Chapter 17 #2
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of forced smiles and shallow conversation. Edie made the rounds, chatting with sponsors about the mural, accepting compliments on her work, pretending she didn't feel Tarmek's gaze tracking her every move.
Because she did.
Every time she glanced in his direction, his eyes were on her. Dark and hungry and lost, like she was a compass point and he'd forgotten which way was north.
By the time the event wound down, Edie's nerves were stretched so tight she felt like she might snap. She found herself standing by the coat check, watching the crowd thin out, counting the minutes until she could escape.
Until she could confront him.
A large hand closed around her elbow.
She knew it was Tarmek before she turned—knew from the size of his palm, the calluses on his fingers, the way her entire body came alive at his touch.
"Come with me."
It wasn't a request.
She went anyway.
He led her through a side door, down a hallway, into a small office that looked like it belonged to someone who ran community programs. Filing cabinets, motivational posters, a desk cluttered with paperwork.
Tarmek closed the door behind them, and the click of the latch seemed impossibly loud in the sudden silence.
"Edie—"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
The words burst out of her, raw and ragged, and Tarmek went very still.
"Tell you what?"
"That you didn't want me to leave. That you were—" She gestured at him, at the shadows under his eyes and the tension in his shoulders and the exhaustion carved into every line of his face.
"That this was happening. You looked at me like I was killing you, Tarmek.
Out there, just now—the whole night—you looked at me like. .."
Like I was everything you wanted and couldn't have.
"I didn't know what to say."
"Anything! Say anything!" She was shaking now, her voice climbing towards hysteria. "You told me the camper was ready. Do you know what that sounded like? It sounded like please leave. It sounded like I'm done with this. It sounded like—"
"I was trying to give you a choice."
"A choice between what? Staying where I wasn't wanted or leaving with a broken—" She cut herself off, turning away before he could see her face crumple. "Never mind. It doesn't matter."
"It matters."
His voice was closer now. She could feel the heat of him behind her, the massive presence that had once made her feel safe and protected. That she missed so desperately it was like a physical ache.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why does it matter if you don't want—"
"I want."
The words were rough, almost guttural, and they sent a shiver down her spine.
"I want, Edie. That's the problem. I want so much it terrifies me.
I want you in my space, in my bed, in my life.
I want your chaos and your coffee mugs and your goddamn glitter.
I want to wake up with you and fall asleep with you and I want—" His breath shuddered.
"I want you to stay. Not for a week or a month or until the mural is finished. I want you to stay."
She turned.
He was right there, close enough to touch, his dark eyes blazing with everything he usually kept hidden. Pain and longing and fear and something else, something deeper, something that looked dangerously like—
"Then why didn't you say so?"
"Because I was scared."
The admission seemed to cost him something. His jaw was clenched so tight she could see a muscle jumping beneath the skin, and his hands—those massive, capable hands—were trembling.
"Scared of what?"
"That you'd say no. That you'd look at me with pity. That I'd finally find the words and you'd tell me you didn't feel the same, and then I'd have to live with that." He swallowed hard. "It was easier to say nothing. To let you go and pretend I was fine. To suffer in silence instead of risking—"
"I thought you didn't care."
"What?"
"You were so calm when I packed. You helped me carry boxes. You stood there and said nothing, and I thought—" Her voice broke. "I thought I'd made the whole thing up. That what we had was just—convenience. Proximity. A way to pass time until the mural was done."
"Edie." He moved closer, crowding her against the desk, his hands coming up to cradle her face with devastating gentleness.
"I have never in my life felt anything less convenient than what I feel for you.
You destroyed my routines. Wrecked my concentration.
Made me want things I'd convinced myself I didn't need.
And I let you walk away because I was too much of a coward to tell you the truth. "
"The truth?"
His thumbs traced her cheekbones, wiping away tears she hadn't realized were falling.
"That I love you."
The words hit her like a physical force. She gasped, her hands coming up to grip his wrists, holding on like he might disappear.
"Tarmek—"
"You don't have to say it back. I know this is—I know I'm not easy.
