The One In My Heart

I’d miss him too. Desperately. I’d just settled into the rhythm of seeing him regularly, of eagerly anticipating those meetings and relishing every moment of our time together.

I’d just had a taste of not being alone.

Walking up to him, I kissed him on the cheek. Now I should go, leave with some dignity and conviction while I still could.

I didn’t move an inch. We stood a bare centimeter apart. I stared at the pulse at the base of his throat; then I was touching it, feeling the erratic beats of his heart. My hand traveled up the column of his neck and trailed along his jawline. I loved touching his face, whether it was freshly shaven or like now, rough with a two-day stubble.

The pad of my thumb traced across his lower lip. He caught my hand, his grip tight. I pulled his hand toward me and rubbed the inside of my lower lip against a knuckle. He sucked in a breath.

“I know why you were walking in the rain, by the way,” he said. “I found out from Mrs. Asquith that Zelda wasn’t well at the time.”

My innards tightened. I turned his hand over and nibbled on his palm. “Then why bother asking me?”

“You should be the one telling me. And I shouldn’t be brushed aside anytime I ask an important question.”

I drew his index finger into my mouth, wanting to shut him up. His eyes darkened. “Why are you so afraid?”

Because life as I know it can end any moment. Because nothing is safe. Because if I don’t protect myself, nobody will.

I said nothing, but pressed an openmouthed kiss below his jaw.

“You’re not walling yourself off from heartache—there’s no possibility of that. You’re only walling yourself off from life.”

Beneath his pajama trousers he was already thickening and rising. I maneuvered him down onto a nearby armchair and kissed him. But he pushed me away. “You don’t want to kiss me. You just want me to stop talking.”

“Then why don’t you?”

And why couldn’t you have left well enough alone?

“Because I care. Because you’re stuck. Because there’s no coming unstuck for you unless you’re willing to change.”

I fell to my knees and licked his erection through the pajamas. It flexed under my tongue. “I don’t want to change.”

“Nobody wants to change, goddammit. But sometimes you have to. Did you think it was easy for me? Did you think I wasn’t exactly like you?”

I pulled down his waistband and took him deep into my mouth. He was shower-clean, with a hint of the musk of arousal. I gripped the base of his shaft, and caressed his scrotum with my other hand.

He still persisted—his fingers digging into the arms of the chair. “I never spoke about Moira to anybody. I never spoke about my parents. I could never stand for anyone to know that my life wasn’t one hundred percent perfect. But for us to have any chance, I knew I had to be honest with you. And if I could, why can’t you?”

I deep-throated him. He emitted a guttural sound. I didn’t know what I was trying to do—this went far beyond silencing him. Part of me wanted to punish him, possibly, for everything he was taking away from me.

For the abyss that awaited me outside. And within.

I looked up. His eyes were shut, his teeth clenched together. And then he opened his eyes, and the way he stared at me, with both anger and despair—pain scorched my heart.

I deep-throated him again. He tried to remain quiet and motionless, but couldn’t. He thrust into me. His breaths turned harsh and sibilant. Then he plunged his hands into my hair and came in my mouth.

I swallowed and swallowed. When it was all over I wrapped my arms around him and set my cheek against his thigh, unable to let go. He was the one who moved away, leaving me with my head on the chair and no one to embrace.

He returned all too soon. “Your cab will be downstairs in two minutes.”

I got up, feeling heavier than ever. Before the private elevator he handed me my coat and my purse. “Maybe you should try to deal with your abandonment issues.”

I recoiled. “What do you know about abandonment issues?”

“My parents turned their backs on me because they didn’t like the person I dated. And the woman for whom I gave up everything sat me down one day and told me that I was too bourgeois for her. What don’t I know about abandonment issues?”

Before I could react, he pressed the button on the elevator. “Good-bye, Eva.”

I trudged into the elevator. By the time I turned around, the doors were already closing, blocking him from view. And then I was looking at my own reflection in the bright chrome, a wide-eyed, bewildered woman who still couldn’t believe that she’d lost the best thing to happen to her in a long, long time.





Chapter 16





IT WAS BARELY PAST NINE o’clock in the evening when I got home. From the living room, Zelda looked up in surprise. “Back so early, darling?”