Twenty
Jude
Ten minutes after I had reached my office, I slammed the door, stalked to the window, grabbed the cup with my morning coffee off my desk, and slung it against the wall, choking back the roar in my chest. Then, I stood there, watching, waiting to see her walk out. Leave. Take her things for the last time.
When a red-and-black Dodge Ram truck pulled up to the door, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.
Gathe climbed out just as the door to the clothes closet swung open and Saylor walked out. She shook her head at something he’d said. It looked like she was going to walk around him, but he took the bag from her hands and leaned down to look at her face. His head snapped around, and even from this distance, I could see the fierceness directed this way. At me.
Saylor yelled at him and grabbed his arm, then got on her tiptoes, jabbing her pointed nail into his chest as she spoke. Long blonde hair caught in the breeze, blowing behind her. The hem of her sundress teasing as it fluttered up just a little, showcasing more of her legs. Those freaking heels she had on, showing her hot-pink toenails on her perfect feet. She was walking again, and this time, it was around the front of the truck. The wind caught her dress, and it barely flashed her panties before she caught it, holding it down until she got to the passenger door and opened it.
Just before she climbed in, her head turned, and she stared this way. I knew she couldn’t see me, but it felt as if those sapphire eyes were telling me goodbye. I never even got to kiss her mouth. Never felt her lips. Her gaze dropped, and then she was inside the truck, the door closing.
“Goodbye, Dimples,” I whispered as the truck pulled off and drove away.
Looking in the direction of the clothes closet, knowing she wasn’t in there and wouldn’t be again, hurt too much. I closed the blinds. They’d have to stay that way from now on.
Sinking down into my chair, I dropped my head into my hands.
I’d had no other choice.
For a moment, I’d considered walking away from it all. And I had wanted to. Wanted to go. Have the freedom.
But that meant I would be tossing away an education that had cost Delana’s parents almost two hundred thousand dollars, just to be with a girl eight years younger than me, who I’d clearly known little about, because her smile made my knees weak, her laugh gave me a lightness in my chest, and her body…well, her body made me want to break my vows over and over and over again. In many different ways.
It hadn’t been a choice between God and lust.
It had been one between love and lust.
I’d loved Delana, and I couldn’t betray her and what her parents had done for me for lust. Possibly the most intense case of lust in the history of mankind, but lust just the same. I couldn’t love someone I didn’t really know.