It wasn’t the feeling of waking up next to a woman and realizing he must have been wearing beer goggles the night before, which Zach had done a couple of times. No, Elise was still lovely, dark lashes fluttering against her cheeks as she slept. But he felt a similar regret.
At night, his mind weak from having more sex in a day than he’d had since university—really, he hadn’t known he still possessed such stamina—it had been easy to tell her she was different and make promises. But now he felt like he’d just talked a big game, like Elise at the bowling alley.
He knew how to walk away. He didn’t know how to stay. And he was convinced he’d screw it up, and he’d rather walk away now than screw it up later and hurt her badly. He just had to think of Sheri.
But a few minutes later, Elise woke up and wrapped her arms around him, and his thoughts melted away. She kissed her way down his body, taking his cock in her mouth. He almost came, even though she hadn’t had her lips on him for very long, just remembering the feeling of sliding into her slick passage. She’d been adventurous in bed—and elsewhere—last night despite her shyness. When she took him deeper, he completely lost his ability to think. He looked down at her, her lips wrapped around him—God, what a pretty picture. He arched against her, and she circled her hand around the base, stroking him in time with her mouth.
Zach didn’t last long. How could he when she was touching him like this? He told her when he couldn’t hold back anymore. She didn’t move away, and he groaned as he came in her mouth.
And after she swallowed his load, a little dribbling down her chin, he was only more turned on. He sheathed himself and pulled her onto his cock. She rode him, touching her breasts when he asked her to, her head tipped back in pleasure. He pulled out before either of them came and finished fucking her against the wall.
She liked it this way—her moans and encouragements told him so—but he felt like he was using her, using her to forget. Right now, ironically, he was using her body to forget that he might be too screwed up to have her.
He came violently, and his mind was briefly blank before he wondered how on earth he could ever make anything like this last, no matter how much he wanted it.
He probably couldn’t.
»»•««
They had a quick breakfast and were on the road before ten, Zach behind the wheel. He was so mixed up right now, and he didn’t think it had escaped Elise’s notice. It looked like she was trying to fall asleep so she didn’t have to face his company.
She wasn’t succeeding, however. About an hour into the drive, her phone rang, and she quickly answered it with no hint of sleep in her voice, though she’d had her eyes closed.
“Hi, Brit.” This was followed by a very long silence on Elise’s end, in which he tried to figure out who Brit might be. “No, of course you can stay with me…I know, I know…Really, it’s no trouble…Don’t you dare think of that. You need to leave…That’s terrible…He’s an asshole.”
So this was a good friend or perhaps her sister. Zach gripped the steering wheel, imagining he was the subject of this conversation and having no trouble at all doing so. It was easy to imagine himself as an asshole live-in boyfriend. If he and Elise started dating…yeah, he could easily imagine things heading in that direction. More easily than he could imagine them working out. He just wasn’t good at relationships. There was no way around it. He was thirty-three, and he’d had exactly one real relationship, one that had not ended well at all.
Elise put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Brit. You never told me…I know…Don’t say that…Okay, that’s fine. I’m out of town, but I’ll be home by then…Really, as long as you need.”
She put her phone away, and Zach wasn’t sure whether he should ask about the call. He decided against it, and they drove on in uncomfortable silence.
A couple minutes later, she said, “That was my sister. She’s going to leave her boyfriend, and she wants to stay with me until she finds her own place.”
“You’re pleased?” he said.
“Yes.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“My sister…it’s hard for her to be single. She likes to feel wanted and needed, but then ends up dating men who treat her like crap. In two weeks, she may very well move out of my apartment only to move in with a guy she just met. Likely one who will soon be micromanaging her life or cheating on her, if not both.” Elise sighed and leaned against the window.
I wouldn’t do that to you.
There was no need to say it out loud. He was pretty sure she didn’t see him that way. Any desire to say it was to convince himself.
And he could convince himself that he wouldn’t be a controlling cheat. But he was also convinced it wouldn’t last and he would hurt her. Of course, there was no way of knowing that for sure. But given his history, he felt like he did know.
“I blame it on our childhood,” Elise said. “I used to beat myself up over her lack of self-confidence and independence. I felt like it was my fault because I’m four years older and more or less raised her. But—”
“That’s not your fault.”
She nodded. “It’s not my fault. Easy to say that when you’re talking about someone else. Harder to believe it for yourself.”
He kept his eyes on the road and said nothing.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You haven’t said much.”
He clenched his jaw. “I’m fine. It was a good weekend.”
“Want to stop in Kingston for lunch?”
