Chapter 10 #3
I turn it over in mind as I get more comfortable with the idea.
I mean, that must be hard. Look at him. It’s not like he doesn’t have offers.
The man is a god. I can’t be the only woman who threw herself at him.
I still can’t decide if that makes me feel better or worse.
No clue. I’m still struggling to move past ‘wow.
He takes a sip of his orange juice. “Well, now that you know, can you forgive me for not having sex with you after you were convinced I was a sure thing?”
My cheeks, only just cooling down, flare up again. “Of course I can. I’m so sorry I said that.”
“Don’t be. Like I said, I was. Hence the celibacy.”
“So, were you…like,” I lean closer and drop my voice to a whisper, “addicted to sex?”
He doesn’t shrink away from the intrusiveness of my question, something I admire in him.
“No. Nothing that simple. I have an addictive personality, and I have multiple issues. I also don’t drink, or do drugs of any kind.
The sex was just another way of escaping, of running away from the things I needed to face.
Some of the things I spoke to you about. ”
I cast my mind back to that night we spent talking.
He’d mentioned some stuff then. Bereavements, the loss of his mom and his girlfriend.
The breakdown of his relationship with his father.
He’d seemed still wounded by it all. In return, I’d opened up about my childhood.
Not the full sordid tale, he wasn’t ready for that.
But the fact that I’d also lost my mom as a teenager.
We shared a lot in a short space of time.
He poured out his heart, and I’ve spent all this time resenting him for not fucking me.
I need to give myself a kick in the ass.
“In the end, sex just stopped serving a purpose for me,” he says. “It stopped being fun. And so I decided to concentrate on other areas of my life.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
I am literally made of questions, but that is the first one out. He stares at me for the longest time and my mind starts to wander to places it shouldn’t, like whether he misses it enough to ever try it again. Specifically, with me. “Sometimes, yeah.”
“So, are you waiting for marriage? The right person? Or will you always be celibate?” I’m unable to hide my curiosity. I hope I don’t sound as disappointed as I feel. What a waste.
“I’ve never really had an end point in mind. I guess I’ll stop being celibate when it doesn’t make sense for me anymore.”
Well, that is vague and non-specific, but also very candid. More candid than I deserve. He’s been vulnerable, yet again, and maybe I should too. “I never forgot that night, Maddox.”
“Neither did I. It was special. I did come back to say goodbye the next day, maybe to get your number. But you…” He raises his eyebrow. He’s giving me the chance to come clean, I guess.
“I was hiding. I told my friend to cover for me. I was too embarrassed Maddox. Absolutely zero judgment on any woman who goes after sex with a man she wants, but I’d never really been that girl, you know?
I’d never put myself out there like that.
So when I invited you up to my room, it was a big deal.
I liked you, and I thought you were, you know, a sure thing. ”
I still cringe as I say it. He nods, thinks about it.
“Wait, so all this time you thought I wouldn’t have sex with you because…?” His eyes narrow.
I take a quick glance down at myself. My thighs stretching the seams of my new dress.
The roundness of my stomach against the fabric.
As opposed to the supermodels he’s probably dated in the past. I don’t look like fashionable New York girls, or even like a lot of the women I traveled with.
I don’t judge myself for that, but it’s also true.
“I just figured it was because I wasn’t your type.”
He frowns, and somehow it makes him look even more handsome. “You think kind, intelligent, stunningly beautiful women with cerulean-blue eyes aren’t my type?”
My skin flushes now for an entirely different reason. He’s trying to make me feel better. Maybe he feels safe being flirtatious, now he’s told me he’s celibate. God, I am spiraling here.
I take a deep breath. “You don’t have to say that Maddox. You are allowed to not want to sleep with me. My ego has survived.” That’s not entirely true, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Ellie.” His voice sounds pained. “When I came back to Marrakech, I intended to spend a week there before heading home. I wasn’t even open to dating anyone.
It was a kind of goodbye to that whole era of my life.
I wanted to spend some time there without any of the other stuff.
I wanted to experience it with a clear heart and a clear head.
Meeting a woman was the absolute last thing on my mind.
Then you came up to me in that coffee shop, and we got talking. You asked me to dinner…”
He licks his bottom lip. Despite what the girls had said about him, I was still surprised when he said yes.
“I figured I looked so pathetic that you felt sorry for me.”
“Stop it.” His voice is deep and commanding, unlike how I’ve ever heard him speak before.
It makes my insides turn to jelly, but it also makes me sit up and listen.
“I never want to hear you speak about yourself like that, Ellie. Ever. I agreed to a date because I thought you were fucking spectacular. And I had one of the most memorable nights of my whole life just sitting there talking to you. It was amazing.”
I stare at him, all shades of confused.
“And yes, I even considered reneging on my recent vow of celibacy and taking you to bed, because you are sexy and beautiful and you have the kind of curves that could bring a man to his knees. I did not feel sorry for you. You were not pathetic. And you were very much my type. But I didn’t want to taint our time together with something that had become so meaningless to me.
It took all my strength to say no to you when you invited me back to your room.
Eleanor Madison, I slept with hundreds of women while I was traveling, but yours is the only name I remember. ”
I suck in a ragged breath. His speech has hit me right in my feels, not to mention my tingly lady parts. He means it all, I can tell. He did want me, really want me. It was just bad timing.
Why is he still celibate? Because right now he could melt my panties with his words alone. The things he’s saying. The passion in his voice. The way his eyes are hooked onto mine, not letting go.
With the worst timing in the history of the entire world, Drake appears behind him. He nods at me, taking in our body language. “Sorry to interrupt, brother. The event starts in ten.”
Maddox’s gaze never leaves me when he replies. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll be right there.”
Drake claps him on the back. “Amber wants us all for the photoshoot.”
Maddox is still staring at me, like he wants to say something. Or he wants me to say something. But my brain seems to have short-circuited. It’s gone wrong, and it’s stopped being connected to my mouth. I can’t speak. I can only gape.
“I’m needed, Ellie. I’m glad we managed to talk. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
He’s already walking away when I finally manage to utter a single word, “Night.”