Author: Roni Loren

“A month, Wyatt. Don’t give me the forever eyes.”

“Kelsey—”

“Don’t,” she repeated. Her throat went tight, and she wished he wasn’t so close. She couldn’t think with him staring at her with those naked blue eyes. “That’s not what this is. It’s not what it’s supposed to be. No romance, Wyatt. No sweet pillow talk.”

“I love you.”

“What?” The trap door fell right out from beneath her. She pulled her knees to her chest and pressed her forehead to the top of them, barely resisting covering her ears. No. No. No. “Don’t do this, Wyatt. Please. I can’t—”

He sighed. “You can’t, what? Handle it? Love me back? Deal?”

“You don’t love me. Don’t say that.”

“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t feel, Kelsey,” he said, anger leaking into his tone as he reached over and grabbed for the robe he’d hung on the bedpost. “Believe me. This wasn’t my plan either. But I’m not going to sit hear and lie about how I feel.”

“Love? That’s bullshit and you know it. You barely know me. Yes, this week has been fun and I enjoy being with you. But we can’t do this for real.”

“Why the hell not?”

She looked at him, disbelief coursing through her. “You want to go through what we did last night every time you take me somewhere? Get those looks? I will never fit into this world. And even if you don’t see it yet, I’m just a shiny, new toy for you—something different and exciting. As soon as the novelty wears off, I’ll be the next Gwen. Only with a nice check in the bank so you don’t have to feel so guilty.”

A thundercloud crossed over his expression. “So this is what you’re going to do, Kelsey? This is your life plan—push away anyone who could care about you so you can’t ever get hurt?”

Her vision went blurry with tears. “You told me not to let you hurt me. You told me. This will hurt me. You said yourself you’re no good for me. I deserve better than becoming another Saturday night special. Don’t pretend that’s not what this would become.”

He scowled. “How the fuck am I supposed to know what this could become? But you’re not even willing to see where it could go? To feel whatever we feel and go from there? I care about you, dammit. Not just fucking you. Being with you. I’m old enough to know the difference. Are you?”

“I guess not.” She laced her hands behind her neck, still sitting in the fetal position, tears tracking down her cheeks. “I can’t do this.”

“You’re going to sit there and pretend you don’t feel something for me, too?”

“This is what I do, Wyatt,” she said, lifting her head and meeting his eyes, her heart splintering at his guarded expression. “I fall too fast. It doesn’t matter what I feel for you. Every time I’ve trusted my heart in my life, it led to nothing good. I’m addicted to relationships. And what you’re offering me right now is the like the biggest, purest dose of heroin I could imagine.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, but didn’t reach for her. “Baby, you are not that girl anymore. Your heart wasn’t telling you lies back then, the drugs and addiction were. Look at me.”

She forced herself to meet his eyes.

“You’re telling me you felt like this with those other guys? The boy who didn’t take you to prom? The dudes who fed you pills and alcohol and pushed you on stage when you were just a fucking kid? The guy who put you on the Miller brothers’ radar?”

“Please.” She shook her head, wishing he would stop. His questions pushed at her brain, making everything scramble—her thoughts, her emotions, her fears. Of course that’s not how this felt. How she felt about Wyatt was different than . . . everything. It was too much. It was all too much. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

He jaw flexed, his teeth obviously pressed hard against each other, but he didn’t look away. “You want a drink, Kelsey?”

She inhaled a sharp breath. “What?”

“You want a drink? Simple question. There’s a whole bottle of tequila in the cabinet.” She stared at him in horror as he got up and strode over to the bar, uncapping the bottle and pouring a healthy shot. He stalked back toward the bed, the golden liquid sloshing in the high ball glass, and plunked it down on the bedside table. “Do you need salt. I’m sure we have that, too.”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“Maybe.” He crossed his arms, staring down at her with ice chip eyes. “So, salt?”

“No!” She scrambled off the other side of the bed, pulling the sheet around herself and squaring off with him. “I don’t want a goddamned drink. Why the hell would I—”

He smiled. Fucking smiled.

Then she realized what he’d done.

She put her hand to her forehead, her brain feeling like it was going to explode behind her eyes. “Jesus, Wyatt.”

“Get in front of the bed,” he said simply. “On your knees.”

She blinked, her mind spinning so fast she could barely understand English, but her body complied before her executive functioning caught up. She found herself lowering to the ground without an ounce of hesitation, the sheet still tangled around her.

He stepped around the corner of the bed and sat down on the edge of it, taking her face in his hands. “It’s okay if you don’t love me back yet. It’s okay that you’re scared. But you are no longer allowed to use the excuse that you aren’t strong enough or good enough to try something with me. Because that is utter bullshit.”

Her throat went dry, her heart tattooing her ribcage. Maybe she was finally strong enough to handle emotional upheavals, but anxiety wrapped around her ribcage and squeezed. She didn’t know how to be in a real relationship without sabotaging things. Without getting needy and clingy with the guy. Without getting wild and jealous. Without losing her own way while trying to be what the guy wanted. “I don’t know how to be normal. The closer we get, the more I want to run.”

He leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Then I guess I’ll have to be faster than you.”

“You deserve better than that,” she whispered.

“You’re right. I do.” His palms spanned the side of her head and he tilted her face upward. “And so do you. You want to spend your whole life running? Pushing away the good things because you’re afraid they’ll disappear?”

“They always do,” she said, the knot in her throat like a steel fist.

The sympathy that crossed his features busted something open inside her. He shouldn’t care this much. She hadn’t earned that emotion on his face, that . . . love. She didn’t even know if she was stable enough to exist on her own yet, much less as half of something else. Wyatt had already suffered through a relationship with a girl who’d used him as her emotional crutch. Kelsey refused to be that kind of albatross to anyone.

“I need to go home, Wyatt.”

“Kelsey.” His voice was a plea.

She met his eyes, letting all the emotion drain from her body until only the echo of loss pounded through her, and she said the one request she knew would do it. “I need space.”

At that, those three simple words, his gaze clouded over, his expression closing. His hands lowered to his side in defeat. “I’ll call for the boat.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The smells and sounds were the same. The clicking keyboards, the ringing phones, the scent of the carpet cleaner the weekend crew used. Even Wyatt’s desk was exactly as he’d left it, everything in its place. His assistant had placed a stack of messages on top of his desk calendar, arranged first by urgency then by date they were received. Everything the way he liked it. Routine. Predictable. Safe. These four walls had been sanctuary for more years than not. Yet, as Wyatt sat in his desk chair, staring out the row of windows, he simply felt lost.

The day outside was bright despite the chill, but the tint on the building’s windows gave everything on the other side a gray hue, reflecting Wyatt’s mood back at him. He’d spent yesterday digging through files and combing through reports, not exactly sure he wanted to see what was there, but finding what had been hiding in them anyway. A goddamned nightmare tucked in a seemingly innocuous row of numbers.

And now nothing would ever be the same.

Cary, his assistant, breezed into his office, the smell of coffee alerting Wyatt of his presence. Cary cleared his throat in that practiced way he had to let Wyatt know he was no longer alone. “Mr. Austin, so good to have you back. I brought you coffee from a new place today. Hope you don’t mind. The other was out of the kind you like.”

“Thanks. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Wyatt spun in his chair to face Cary.

Cary looked down at the steno pad in his hand. “So you have Mrs. Caracas coming in at ten. She wants to shift some investments around. Then I have Mr. Bristol in after lunch—he’s ranting about the big loss he took last week.” He rolled his eyes. “As if you didn’t warn him that it was a shit move. And—”

Wyatt held up his hand. “Just send the schedule to my email. And cancel anything I have for the rest of the week.”

Cary’s eyes widened to panicked-deer mode. “What? But you have—”

“I don’t care,” Wyatt said, cutting him off, but not having the energy to explain further. “I’m going meet with my father in a few minutes. We aren’t to be interrupted.”

Cary clamped his jaw and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Wyatt grabbed a folder off his desk and walked over to Cary, putting a hand on his shoulder when he reached him. “Thank you for keeping the ship afloat while I was gone. I know your position isn’t an easy one and that I can be a prick to deal with sometimes. You’ve done a great job.”

Cary looked stunned, as if Wyatt had spoken it in a foreign language, but he quickly found his composure. “Thank you, sir.”

Wyatt left him behind and headed toward his father’s office. It was a walk he’d made thousands of times. But never before had he carried the dread he did today. He still had a sliver of hope he was wrong, but his gut never lied. And his gut was screaming foul.

He strode past his father’s assistant, giving her a curt response when she attempted to thwart him from walking in unannounced, and opened his father’s office door. His dad was on the phone when Wyatt walked in but he waved him in anyway. Wyatt shut the door behind him and took a seat in the palatial space that the rest of the staff secretly referred to as the Oval Office.

His father wrapped up his conversation after a few minutes, then hung up the phone, sending Wyatt a smile. “Welcome back, son.”

“Thanks.”

He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “Looks like you got some sun.”

Flashes of running through the waves with Kelsey flickered through Wyatt’s mind, a painful reminder of what he no longer had now that he was back in this gray fog of a building. “Well, it was a beach vacation.”

His father chuckled. “I’m impressed you spent that much time outside. I heard you got more than a suntan, though. Saw the email about Belle Pritchard. And I just got off the phone with Andrew Carmichael a few minutes ago. Seems you made quite an impression on him.”

Wyatt’s gaze narrowed. “What the hell is he doing calling you?”

“He’s ready to work with us. Said he needs a risk-taker and you proved yourself to be one last week.” A beaming smile broke through. “I have to tell you, son. I wasn’t sure you could pull it off. But color me impressed. You’re not as socially inept as I thought. Maybe I’ve raised a true CEO after all.”