Chapter Eight #2
I was at her door in thirty seconds, still in my workout clothes and dripping sweat. I knocked, then knocked again when she didn't answer.
"Nicole. Open the door."
"Go away, Shawn."
I could hear the tears in it. The woman who'd told me she never cried was crying, and every protective instinct I had roared to life.
"Not happening. Either you open this door or I'm using the spare key Mrs. Kowalski gave me for emergencies."
There was silence, then the sound of the deadbolt turning. The door opened just enough for me to see her face, and what I saw made my hands clench into fists.
Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. Her hair was a mess, like she'd been running her hands through it. She was still in her work clothes, but her blouse was wrinkled and her skirt was twisted.
She looked destroyed.
"What happened?" I pushed past her into the apartment before she could stop me.
Her usually immaculate living room looked like a tornado had hit it. Papers scattered across the floor. A broken picture frame by the wall. Her laptop bag overturned by the door.
"Nicole." I turned to face her, and she was hugging herself like she was trying to hold herself together. "Talk to me."
"I don't want to talk." She moved toward her bedroom. "I just want to be alone."
"Too bad." I caught her arm gently, stopping her retreat. "You're upset, and I'm not leaving until you tell me why."
"You don't get to do that." She jerked away from me, and for the first time since I'd known her, there was real fire in her voice. "You don't get to play concerned boyfriend when you're not my boyfriend."
The words stung more than they should have. "Then what am I?"
"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.
"What if I don't want to leave?" The words came out before I could stop them.
Her eyes widened. "What?"
"What if I want to stay? What if I want to see where this goes?"
"You can't mean that."
"Why not?"
"Because you're not the staying type." She said it matter-of-factly, like it was just an accepted truth. "You're the type who moves on when things get complicated. And this is about as complicated as it gets."
She wasn't wrong. I had a track record of running when women started wanting more than I was willing to give. But the thought of walking away from Nicole made my chest ache in ways I didn't want to examine.
"Maybe I'm tired of running," I said.
"Maybe you just think you are because the sex is good."
"The sex is fucking incredible." I stepped closer, and this time she didn't back away. "But that's not why I want to stay."
"Then why?"
"Because you make me want to be the kind of man who stays.
Because when you're in my arms, you're not the ice queen everyone else sees.
You're soft and real and more beautiful than you know.
" I framed her face with my hands, forcing her to look at me.
"Because you're falling apart right now, and all I want to do is put you back together. "
She was crying again, silent tears that tracked down her cheeks.
"I don't know how to do this," she said.
"Do what?"
"Trust someone. Need someone. Be vulnerable with someone who could destroy me."
"I won't destroy you."
"You don't know that. People always leave, Shawn. Always. My parents, Richard, everyone who's ever mattered. Why would you be different?"
Because I'm already half in love with you, I thought but didn't say. Because the thought of hurting you makes me want to punch something. Because you've gotten under my skin in ways I didn't think were possible anymore.
But the truth was, I didn't know if I'd be different. Sarah had needed more from me, and I'd failed her. Nicole needed the same thing, and I still had nothing to offer. No permanent home. No real plan. Just a borrowed apartment and a collection of freelance clients.
I was the same man Sarah had left. The same man who wasn't enough.
"Because I'm not them," I said instead, even though I wasn't sure I believed it. "Because I see you, Nicole. Really see you. And what I see is worth staying for."
She searched my face like she was looking for lies, for the crack that would prove I was just like everyone else who'd let her down.
"I'm scared," she admitted.
"I know. Me too."
"What scares you?"
The question hit harder than she knew. What scared me? Everything. Falling for another driven, ambitious woman who'd realize I wasn't stable enough. Making promises I didn't know how to keep. Wanting something I'd spent five years convincing myself I didn't need.
Being left again because I wasn't enough.
"That you're right. That I'll fuck this up somehow." I brushed her tears away with my thumbs. "That I'm not good enough for you. That I'll make you promises I can't keep and you'll end up hating me for it."
"I could never hate you."
"Sarah did." The words came out before I could stop them. "She needed stability. A man with a plan. A future she could count on. And I gave her none of that."
Nicole's eyes widened slightly. "What happened?"
"She left while I was deployed. Said she couldn't do it anymore. Couldn't wait for a man who didn't know where he'd be in six months. Couldn't build a life with someone who had no real home." I swallowed hard. "She said I wasn't enough. And she was right."
"Shawn—"
"And you're just like her." The admission hurt coming out.
"Driven. Ambitious. With your whole life planned out.
You need someone stable. Someone who can give you forever.
And I'm living in my brother's apartment with no permanent address and a bunch of freelance clients. What the hell do I have to offer you?"
She stared at me, and I could see her processing this. Realizing that I was just as scared as she was. That I had just as many reasons to run.
"Then why are you here?" she asked.
"Because I can't stay away." I leaned down until our foreheads were touching. "Because you're brilliant and beautiful and strong as hell. Because any man would be lucky to have you. Because I'd rather try and fail than spend the rest of my life wondering what we could have been."
"What if we both fail?"
"Then at least we'll fail together." I pressed a soft kiss to her lips. "Let me help you, Nicole. Let me hold you. We don't have to figure out forever tonight. We just have to figure out right now."
"I don't know how."
"Start by letting me hold you."
She nodded, and I pulled her into my arms. She melted against me, her body finally relaxing as she let me support her weight.
"I'm sorry," she said against my chest.
"For what?"
"For being a mess. For pushing you away. For being scared of something that feels this good."
"Don't apologize for being human, baby." I tightened my arms around her. "And don't apologize for being scared. This scares the hell out of me too."
We stood there in her destroyed living room, holding each other while she cried out months of suppressed emotion. And for the first time since Sarah had left, I didn't want to run.
I wanted to stay and fight for this. For her. For us.
Even if I had no idea how to make it work.
Even if I was just as scared as she was.
Even if I might not be enough.