Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(92)

Allison shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”

“You acted like you did. You always seemed pretty annoyed to see me.” So much so, in fact, I’d stopped bothering. The look of irritation on her face when I turned up, even if I was there for a justifiable, work-related reason, had become too painful for me to handle.

Allison sighed, her expression becoming pensive. “No, I wasn’t. Well, not at you anyway.”

“Why, then?”

“I was annoyed at myself. Well, maybe a little bit at you for making me feel the things I felt, but mostly at me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you know what I love most about you, Ryan?”

I opened my mouth to make a smart-assed remark or comment on the present-tense classification of that statement but reined in the temptation. Instead, I simply shook my head. Her lightning changes in topic were giving me whiplash.

“You’re fearless.”

I snorted indelicately. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious. You are. It was the first thing I noticed about you.” And then she smiled. “Well, one of the first. The very first was your eyes and how when you looked at me, no matter how innocently, my heart stopped and I couldn’t think.”

That was a surprise. Allison had never waxed poetic about feelings, so all of this was news. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“But right after that, I noticed how easily you could just be you. You were completely comfortable in your own skin. You didn’t care what anyone thought. If someone said or did something you didn’t agree with, you told them. If you wanted something, you just went for it. You never let anyone else stand in your way.”

Guilt blossomed in me, and I struggled to keep it from showing. Her assessment of my character flattered me, but I thought she was founding her judgment on false pretenses. She also had no idea Ben was my father, and I was terrified her opinion of me would instantly change when she discovered the truth. The secret itself wouldn’t impact our relationship as much as the fact that I’d hidden it for this long.

“I was always a little envious of that,” Allison broke into my thoughts.

“I don’t know why,” I told her, still fighting with my inner remorse and trying to decide whether to come clean. “You seem pretty in tune with what you want. I mean, you’re on PPD. They’re tapping you to handle last-minute leads. You’re a shoo-in for a promotion when the time comes. I thought that was the plan. Isn’t that what you told me the first day we met?”

Allison sighed and looked away. “It was. Until it wasn’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

Allison’s eyes shifted back to capture mine, pain etched on her face. “I’ve always had one dream, Ryan. Ever since I was a kid and the news of the assassination attempt on President Reagan riveted everyone, I wanted to be a Secret Service agent. And then, when I got a little older, I set my sights on being the first female director. It was my all-consuming focus, and I put all my energy into working toward that goal. It defined me as a person.”

“No, that’s not what defines you.”

Allison smiled. “It is, though. Because I let it be. And I’d become so comfortable with just that image of myself that when I realized I might want something else, I was afraid. I didn’t know how to handle it or whether I even wanted to. And so I ran.”

“I don’t understand.” I felt like a broken record repeating that phrase, but I just didn’t see what she was getting at.

Allison took a deep breath, and I could see varying emotions at war in her eyes. “The day I broke up with you was the day I got the call that I was going to PPD.”

“Okay. So, you didn’t want to have a long-distance relationship, was that it? Because you could have just told me that.”

“That was only part of it, actually. And, be honest. With yourself if not with me. Tell me if I’d mentioned that you wouldn’t have come up with a hundred ways for us to work that out.”

I rolled my eyes, tamping down a grin. She had me there. “So what if I had?”

“Ryan, you drove me to distraction more often than not, and that was when I got to see you all the time. I was afraid that with you in New York and me in D.C., us having different days off and not knowing when we’d get to see one another again, we would’ve fallen apart.”

I gaped at her. “So, basically, you’re telling me you dumped me because you’d already decided how our relationship would play out, and you couldn’t be bothered to wait to see whether you were even right.” Bitterness stuck to my tongue even after I’d gotten the words out.

Guilt flickered in Allison’s eyes. “I never thought about it that way. It just seemed like the best thing for everyone at the time.”

“The best thing for you, you mean.” I’d thought those words would have an edge to them once I uttered them, but they came out sounding almost weary.

“No, I honestly thought that—”

“Don’t.” I impatiently waved my good hand. “Please. Don’t insult either of us by claiming you knew what was best for me and therefore had the right to make my decisions for me. It’s asinine and demeans us both.”

“Ryan.” Allison frowned.