Take a Hint, Dani Brown (The Brown Sisters #2)(82)

“I—what?” Beside her, Zaf looked painfully uncertain.

“How could you love me?” Because now she’d managed the question, she realized it was the right one to ask. The only one to ask. “When would you even get the chance to start? I mean, I know I’m a good time, don’t get me wrong.” Her attempt at a laugh came out disturbingly bitter. “But I’ve spent the last month pushing you away, using you for sex, and boring you to death with various work-based neuroses, so when, exactly—?”

“Stop it.” She could see he was trying to stay calm—but she also knew him well enough to see the tension in his jaw, hear the slight edge to his voice. “You’ve spent the last month making me happy, making me come more than I thought was humanly possible, and carrying out a ridiculous scheme just to help me and my business. And you really don’t see why I might love you? Sweetheart, loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done. If only she was ridiculous enough to believe that, despite all evidence to the contrary. If only it sounded remotely like a fact instead of a fairy tale. But she wasn’t, and it didn’t, and her heart—her heart didn’t just fall. It collapsed.

“Oh God,” she breathed. Realization was finally dawning, slow and terrible, like a bloodred sun in some postapocalyptic nightmare. She scrambled to her feet, dragging the sheets with her.

“Danika, whatever you’re thinking right now, I can tell by your face that it’s absolutely wrong.”

Except she wasn’t wrong, because it all made sense. This was the only logical explanation. “I know what you’re doing, Zafir.”

He stared, apparently at a loss. Because of course he wasn’t doing this on purpose. He’d never do a thing like this on purpose. “What—?”

“We’ve been faking it, and sleeping together, and blurring all kinds of lines. So we both—we both got confused, and did this.” She gesticulated wildly, as wild as the panicked rush of her pulse. “And now you’re romanticizing everything, trying to turn us into some epic love story, trying to make me something I’ve never been—”

“Are you serious?” he demanded.

“Don’t act like I’m not making sense,” she snapped, searching the floor for her clothes. “Just—just ask yourself for a second if what you’re feeling is really about me or if it’s part of the . . . the story you want to weave for yourself.” And then tell me. Tell me the truth, and make it good, and make me believe it, and then I can calm down and get back into bed and stop—stop feeling like I’m dying—

Zaf stood with a curse, stabbing his legs into a pair of sweatpants. “Danika, the first night we slept together I left your place in fucking knots because I knew I had feelings for you and I couldn’t see how it would ever work out. I thought the best I could hope for was just getting over you. You think that’s the kind of thing I romanticize? It’s not like you’re the easiest option!”

She stopped in her tracks and turned to stare at him. “You’re right,” she whispered, because if she spoke any louder she might . . . she might cry. “I’m not the easiest option at all.”

He looked stricken. “I didn’t mean it was a bad thing! It’s the exact fucking opposite. I am not just stumbling into this.” He walked toward her slowly, the way you might approach a wounded animal. They’d woken up together, and he’d told her she was perfect, and that he loved her, and instead of it being the sweet, romantic moment he deserved, she’d turned it into this.

Jesus fucking Christ, couldn’t she have just said thank you and made him some coffee?

“I love you,” he repeated softly. “And it’s not in spite of this or that. It’s not because I don’t see you as you are. It’s not because I want you to be someone else. I just . . . love you.”

He didn’t, of course. He couldn’t. He was deluded. And she wanted to be deluded with him, she wanted that so fucking badly, but—but it wouldn’t last. It never did.

Would Zaf still think he loved her when she fucked up, when she started to buckle under the pressure of his expectations? When she made everything hard all the fucking time just to see if he’d bend or break, if this or that time would be the last straw? In that moment, she could visualize a thousand ways her rough edges might wear away his shine, and she just—

In every relationship she’d ever had, someone was ruined and someone did the ruining. Danika didn’t want to play either role. Not with him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He knew what she meant. He always knew what she meant. “Don’t. Danika, don’t.”

“This was a mistake.”

He stepped back as if she’d slapped him. His expression crumpled like paper, and her heart did, too. “No,” he said. “We’re—we’re trying. Try with me, Dan. Give me something.”

“We tried,” she corrected, because she had to get the hell out of here before the first tears came and snapped her in two. “But trying didn’t work.”





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


Four hours later, Zaf was standing on the rugby pitch, waving good-bye to the last of the lads, mentally patting himself on the back for pretending to be a real, live human during the length of a Tackle It session.