Chapter 31
“As if.” I unlock my door and open it, but only a crack. I stand in front of it, so he can’t barge in. “You can’t.”
“The fuck I can’t.”
God , the man is infuriating. “You don’t even know me.”
I don’t want to invite him in. More accurately, I don’t want to invite Noah Maddox in. I only want Noah Steel. But he doesn’t exist.
“I do know you,” he insists. “In many ways, better than anyone ever has. I’m the only one who knows?—”
“Stop.” I know what he’s going to say and I don’t want to be reminded of any of that.
And I hate that he’s right. The problem is, it doesn’t matter.
“Anyway, thanks, I guess, for escorting me home against my will. I hope you have a wonderful day ruining lives and adding to your vault of money. Oh—” I hold out my wrist where the sapphire bracelet circles.
“I can’t get this off but if you could please take it off for me you can have it back. I don’t want it.”
Noah doesn’t take the bracelet off. Instead, he gets down on his knees, sliding his warm palms around the backs of my bare thighs as though to keep me here.
“Lucky Emerson O’Callahan from County Cork Irish Ashton, don’t fucking leave me.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry my brothers and I tried to buy your company.
I’m sorry I didn’t realize it was yours.
I’m sorry we offered you fair but low market value even though the company clearly has huge potential for growth.
I’m sorry I said we wouldn’t fucking budge on fifteen million in a mean way.
I’m sorry you had a stressful day today and it was my fault.
I’m sorry I couldn’t take some of that worry away this morning before you snuck out on me.
I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to kiss you and make sweet love to you until you were happy again, which is all I really want to do.
I’m sorry we didn’t tell each other the truth about who we were.
But I’m also not sorry about that, because then you would have hated me before our weekend ended and that would have ripped my heart right out of my chest. I’m sorry your life has been so hard, for a long time.
I’m sorry you lost your parents and you’ve spent so much time feeling so alone.
I’m sorry you’ve been scared that you’re going to lose your company and your apartment.
And that would be very fucking scary. I’m sorry you think I’m evil.
I’m not evil, I promise, and I’m going to prove that to you no matter how long that takes.
I’m sorry you don’t believe I’ve already fallen for you.
Hard. I fell in love with you the minute I saw you and every minute of our weekend together only made me fall harder.
And then I fell even more in love with you today and I’m falling even more in love with you right now.
It just keeps compounding on itself exponentially.
The thing is, I’ve also been alone for a long time.
I have my brothers but I’m not talking about that kind of alone.
I mean alone alone. I mean the kind of alone where you feel lost and sort of broken because you know you’re fucking destined to love someone with everything you’ve got, but you can’t find that person.
So you spend all your time just fucking looking for her.
And you start to doubt everything about life itself.
Because there’s always this big black hole in the middle of everything and you don’t know how to fill it.
The thing is, Irish, you filled it. You just waltzed into that restaurant the other night and fucking filled it.
With your white-gold hair and your blue, blue eyes and that way you look at me like you’re exasperated with me.
Gone . And don’t tell me I can’t know that.
Don’t tell me it’s too soon. I know what a fucking black hole feels like, Lucky Irish.
I also, now, because of you, know what it feels like to have it filled up. Because suddenly there you were.”