Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(48)
“Do you?” Lizzie purred, plucking the rag from his hands. “Maybe I should give cleaning a fairer shot then, if you enjoy it so much.” She dragged the cloth up and down the baseboards, slowly, seductively, making sure her breasts pushed together and ample cleavage showed as she did it.
She heard Rake swallow, and she glanced up at him through her lashes. He was staring at her face with such obvious focus, it was clear he would much rather be looking at her chest.
She slid forward an inch, moving closer, still looking up at him, trying to give him ideas of what she could do from this position. Lizzie slowly reached out her hand, dragging her palm up his thigh.
“Or, we could take a break from cleaning and do something else enjoyable,” she said, smiling to herself at the obvious bulge growing at the front of his jeans. She inched closer still, dragging the tip of her finger over the shiny metal of his button, enjoying his hiss of breath as she did it. Lizzie watched as Rake stared down at her hand, his chest moving with his shallow breaths. Slowly, she pushed the button through the hole then pinched the tongue of his zipper.
Rake jerked back like she’d shocked him.
“Nope. No. No. We can’t. Sorry. No,” he said, crab-walking away from her across his shiny floors.
Lizzie’s head shot back in confusion. “What?”
“We … we can’t have sex,” he said, redoing his button.
“I assure you, we can,” Lizzie responded with a laugh, shucking off her T-shirt and crawling toward him.
“I mean, we shouldn’t,” he said, slamming his eyes shut and swallowing. “We shouldn’t have sex.”
Lizzie stopped her pursuit, her heart sinking and mortification pricking at her skin. “What? Why not?”
“Well, uh … sex got us into this … situation, didn’t it? I was thinking it’d probably be better if we didn’t continue to … do … it. Since we aren’t getting married or pursuing that aspect, it will make our, uh, cohabitation less messy.”
Lizzie flinched, the words feeling like a punch to the chest. Her brain whirred into overdrive, rejection flooding her veins.
“Cool, cool, cool, cool,” she said, shooting to her feet and moving toward her stuff. “Sexless parents living together. Sounds more like a marriage than not, huh? Should have let you put a ring on it if it meant I could have an orgasm.” She let out a horrified little laugh, her mind diving into a tailspin. Rejection and shame and embarrassment dug their claws into her back and wouldn’t let go.
“Calm down, Birdy,” Rake said, scrambling to stand. “This isn’t because I don’t want to. It just would complicate things even more.”
Lizzie could hear the words, could even picture their order in her head, but all she could feel was the weight of I don’t want to and complicate and messy pound at all her pulse points. She tore through her garbage bags and pulled out workout clothes, throwing them on in a flash. Hot, embarrassed tears welled at her eyes, and she wanted to strangle herself for letting him see. The tears were making it so much worse.
“Where are you going?” Rake asked, coming up behind her.
“For a jog. Maybe jog right into the river. Who knows, ha ha, see you later.” She knew how unhinged she must seem to Rake, but she couldn’t control it. Even the smallest whisper of rejection shattered her into a million sharp pieces of embarrassment. She’d always been this way.
“Lizzie, come on. I just meant—”
She shut the door behind her before she would have to hear more words that could hurt her.
Chapter 25
LIZZIE’S mind was lulled by the rhythm of her feet hitting the pavement. She tried to match her breaths to her steps—in, in, out, out—her chest squeezing as she moved faster. Ran farther.
It’d been a while since she last laced up her tennis shoes, but her body fell right back into the tempo, her thick thighs and muscular calves rejoicing at the delicious burn of their use. She had picked up running on a whim a few years back, signing up for a marathon training club after seeing a group of cute guys walk into the running store.
She’d hooked up with one of the guys and ended up completing the marathon, throwing herself into the sport like she did everything else: with unadulterated hyper-focus.
That is, until she got bored with it. Just like she did with everything else too.
That was Lizzie’s pattern—a new shiny high to chase, a bucket list item to check off, all pursued with fanatical zeal. And then the inevitable lull of monotony creeping in at the edges made her sprint toward the next thing to snag her attention.
She turned, heading back for Rake’s place. Their place? Probably just Rake’s place after the total meltdown she’d had.
Lizzie knew she’d overreacted. What he said made sense; they definitely shouldn’t be having sex.
But that was her pattern too: overreact, feel rejected, flip out, flee.
Her brain felt like a giant scribble of complex patterns, and she wished more than anything she could raze it over, flattening out the nooks and crannies and complexities and react rationally for once.
She stopped at the corner, walking the rest of the way to the building to catch her breath, Rake’s words still stinging her skin. She knew that, in a more direct sense, she had rejected Rake, by turning down his offer of marriage, but she had known he offered out of pity. A natural, albeit outdated, offer to take responsibility for their situation. But even that had the feeling of rejection snaking its way through her veins. She didn’t want to be anyone’s obligation.