Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(110)

Oh, Henry. What have you done?

“I—” she tried.

“Nora, please. Just … let’s drop it.”

“I do trust you.” And then, when he glared at her to tell her she couldn’t bullshit him like that, she pushed the phone toward him another few inches, knowing it was futile. He turned away from it, as she’d known he would. Too little, too late.

He’d asked for something she wanted—needed—to be able to give him, and she couldn’t. Because Henry had taken it away.

Miles had said he’d come to Boston and see her. He’d been honest with her about his doubts; he’d overcome them to take the next step with her. And she’d failed him when he asked her to take the next step with him.

“I—Miles, I’m so sorry. It was a knee-jerk thing. I have trust issues. Henry …”

It sounded like an excuse. A paltry one.

“It doesn’t mean I don’t believe you’re innocent. It doesn’t mean anything. It was just—I’m weird about my phone.”

“You don’t have to apologize. You got dumped by a guy who cheated on you for nine months. You’ve known me a day.”

So kind. His voice so even and patient.

Of course, he had his own trust issues. A fiancée who hadn’t been willing to stick by his side, and now Nora wanted so desperately to take it all back. Her hesitation. Her attempts at excuses. Even her apology. But some things couldn’t be taken back. Some things, once they were out there in the world, were there.

She needed to say, I know you didn’t; I know you’re innocent, as she had earlier today, before the truth of her feelings had been tested. Before she’d had to lay her world in the palm of his hand and leave the room.

She opened her mouth, but the words she needed to say wouldn’t come out. She just stood there, looking at the hurt on his face. Looking at the despair on his face, which she’d put there.

He said again, “It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t okay. It was really not okay. She’d hurt him and she could see that he’d gone to some kind of weird dark place. “Miles,” she attempted. “I ninety-five percent believe you’re innocent.”

She watched as the pain on his face transmuted into something harder. Sometimes it was better to shut up. Sometimes you dug yourself into a hole and you needed to stay there and reflect on how dumb you’d been to get there instead of scrambling up the unstable walls and triggering a cave-in.

“It’s fine, Nora. I can’t ask more than that of you. Of course I can’t. I don’t want to be unreasonable about it.”

“You’re not being unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable to want people to have some faith in you—”

He shook his head. A denial of that possibility.

The waitress brought his coffee and her dessert, and they sat across from each other, but the cake had no flavor. She watched as the edge of her fork released an ooze of chocolate, but when she put the first bite in her mouth, it might as well have been dirt. “I’m sorry,” she tried again.

“Please don’t beat yourself up about it, Nora.”

He wouldn’t look at her. She’d lost him. He’d shut down some part of himself, the part that she’d reached out to at the New Year’s Eve party, the part that she’d awakened and taken into herself.

She stopped talking, because she hated all the words that came out, but that didn’t mean the words in her head had stopped. Pleas: Don’t shut me out, Miles. Defenses: But, Miles, you can’t expect—it’s not fair. Even an unexpected wash of anger: I’m doing my best, Miles.

Between them, at the table, there was silence now.

He drove her back to his house, and it was painful being next to him in the car. He was in there somewhere, but she couldn’t feel him. It was as if he were wearing his skin as a force field and she didn’t have the tools to break it down. She’d been exiled from him. The way it had been all those months after the party, when she didn’t know how to find her way back to him. Miles Shepard could hide from the world and he could hide from her, and if he wanted to hide, she didn’t know how to find him.

She was afraid he would put her in the guest room, and she didn’t think she could stand that. She thought if he did that, she would cry herself to sleep. But what he did was worse. He let her climb into bed with him, and when she turned to him, he made love to her. Exactly the way she’d imagined it would be in the bed, the two of them, in the dark. The light deprivation awakening her senses, her skin lit with the feel of his smooth skin, his rough hair, the heat of his body. The scent of him filling her, overflowing her. The rough sounds of his breathing, his grunts, the held-back moans and whimpers of hers. His entry into her languid, exquisite, an easy, slow slide, spreading and stretching and making the tears she’d been holding back trickle out the corners of her eyes as he moved over her, braced up on his arms, his face nearly invisible over hers. She wanted to hold herself back the way he could hold himself back, but she had no idea how to do that, and so her body melted and she lost all her boundaries, like quicksilver running across the floor to meld and merge into the larger puddle. And the sensation was like quicksilver, too, bright and metal-sharp and soft and round and definitionless, everywhere, and she recognized what this sex was, knew its identity as well as she’d known him when she’d first seen him across the room.