I'm rigid and controlling and I communicate like a brick wall.
But I need you to know. I need you to understand that when I said the camper was ready, I meant—" He closed his eyes, struggling for words.
"I meant I would support whatever made you happy, even if it killed me.
I meant I wanted you to have options. I meant—"
She kissed him.
It was the only way to make him stop talking, to stop the flow of self-deprecating confessions that were breaking her heart.
She surged up on her toes, gripped the lapels of his suit, and pressed her mouth to his with all the desperation and longing that had been building since the moment she'd walked out his door.
He groaned.
The sound rumbled through her, vibrating against her lips, and then his arms were around her—lifting her, crushing her against his chest, kissing her back with a ferocity that stole her breath.
This wasn't the controlled passion of their earlier encounters. This was raw. Primal. The dam breaking after days of pressure.
He set her on the edge of the desk, scattering paperwork, and stepped between her thighs without breaking the kiss. His hands were everywhere—in her hair, down her back, gripping her hips hard enough to bruise.
"Edie." Her name was a prayer and a curse. "I can't—I need—"
"Yes." She didn't care what he was asking. The answer was yes. Yes to everything. Yes to him. Yes to whatever came next.
His mouth moved to her throat, and she tilted her head back with a moan. His teeth scraped over her pulse point, not quite biting, and her whole body arched into him.
"Not here." The words seemed to cost him physical effort. "I want—need—a bed. Need to do this properly."
"Your place?"
"Yes."
He pulled back just enough to look at her, and the naked hunger in his eyes made her stomach flip. But beneath the desire, she saw something else. Uncertainty. Fear.
He's still afraid I'll change my mind.
She cupped his face in her hands, forcing him to meet her gaze.
"Take me home, Tarmek."
Something in him shattered.
She saw it happen—the careful walls he'd built crumbling into dust, leaving nothing but raw need and desperate hope. He kissed her once more, hard and brief, then grabbed her hand and practically dragged her towards the door.
The drive to his condo passed in a blur of heated glances and white-knuckled steering wheel grips. Every red light was agony. Every second spent not touching him felt like a waste.
When they finally stumbled through his front door, Edie barely had time to register the familiar space—the clean lines, the organized shelves, the painful tidiness that still made her chest ache—before Tarmek was on her.
He pressed her against the wall, his body a solid wall of heat, and kissed her like he was dying and she was the only cure.
"Bedroom," she gasped against his mouth.
"Yes."
He lifted her effortlessly, and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her down the hallway. The bedroom was exactly as she remembered—huge bed, perfectly made, navy sheets that still smelled faintly of his soap.
He laid her down with a tenderness that contrasted sharply with the urgency of moments before, and she pulled him down on top of her, reveling in his weight.
"Edie." His voice was wrecked. "I need to—I want to—"
"Stop talking."
She reached for the buttons of his shirt, fingers trembling with impatience. He helped her, shrugging out of the fabric, and then his hands were on her zipper, peeling the borrowed dress away until she was laid bare beneath him.
His eyes raked over her body with an intensity that made her flush.
"Beautiful."
"Tarmek—"
"Let me." He pressed a kiss to her collarbone. "Let me show you."
And then his mouth was moving down her body, methodical and thorough, mapping every inch of skin like he was memorizing her. She arched and gasped and clutched at the sheets, overwhelmed by the focused precision of his attention.
Because that's what this was.
Attention.
Tarmek worshipped her body the same way he approached everything else—with obsessive, single-minded dedication. He found every sensitive spot, learned every response, cataloged every sound she made.
By the time he finally settled between her thighs, she was shaking.
"Please—"
He looked up at her, dark eyes blazing. "I've got you."
And then—finally—he was inside her.
The sensation was overwhelming. He filled her completely, and for a moment neither of them moved, just breathed together in the charged silence.
"Okay?" he asked, voice strained.
"More than okay." She pulled him down for a kiss. "Move."
He did.
What followed was unlike anything they'd shared before. This wasn't playful teasing or passionate urgency. This was claiming. Every thrust felt like a declaration, every kiss like a promise.
