“I was just helping a neighbor out, you know that, right?”

She let her lids droop down so that I couldn’t really see what was going on in that complex mind of hers.

“It doesn’t matter. We don’t have that kind of claim on each other.”

There it was. I wanted more and she didn’t want anything. I felt my stomach drop and I stepped away from her. She followed the movement and frowned at me.

“That’s too bad, Saint. I wanted that kind of claim. I don’t know what this”—I motioned between us with a hand—“is all about, but it means something to me, and if you can’t say the same, then I don’t want to just be the dude you hook up with because I can get you off and no one else can. That’s not enough for me anymore, and frankly it makes me feel like shit.”

I walked to the front door, ready to pull it open and send her on her way for good. I was mad and upset and not bothering to hide it. I wasn’t in any kind of head space to separate how much of it had to do with her and how much of it had to do with what I was feeling because of Phil.

“I wanted to spend the night with you tonight because the only person that ever made me feel like I was worth anything is dying and I have to watch it and do nothing about it. Nothing makes that better. Nothing fixes it, but when I’m with you …”—I rubbed a hand over my face and used it to grab the back of my neck—“it hurts just a fraction less. You make me want to focus on the good, on the memories I have that make me happy, but this clearly doesn’t mean the same thing to you. You can’t even be bothered to stay the entire night with me, Saint. I get it, you aren’t into this the way I am, so you can go. Thanks for coming by.”

I had my hand on the knob and a sweltering heat was pulsing under my skin. I hated to see her go, but for my sanity and peace of mind, it was the right call. I was getting ready to yank the door open when she was suddenly between me and the wood. She put her hands on the center of my chest and splayed her fingers wide open. My heart sped up, started thumping harder, like it was trying to burst out of my chest and put itself in her hands.

“Nash.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“I can’t do it anymore, Saint. I don’t even know what it is.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. I don’t mean to push you away, to dismiss whatever it is we have. I just don’t know how to do this with you. I don’t want to be the jealous, fearful girl, but I am. I saw Royal and wanted to turn right around and never come back.”

Her hands moved up my chest and cupped each side of my face.

“It makes me feel better to think it wouldn’t matter if you were doing something questionable with her because we don’t mean anything to each other. It can’t hurt if we don’t have any kind of real feelings for each other.”

Her logic was ridiculous. Of course it could still hurt, because even if she convinced herself she didn’t have any feelings for me, her reactions still tore me up because I sure as shit had feelings for her.

“All I can see is you. Why can’t you understand that? No one shines as bright as you in the sky I’m looking at. To me there is no sun, no moon, and no stars in the sky, just endless miles of storm clouds and pretty, pretty gray.”

She moved her hands up higher and used her fingers to trace over the flames above my ears. She was trying to soothe me, trying to make the frayed edges come back together and put sutures in the wounds she had unwittingly inflicted.

“I want to believe that so badly, Nash. I can’t explain it to you, but part of me wants so much to see me the way you do, but a bigger, louder part refuses to believe it’s possible.”

I put my hands around her delicate wrists. My fingers overlapped because her wrists were so fragile, and I felt her pulse hammering under her pale skin.

“What do you want, Saint? What do you really want?”

She moved her hands off of my head and let them rest on my shoulders. Her eyes were swirling gray as she fought for control of the emotion whipping in the depths.

“I want your dad to be okay and for you not to have to watch him suffer. I want to be able to enjoy the time we spend together like a normal person and not constantly be waiting for the other shoe to drop. I want to get promoted at work. I want my mom to get over my dad and stop hurting. Mostly I want to make sure that this thing we’re doing doesn’t leave either one of us sad and full of regret.”

I couldn’t fault her honesty, but I also couldn’t give her any kind of guarantee or affirmation that any of those things she wanted were possible. In fact I knew some of them weren’t.

“What do you want from me?” I sounded a little like I was being strangled. I was already stripped to the live nerve center of my emotional threshold for the day. Doing this with her was the last thing I needed or wanted.

She sighed and finally all the shadows and fog in her eyes cleared and left behind the crystalline gray.

“I want you, Nash. I always want you; this is just the only way I know how to do it and feel comfortable.”

“Why are you so certain I’m going to hurt you? That I’m going to fuck up and disappoint you?”

She gave me a lopsided smile and she worked her hands under the collar of my shirt so she could stroke the base of my neck.

“Because it’s bound to happen, but I really want to enjoy what we have before then.”

How did I fight against that? How did I convince her when she seemed so certain that if she let go and trusted the feelings building between us instead of worrying about what might happen or what had happened, we could make the here and now something that lasted forever?

I wanted to keep arguing, to keep pushing her to see that this was more than a fling, more than two people who were sexually compatible. I wanted her to feel, to know I wouldn’t have been able to make it through everything going on with Phil and the shop without her kindness, her gentleness and care. However, she had her hands under my clothes and her mouth settled over mine, and even though I knew she was trying to distract me from the conversation, I decided not to stop her.

If this was the only way she was going to let me connect to her, I would just have to make do with it for now. I was a guy after all … and there were far worse things in life than having a gorgeous girl want you for sex. Plus, she wanted me, had proven that time and time again. I guess I would just have to ultimately decide if what she wanted me for was going to be enough when I felt like I needed to give her everything else I had.

I was going to screw all of this up. I felt it all the way down to the marrow of my bones.

I had to touch him. Had to try and soothe the way I was cutting into him and making him bleed. There was no hiding the way my hesitation, my resistance, made his eyes go dark and his mouth go hard. Even with his obvious disappointment, he never lashed out, never got nasty, which made everything even more convoluted in my head. I did what I knew would make it all go away for a while, I kissed him, started pulling at his clothes and pressed up against his hard body. He was stiff and unresponsive for a half of a second, but like always when we got together like this, his big frame started to loosen.

Seeing Royal making herself at home on his couch had made every concern, every worry, every insecure part of me want to run away from him and never look back. All those questions of why he would want me, of how long would it take until he found someone without my hang-ups, someone not stuck in the past, barreled through my head like a runaway boulder falling off a cliff. If there hadn’t been real joy, real gratitude glowing out of his violet eyes when he saw it was me at the door, I would have bolted and never spoken to him again. I hated that this thing with him made me feel that way, brought such a ridiculous weakness to the forefront of my mind. It made me feel like I was stuck in time. I just couldn’t handle that, so I blew him off when he tried to explain. I was protecting myself, insulating my heart, but little did I know my words were drawing a line in the sand where he was concerned and his heart very well might be just as fragile as mine.