LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Thirteen

      Should he have known this would happen?

      Of course he damn well should have.

      In fact, to be brutally honest, he had known it would come to this. Exactly this. And he’d gone ahead and done what he wanted to do anyway.

      Damien stood in the doorway, holding the tray with the breakfast she would probably never eat, and cursed himself for being a heartless, lust-driven dog. He shouldn’t have come here. He never should have let this thing with them get started in the first place.

      She was his friend, dear to him. She deserved so much—everything.

      Instead he’d had to go and become her lover when he knew himself and knew how it would end: just like this. With her suffering and him hating himself.

      He set down the tray and went to her. “Luce, my darling...”

      She had her head in her hands. Her slim shoulders were shaking. He reached for her and she sagged against him with a lost little sob.

      He gathered her closer, stroked her soft hair. “Shh...” He knew the words to say, the gentle reassurances. “It’s all right. Don’t cry. Everything will work out....”

      “Oh, no.” A gasp, another sob. “I don’t think so.” He felt the warmth of her tears against his throat.

      He cradled her face, tipped it up to him, wiped at her tears with his thumbs. Her eyes glittered, wet. Yearning. Her mouth trembled and he wanted to kiss her, to taste the salt and the wet, to pull the covers away and make love to her again.

      One more time. Before he left.

      He didn’t do what he wanted. For once.

      Her eyes sought something in his face. He doubted she found it. She said, “Dami, I’ve been lying. Lying to you. Lying to me. I thought I could do it. Could just keep on lying until after you’d gone.”

      He did kiss her then. But he kept the kiss chaste, though her mouth trembled, willing, beneath his.

      When he lifted his head, he saw she was on to him. “Kisses can’t keep me from saying it,” she whispered.

      “Luce...” It was a warning. And a plea.

      She said it anyway. “I love you, Dami. I’m in love with you.”

      There. She’d gone and done it. Said the three words that couldn’t be unsaid. The ones that always made him feel restless, eager to be gone.

      And she wasn’t finished. “I think I’ve been in love with you since that first night I met you, when you danced with me and treated me with such complete consideration. You talked to me, really talked to me, and you listened, like you really were interested in me and what I had to say, as though I was more than some sickly, scarred-up, skinny girl. Like I was a grown woman, beautiful and whole and strong and well.”

      “That was exactly how I saw you.”

      Through her tears, she gave him a certain look. Knowing. Patient. “As a grown woman? Hardly. You saw me as a child, Dami. You might even have loved me, too—as a friend, I mean. Or at least felt affection for me right from the first. I knew that you did. I felt that you liked me. I knew you noticed me. And you were kind to treat me as a grown woman when you knew how I longed to be thought of as a fully functioning adult. But you didn’t see me as a woman. Not then. Don’t try to tell me that you did.”

      He gave it up. “All right. As a child. I thought of you as childlike. And I adored you from the first.”

      “Okay,” she said halfheartedly. “I’ll buy that.” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. He grabbed the box of tissues from the nightstand and offered it. She took it, pulled one out, dropped the box on the bed. “You liked me and I loved you. I just didn’t realize the way that I loved you.”

      “Luce. It doesn’t matter.”

      “But I’ve been dishonest, in my heart.”

      He shook his head. “I don’t care.”

      She gasped. “But I...I used our friendship to get you to make love with me.”

      “Yes, you did. I knew that from the first. You did nothing wrong.”

      Her soft mouth twisted. “Why don’t you get it?”

      “But, Luce, I do get it.”

      “Uh-uh. No. All along I’ve been telling myself that it was just for Thanksgiving, just for these past few days, just for a little while, for experience so I could get some guy like Brandon to look twice at me. I’ve been telling myself that I didn’t want anything permanent, that I only wanted a few lessons in love and then we would go back to being like we were before. That was a lie. A lie, do you hear me? All along, deep down where it matters, in the heart of me where the truth is, I’ve been hoping, praying, longing for you to fall in love with me. I’ve been wanting a chance at forever with you.”

      He took her hand. She allowed that, which surprised him a little. Her fingers felt cool and smooth in his. He kissed them. “I lied to you, too.”

      “No.” She looked as though she might cry again, those big eyes filling. With the tissue in her free hand, she dashed the tears away.

      He confessed. “I came here on Friday because I wanted to see you again, to be with you again. When Rule couldn’t make it for the transit-app meetings, I jumped at the chance to fill in for him.”

      Hope lit her wonderful face from within. “You...you wanted to be with me, too?”

      “Of course I did. I do, but...”

      She saw the truth in his eyes and pulled her hand free of his. Bleakly, she said the rest for him. “Not in a forever way.”

      “That’s right.”

      Dipping her head, she stared at the tissue between her hands. “So if not in a forever way, what kind of way, exactly?”

      He’d thought he’d hated it when she cried. This was worse. But she was Luce and even if he was incapable of giving her the love she deserved, he still adored her, and she wanted the truth now. What else was there to do but lay it out there for her? “You excite me, Luce. From the minute I started to see you as a woman, from that first kiss by the harbor on Thanksgiving Day, I’ve wanted you. I seem to have developed a real obsession with you. It keeps getting stronger. I know I should leave you alone, but I, well, I know you want me, too. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, wanting you. So I

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