15. Will
Chapter fifteen
Will
M aureen opened the front door and flew outside. I grabbed my coat from near the front entrance and raced after her.
Her fists tightened into balls at her sides as she stomped down the front stairs, muttering incoherently. She paused when I shouted into the chilly night air. “Maureen!” I caught up with her on the front walkway, compelled to take a step back when she turned and directed her wild eyes at me. In a quieter tone, I asked, “What happened back there?”
She unclenched her palms and placed her hands on her hips, glancing up at the sky before speaking. “When I said I could be nicer to you, I meant I wanted us to co-exist. I didn’t mean I wanted…”
She trailed off, looking somehow both angry and resigned. When she didn’t pick up the thread after ten achingly silent seconds, I prompted, “That you wanted…?”
The white-gray mist of her harsh breaths hung in the air. “That I wanted… Shit!” She pushed one fist into the other, shaking her head as she regarded the frozen ground. “I don’t know! I’m not ready to forgive you… And you touching me back there—it’s too confusing right now. Too much.”
I reeled back. When she’d called me beautiful and pushed my hand to her face, it lit me up inside. I honestly thought we’d been working our way somewhere. But whatever I’d seen in her eyes, she was afraid of it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Truly. I thought we were having kind of a moment.”
A car honking blared in the distance, causing us both to startle.
“We were having a moment. There’s no point in pretending otherwise.” Sighing, she dropped her arms to her sides. “I’ll admit you make me…feel things.” Softly, she murmured, “I wish you didn’t.”
Even with the disclaimer that she didn’t want to want me, her words gave me hope—because she was acknowledging something between us. But I’d also upset her again. Fuck.
She shivered, and I pulled off my coat. I held it at the end of my arm like a white flag, keeping a foot of distance between us. She hesitated a moment before taking it from my grip and throwing it over her shoulders.
Selfishly, I wanted to ask what she’d been thinking when she pressed her nose to my scarred palm. But of course, I’d never do that. Not when she’d already given me more than she’d intended to. I settled on, “I feel things for you too, Maureen.”
Our gazes locked. She nodded resignedly. “I know you do.”
Naturally, she knew. I hadn’t been subtle tonight.
Maureen coughed delicately and squared her shoulders, drawing my coat tightly across her torso to fight the frigid night. “Will, these feelings we’re having…I…I don’t want them. When you touched me, it was like I turned into a puddle of goo. Like all the promises I’d made myself, all the resolve just vanished.” She touched all the fingers of her right hand together before stretching them out quickly. “Poof.”
Her troubled eyes sparkled as a bloom of pink invaded her cheeks. My eyes lasered on her lower lip as she chewed it. Even rejecting me, she was magnetic. I longed to pull her into my arms, to show her she didn’t need to be afraid. Instead, I blew air into my cupped palms and struggled for the right words. “Maureen, I know I hurt you. You’ll never know how sorry I am.” I dragged a hand across my neck, resting it in the mouth of my sweater. Unashamedly, I pleaded, “But does that have to mean we ignore this amazing connection between us forever? Why should we take it for granted when it’s so…rare?”
Spending a night with Maureen five years ago had been like striking a match. Afterward, I’d begun to want other things too. Art. Choices. Challenges. Conflict. Everything I’d lost since the accident. Standing in front of her magnified the impulse tenfold.
Feeling that deeply for someone. How was this a bad thing?
But she shook her head.
My eyes landed on the house next door. The lawn hummed with the noise of motors maintaining four different blow-up Santas. Twinkle lights dancing in the snow seemed to taunt me.
Maureen softened, not immune to my frustration. “I’m not sure I can make you understand, Will. But I’ll try. The bottom line is, I don’t want to be that woman again, the one who loses herself in a man. I don’t like feeling that way, not being in control.”
“Okay. But that happens to all of us, right? There are times you just have to let go and take a chance. Some things are worth it.”
Her eyes flared. “And sometimes, not being in control means being completely and utterly out of control. Inviting disaster.” She released a humorless laugh. “And what happened between us… That was a disaster of epic proportions.”
I recoiled.
