Cuff Me(80)

“I want more, Vin.”

He shook his head to indicate he didn’t understand.

She pressed her hands together. “Tom wasn’t the one that I wanted, but he was offering me what I wanted. Marriage. A future.”

Vin’s head tilted back, realizing he wasn’t going to like where this was going.

“And you,” she continued. “You are the one that I want, Vin. I think you’re maybe the one, but—”

“No buts,” he said, moving toward her again, caging her in. “Let that just be enough.”

She lifted her hands, set them against his chest, gently. Regretfully. “I don’t think it is enough.” She lifted her eyes to his. “Not for me. I want more. I want it all.”

They stared at each other miserably for several seconds, and she licked her lips nervously.

“Vin, can you tell me—do you just need time? Is it just taking things slow? Because I can do that. But you put up warning signs on almost a daily basis. Like there’s a bunch of yellow caution tape around your heart, and I just need to know if it will always be like that.”

“Jill—”

“I need to know if you think you could ever love me,” she said, her voice a little bit urgent now.

He’d never felt so miserable. He wanted to tell her yes. He wanted to say whatever would bring her smile back and take them back to where they were before.

But he wouldn’t lie to her. She’d been right before when she’d said that trust was the one thing they’d always been able to count on in each other.

So he told her the truth. Knowing it meant losing her.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what that feels like.”

I don’t know that I can take that kind of risk.

She nodded, not looking the least bit surprised, and that somehow made it worse.

He lifted a hand to her cheek. “Can’t we just stay as we are? That’s been pretty good, right?”

She slipped away from him. “I need a little time to think about things.”

He swallowed. “How much time?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that I’ve gone from being engaged, to being single, to jumping into this, whatever this is, and it’s been great, it’s just…”

She rubbed her eyes. “I think I need a minute.”

“Okay,” he said quietly. “Do you want a glass of wine? I can put on music, or—”

“I think I’m going to head home.”

It hurt. He was prepared for it, but it still hurt.

He nodded slowly. “I’ll be around when you need me.”

“I know,” she said, not looking at him.

“Jill—”

She turned away, giving him her back, and he sucked in a quick breath.

In that moment, Vincent knew precisely the reason he avoided falling in love.

Because it meant feeling like this. It meant feeling half-alive.

“I’ll be here,” he said again. Quietly. Weakly.

She turned then, walked slowly toward his front door, and he willed himself to call out to her.

But he was also mad. Mad that she was so wrapped up in her little dream bubble of what romance looked like that she couldn’t even see that he was trying.

He waited for her to turn back around. To come back and tell him that she wanted him, flaws and all. That staying in with him was better than going out with someone else.

She didn’t.





CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN


Lying about being sick did not exactly rank in Jill’s Top Moments to be Proud Of.

But since facing Vin was so not an option just yet, Jill was on day four of “the flu.”

Vincent, of course, would know better.

But her bosses wouldn’t.

Still, Jill had found a way to assuage her guilt, slightly: by working.

Granted, she wasn’t working on a case she was supposed to be working on.

But in a desperate move to stop the ache that happened every time she thought about Vincent, she’d thrown herself into the Lenora Birch case.

Sure, she had explicit orders to let that one go—but she was willing to bet that if the higher-ups had their choice between her sitting and watching soaps while eating Ben & Jerry’s, or her going through decades-old news articles in an attempt to find something they’d missed, they’d choose the latter.

Still, the task was daunting. Lenora Birch had been famous and old. The result? Hundreds of articles mentioning her name.

There were casting announcements, casting rumors, film reviews, film screenings. And that’s before you even got to the gossip rags, where there were feuds and catfights and tantrums and divorce.

Jill’s cell phone buzzed as she was reading a particularly juicy account of Lenora’s on-screen chemistry with James Killroy.

A quick glance showed it was Elena for, oh, the millionth time.

Jill put the phone back down without answering. Was she avoiding her best friend? Yes. Was she proud of it? Certainly not.

She wasn’t mad at Elena. Not at all.

But Elena had the misfortune of being related to the one person Jill couldn’t even think about right now.

Her phone buzzed once more. Elena again.

Jill was just about to put the dang thing on silent when there was a knock at her door, timed in perfect rhythm to the phone. Almost as though the person knocking was also listening to the phone ring.