“It was a mistake. That night was all we could have had.”

“So tell me to stop,” she whispered. “And I’ll walk out of here and we won’t ever speak of it again, if that’s what you want.”

Fitz couldn’t even bring himself to open his mouth. The way she was staring at him now, so intently, was infinitely better than the way she’d been watching him a few moments earlier. With such an expression of hurt clouding her lovely features that he felt like a complete coward.

That was why he didn’t get involved. He let people down, he betrayed them. He hurt people. One look back on his past proved it.

He didn’t need Elle as further evidence.

The relief on her face had fired everything back up inside him. Seeing how much it mattered to her, that their one-night stand wasn’t meaningless.

But that didn’t mean it was meaningful either, and that was the problem. He couldn’t offer her a future. Even if he wanted to, he lacked the ability; it wasn’t the kind of man he could ever be.

“What do you want from me, Elle?” he rasped.

He didn’t know whether he was challenging her because if she couldn’t say the words then it gave them an out, or because he so urgently wanted to hear them from her lips.

She swallowed.

“One more night.”