“I don’t believe that.” My hushed voice resounded in the stillness. “I can’t. Maybe I felt it more strongly than you did, but that night we had was fucking great. I know everything went to shit, but it was amazing—”
“Until it was fucking horrible!” she snapped, one hand still clenching my coat together as the other waved animatedly up and down. “My whole life I never missed a beat—handling my shit, being there for my family, trying to carve out a future. I was a boss bitch. And then I met you, and all that went out the window. All because you made me feel things .”
“And I’ll never stop being sorry for hurting you.”
“No! Not hurt. You humiliated me. Hu-mil-i-a-ted. What happened that day in the lobby turned me into the worst version of myself.”
I felt the weight of her words wash over me. Clearly, more was going on than just what happened between us. I wasn’t sure if I should say “sorry” again. It might piss her off more. I shoved a hand through my hair and tugged on the ends, grateful for the sting.
At my non-reply, she huffed. “I know what you’re thinking.”
The cold started seeping under my skin. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “What am I thinking?”
“That you’ve apologized repeatedly, and where has it gotten us?”
She’d read my mind. “If I thought it would help move us past it, I’d apologize a million more times. If you want me to, just say the word.”
Maureen stepped closer to me, a surprise. In a low voice, she stated, “I almost died, Will.”
My brows drew together. “What?”
“After that day in the lobby, I almost died.”
“What?… Died? What do you mean?”
“Do you really want to know? Because I’m still not interested in your excuses for why you lied back then, so it seems only fair to offer you an out from hearing about that day from my perspective.”
“Tell me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut for a second and pulled my jacket tight around her torso again before speaking.
“To your point, we connected that night. In a way I hadn’t with anyone else. Ever. When you didn’t text, I was upset with myself for letting you in. I’d been careful never to get so involved with anyone that they could get to me like that. It stung that you dismantled all those defenses in one night. I’d seen it happen to other women, and it was almost a shock to recognize it in myself. It pissed me off. You need to understand that all I could think at the time—when you didn’t text me other than the world’s lamest ‘I’m sorry’—was that you had totally played me, that you had somehow tricked me into believing you’d felt something for me. I felt disgusted with myself because I’d allowed that to happen. So, I was already in a pretty dark place. Then I got blindsided by you and your fiancée in that hotel lobby. A sick, out-of-body experience, a hammer to the gut. The immediate self-loathing was…unmanageable.”
Her words upended a picture I’d had in my mind for five years. That day. Maureen had coolly shaken Rosalyn’s offered hand, added, “Nice to see you again,” in my direction, and walked away. To my eyes, she’d appeared perfectly collected.
Maureen paused before releasing a slow, deliberate breath. Near enough I felt it on my chin. She continued, “I went home. Couldn’t drag myself back to the office, didn’t even call my boss. My best friend—my roommate—wasn’t there. I’d never told her the truth about you, which was weird since we talk about everything, but being hung up over a guy was unfamiliar territory, and I hadn’t known what to do with it.
“She found me in the morning. I’d spent the night drinking anything I could get my hands on and passed out in a puddle of my own vomit. Got a nasty cut on my leg, too. Later, the doctor said I’d gotten lucky passing out on my side. I could have choked if I’d been on my back. But the truly crazy part is, when I woke up, I still didn’t tell my best friend why I’d gone on such a bender. I made up something about work stress and not realizing how much I’d had…blah…blah…blah.” Maureen made a derisive sound. “I didn’t even tell my mom or sisters about going to the hospital.
“And that’s what I’m trying to make you understand, Will. I’m not interested in revisiting that day. Or changing the way I perceive it. The memory of what happened has kept me from forming any new attachments. It’s kept me sane. Safe.”
My heartbeat increased steadily as she spoke, realizing the full consequences of my actions. How she had processed the aftermath of meeting me.
Not only a man she’d made an instant connection with but also the cause of a near-death experience.
Her hesitance made much more sense to me now. But after the glimmer of hope she’d given me today, I no longer believed our past was something we couldn’t come back from.
I inhaled heavily. “You said before you felt like I’d tricked you into feeling things. Back then.”
She side-eyed me. “That’s right.”
“So, I just want to say that I intend to convince you that you’re wrong about me. About us and what we can be. I’m not manipulating you. I’m saying it plainly.”
