Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(114)

Miles’s teeth hurt and his hands clenched into fists, remembering.

He knew there was no one else for him. All the women who’d come before her were ghost versions of what he wanted. Her, naked, in those red lace boy shorts, gesturing and laughing and making him laugh. Down on her knees, draping herself over his shoulder while he knelt at her feet, standing with her legs apart and her hands braced against the shower wall. Telling him about her job, her day, her reasons for things. Smiling, laughing, teasing, remaking the world in her image: Luminous. Glorious.

He stepped into the lobby and headed for the revolving doors.

He’d seen her, a year ago tonight, and there was no way to unsee her. No way to unravel her from his own fibers, no way to forget the whisper of her voice in his ear, the curves of her body under his hands, the feel of her as he moved in her, through her. There was the world, vivid with her presence, and then there was this. One foot in front of the other. While that imaginary other man at that other party watched her across the room and coveted and schemed.

Because Miles had screwed up and needed too much and confided too little and waited too long. And being here was too little, too late.

He was going to make himself sick.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Owen, he thought, and he almost let it go.

Only he didn’t. He pulled out his phone.

Nora. View’s not bad from down here, either.

He looked up and she stepped out of the revolving door, toward him.

*

She wore a loose, short bright-blue dress with chunky blue patent-leather shoes. She had a matching shawl wrapped around her shoulders and draped over her arms. The blue of the dress made her eyes bluer, and the drape of the dress made her breasts higher and rounder, and he—he stuck both his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t try to slide them under the flippy little hem of that dress, which had a ruffle all the way around it.

“Nora,” he said.

“I was already on my way when I got your text.” She said it so defiantly that it would have made him laugh, except that all he wanted to do was grab her and hold her and brand her in every way he knew how.

“Nora, I—”

“No. Listen.”

She looked fierce. For a moment he was afraid again. She was here, but that didn’t mean she was his.

“I almost didn’t come here tonight,” she said.

He started to say he was glad she had, but she talked right through the half-formed words.

“Because I couldn’t do it. I tried and tried—I practiced in front of the goddamned mirror—but no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t tell you I was a hundred percent sure you were innocent.”

He shook his head and started to speak, but she shook hers, too, hard. Don’t interrupt me.

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me if I couldn’t say that.”

“Oh, God, Nora, I’m so sorry—”

But she was still talking, ferocious and relentless. “I kept thinking about Henry. How Henry told me I was too trusting. I thought that was why I couldn’t trust you. I felt like Henry had taken away the best part of me. The part that sees the best in people. And that was all I could focus on, how I couldn’t see the best in you, and it was Henry’s fault.”

“I don’t need you to say anything,” he said. “I don’t need you to promise anything or believe anything. I just—I’m just so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you came.”

But she didn’t respond, and his mouth got dry and his throat tight. She wouldn’t have come all this way, would she, only to dress him down? To turn and walk away?

“I kept banging my head against it. Why I couldn’t trust you. Why I couldn’t believe you. What was wrong with me. And then I got it. It had to do with this whole thing with my students.” She drew herself up to full height, and he realized he was seeing what she looked like when she talked to them from the front of a classroom. “ ‘If you listen to the wrong voices, it can be very hard to hear your own.’ I was trying to teach them about self-trust. But even after that, I didn’t totally get it. The problem had nothing to do with not seeing the best in you; it had to do with not trusting myself. That’s what Henry did. He stole my self-trust.”

Her hair was bright in the lobby lights, her eyes flashing, her hands moving wildly, her breasts rising and falling with her sped-up breathing. He still wanted to grab her, but he was pretty sure if he tried to, she’d bite him, and not in a good way.

“I should have stood up for myself that night at dinner with you. I should have told you, Hey, cut me some slack, Miles, and don’t shut down on me.”

“I shouldn’t have—”

“Because if I had, if I’d stood up for myself and made you look at me and listen to me, we would have both had time to think about it and figure out that it was normal for me to have some doubts in the situation you and I were in.”

“Nora—”

“For the record? I meant what I said. I don’t let anyone touch my phone. I don’t let my mother touch my phone.”

“I know,” he said. “I know you didn’t mean anything. I was just … so—”

“You were wound so tight.”

She said it gently, not an accusation, but she was right. “I’m sorry.”