I love you, his body said. I want you. I need you. Stay.
And Edie answered in kind, matching his intensity, meeting him movement for movement until the pleasure crested and broke, sweeping them both under in a wave of sensation that left her gasping.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in the wreckage of his perfectly made bed, breathing hard, skin cooling.
Tarmek traced patterns on her shoulder, his touch gentle. "Stay tonight."
It wasn't a question, but Edie heard the plea beneath it. The fear.
"Yes."
His arm tightened around her, and she felt him exhale—a long, shuddering release of tension she hadn't realized he was holding.
"We still need to talk," she murmured. "About everything. About what this means."
"I know." He pressed a kiss to her hair. "Tomorrow?"
Tomorrow.
The word felt heavy with promise and uncertainty. They'd confessed things tonight—raw, desperate things—but confession wasn't resolution. Love wasn't a solution to the fundamental differences between them.
She still didn't know how to stay.
He still didn't know how to let go.
But that was a problem for tomorrow.
Tonight, she let herself sink into the warmth of his body, let herself pretend that this could last, let herself believe—just for a few hours—that she could have this.
Could have him.
She fell asleep with his heartbeat steady beneath her ear.
Edie woke to grey predawn light filtering through unfamiliar curtains.
For a moment, she was disoriented—wrong ceiling, wrong smell, wrong everything. Then the previous night came rushing back, and her chest tightened.
Tarmek.
He was still asleep beside her, one massive arm thrown across her waist, his face relaxed in a way she'd never seen while he was awake. Without the tension of consciousness, he looked younger. Softer. Almost peaceful.
I love you, he'd said.
The words echoed in her memory, warm and terrifying and impossible. Nobody had ever said that to her before—not like that, not with such raw, desperate sincerity.
She should be happy.
She was happy.
So why did she feel like she was about to shatter?
Because nothing is resolved.
The thought sliced through her contentment like a knife. They'd had incredible sex. They'd made confessions. But they hadn't actually talked. Hadn't figured out what this meant, what came next, how two people with such fundamentally different needs could build something lasting.
Tarmek needed stability. Roots. Routine.
Edie needed—
What do you need?
She'd always said she needed freedom. Movement. The ability to leave before things got complicated.
But lying here in the early morning quiet, watching Tarmek sleep, she wasn't sure that was true anymore.
Maybe you just needed an excuse to run before anyone could hurt you.
The thought was too big, too frightening to examine in the fragile light of dawn.
So she did what she always did.
She ran.
Moving carefully, barely breathing, she extracted herself from Tarmek's embrace.
He stirred slightly, mumbling something unintelligible, but didn't wake.
She found her dress crumpled on the floor, her heels kicked under the bed.
She dressed as quietly as possible, heart pounding with every rustle of fabric.
You should wake him. You should stay. You should—
She couldn't.
Not yet.
Not when her chest felt like it was cracking open, when her eyes were burning with tears she refused to shed, when every instinct screamed at her to flee before the weight of her feelings crushed her entirely.
She needed to think.
She needed space.
She needed—
Him. You need him, and that's what's terrifying.
She paused at the bedroom door, looking back at his sleeping form. So large. So solid. So incredibly, achingly there.
I love you too, she thought.
But she couldn't say it. Couldn't make herself that vulnerable, not when everything still felt so uncertain.
Tomorrow, she promised silently. We'll figure this out tomorrow.
And then she slipped out of the room, down the hallway, through the front door that she closed with agonizing care.
The cold morning air hit her like a slap.
And the tears came.
She cried silently, shoulders shaking, as she walked to her camper in last night's rumpled dress and smeared makeup. She cried for the mess they'd made, for the conversations they hadn't had, for the terrifying possibility that she might actually want to stay.
She cried because she loved him.
And she had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
The camper door squeaked as she pulled it open, and she climbed inside, collapsing onto her narrow bed still wearing her borrowed dress.
Tomorrow, she thought again.
We'll fix this tomorrow.
But even as she thought it, she wasn't sure she believed it.