“Saying what?”
“That I’m going to keep showing you who I am. Get to know you better, as much as you’ll let me. I’m not the monster you’ve built up in your head. I’m the man who just spent a half hour washing dishes with you. The one who snores and is bad at pouring champagne. You’re right that I did a terrible thing. I had reasons—” At her tight expression, I held my palms open. “I know, I know, you don’t want to hear them. But I don’t think we should stop exploring this thing between us because you’re afraid to give up control. Were you planning on just being alone your whole life and never being in a relationship?”
“It doesn’t matter because that’s not what’s happening here.” She pursed her lips in a sexy little pout, cocking her hip.
“Isn’t it?” I challenged, raising my eyebrows.
“No. Even if a time came when I allowed myself to feel things for someone, do you honestly think I’d let it happen with the man who humiliated me the way you did? Wouldn’t it be smarter to let my guard down with literally any other person? How big of a chump should I be?”
Her stubbornness was maddening, but then again, it was kind of glorious. It was one of the things that had drawn me to her initially—she could be sweet but also totally fierce. “Look, Maureen, I get where you’re coming from. But ten minutes ago, you admitted that you feel things for me. You may not like it, but here we are. Sometimes we don’t decide.”
She snorted. “You mean like it’s fate? The universe calls the shots? I don’t believe in that shit.”
I smiled wryly. “Honestly, neither do I. I’m just stating facts. And the fact is, I never felt with anyone the way I did with you five years ago. I think the same is true for you. A year ago, when I saw you in the auditorium, I felt it again. Just deep in me. You spark something. And the more I learn about you, even now, seeing how you are with your sisters, or Vivienne’s kids, just listening to you laugh, I’m greedy for more. It’s impossible not to want you.”
She pursed her lips. “Well, that’s too bad. Just because you want something doesn’t make it right, doesn’t make it good for you. If I drank strawberry shakes from Five Guys as much as I wanted, I’d have diabetes. If I told off annoying customers at work as often as they deserved, I’d have been unemployed a lot sooner. Our gut instincts don’t always serve us well.”
Her words sounded decisive, but I saw the conflict in her stormy green eyes as she glared at me—an unmistakable hint of challenge lighting her features.
I could work with that.
I braved a step toward her. When she didn’t retreat, I ventured, “You sure about that?”
“Yes.” Her nostrils flared.
“You don’t even want to try to work out whatever this is between us? Explore things?”
“No.”
I inched closer. “Maybe pick up where we left off five years ago after talking all night?”
“No.”
“Or last year, when you shivered after I touched your fingers?”
“No.”
“How about fifteen minutes ago, when you put your arms around me in the kitchen before running away?”
“No.” It was the barest whisper.
I was practically on top of her now. My electrified brain wondered if I was pushing too hard, too fast, but the thumping of my heart dulled my restraint. I felt her proximity everywhere, arousal coursing through my veins. Even though it was freezing, I was a furnace, burning from my scalp to my toes to the tip of my very interested cock. It made me bold in the way I’d only ever been with her.
I angled in so we stood cheek to cheek and breathed into her ear. “Liar.”
I leaned my head back, anticipating her expression of fury—satisfied as it materialized instantly. Even as I felt bad for raising her ire, I couldn’t help reveling in the fire between us. Her passion was manifesting as anger now, but it was there. I could be patient. But I was done pretending the explosive pull didn’t exist.
She stepped back and practically spat, “Dream on, Will. We may be in a better place now. And I may accept you’re a part of my life—a tiny, inconsequential part—but you don’t get to tell me how I feel. And you don’t get to flip my world upside down. Again.”
With that, she shrugged her shoulders dramatically out of my coat. Steeling her expression, she balled it up and smashed it roughly against my chest, turning away in a graceful, defiant huff.
It would have been a magnificent exit, a parting shot worthy of an Academy Award. Except for the not insignificant detail that the ground outside was frozen and slippery. And I’d worn very insensible shoes.
I barely had a moment to admire the brilliant flush of her cheeks before her face crumpled. Before she realized she might have shoved me a smidge too hard. The last thing I heard was her calling out my name. Then pain. Searing—not unfamiliar—pain. And after the pain, blackness.