes you a woman who's been so focused on being flawless that she forgot she was allowed to need things."
"I can't need you."The words came out fierce, desperate."I can't need anyone.Every time I've needed someone, they've left."
And there it was.The real fear underneath all her control and walls.
"Who left?"I asked, even though I already knew.
"Richard.My ex-fiancé."She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand."He said I was too cold.Too focused on work.That he needed someone who could actually connect with him emotionally."
"He was an idiot."
"Was he?Because look at me, Shawn.Look at what I've become.I'm thirty years old and I don't know how to cry.I don't know how to laugh.I don't know how to be anything except successful, and now I'm not even good at that anymore."
She was spiraling, and I could see the panic taking hold.The same panic that had sent her running after our first kiss, magnified by professional humiliation and old wounds.
"Come here," I said, opening my arms.
"No."She shook her head violently."Don't you understand?I can't keep doing this.I can't keep needing you and then hating myself for it."
"Why do you hate yourself for needing me?"
"Because you're going to leave."The words were barely audible."In four months, when Justin comes back, you're going to leave, and I'm going to be right back where I started.Except worse, because now I'll know what I'm missing."
The raw honesty in her voice gutted me.She was right to be scared.I was going to leave, because that's what I did.That's what I'd always done.
Except the thought of leaving Nicole made me feel sick.