“No, I’ve got work to do at home. Let’s just stop at a service center.” He couldn’t bear to spend more time with her. It was too painful.
Elise was silent for a long time, and when she spoke, her voice was very quiet. “So now that you’ve slept with me, you’re losing interest. Is that what’s going on here?”
“Yes.” A total lie, of course. He wanted her just as badly.
“I thought you might say that. But the thing is, I don’t believe you.”
Dammit. She was too perceptive.
“Just because I was capable of being sweet last night—”
“Why do you do this to yourself? You won’t even give it a chance.”
He gripped the steering wheel even harder. Honestly, it was a miracle he hadn’t broken the damn thing. Too bad there weren’t any other miracles in his life.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“And why do you think you’ll hurt me?”
“I have a history. Trust me, you don’t want to be with me.”
“What did you do to your ex-fiancée?”
Zach remembered the time he’d gone to Sheri’s apartment with boxes of her things, including all the clothes from her drawer in his dresser. She’d opened the door for him, and then she’d collapsed on the couch, as though simply getting up to open the door was too much effort for her. She’d looked gaunt and pale, and there was an enormous pile of used tissue on the coffee table.
And he was the one who’d done that to her.
“Well, I ended the engagement,” he said. “As you know.”
“Did you cheat on her, maybe with her best friend? Throw her over in front of her entire family at the engagement party?”
“I told her she should marry someone who loved her, and that man wasn’t me. Not anymore.” Actually, he didn’t think he’d ever truly loved her. It was more that he’d wanted to love her, wanted to be able to make a relationship work. But he couldn’t. “And she was heartbroken and totally lost it. Stopped leaving her apartment, even to go to work. That sort of thing.”
“What happened to her? Is she married now?”
“I have no idea.” He could ask someone, but he was too scared to learn the truth. Yes, last he’d heard, two years after he’d dumped her, she’d finally start to put her life back in order. But he was still afraid that he might learn she’d never completely moved on.
They drove in silence for a while, the wind whipping the snow across the road—not the nicest winter day. It suited his emotional state just fine.
“So maybe you’ll hurt me,” Elise said quietly.
“I am hurting you.”
“Yeah, you are. Though I think you’re doing it just to prove your point.” She paused. “But I wasn’t talking about now. I mean…if we dated for a while, and you dumped me and broke my heart. Yes, that might hurt a lot. But I could take it. It might be awful, but I’d cope.”
“I don’t know if I could. Not again.”
“You’re sensitive,” she said. “And I like that. However, coupled with an exaggerated sense of responsibility for other people’s lives and feelings—”
“You sound like a goddamn therapist.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time in a psychologist’s office, yes.”
“No one takes enough responsibility for things these days.”
“Perhaps not, but you can’t take responsibility for things you have no control over. You couldn’t control what your ex did after you broke up.”
“We’re not talking about this anymore.” He couldn’t believe he still had three more hours alone in the car with Elise. This was torture. “We had one night together. It was a great night, but now it’s over. End of story.”
“And last night you believed—”
“Yeah, it was stupid,” he said.
“And this morning?”
“I was just using you to forget about everything.”
She sighed. “Not even my parents loved me,” she said, shaking her head. “Brit clings to anyone who shows her affection, and I understand why she does it. Me—I’ve just avoided relationships, thinking no one would ever love me.”
“Don’t say that.” He hated for her to believe that was true.
“But over time, I’ve come to think you do care about me. What you’re doing right now, it hurts a lot. Because it’s like proof I can’t be loved.”
She was wrong. The problem was with him, not her. He knew she could be loved—of course she could be. But he couldn’t give that to her, couldn’t give her what she deserved. He’d failed to love the woman he’d planned to marry. It just wasn’t something he was capable of.
“I do care about you,” he admitted. “Far too much to subject you to me.”
She exhaled loudly. “Fine. I give up. Go back to your punching bag.”
Yeah, he’d be doing a lot of that when he got home.
»»•««
He pulled up in front of her building at three. He was going to say goodbye and watch her walk away. Usually this was no big deal for him, but there was no pretending Elise hadn’t gotten to him in a big way.
She turned to him and said, “I know you’re going through a tough time right now. I wish you’d let me be there for you. If you change your mind…”
He brought his lips to hers and kissed her slowly, reverently, drinking her in. She felt so perfect in his arms—too perfect.
“Goodbye,” he said, pulling back.
She looked at him for a long time, and she reached out a hand to cup his cheek.
“I love you,” she said softly, her voice a little unsteady. “I know you don’t feel the same way. But I still love you.”
And then she was gone.