As cliché as it was to say a bride looked like a princess on her wedding day, that was the only way Leah could think of to describe Robyn. She couldn’t remember a time her friend looked more beautiful. And it wasn’t just her fairy-tale gown, or her elegant up-do, or her delicate makeup. It was because she was so unbelievably happy. Her smile didn’t leave her face the entire day, and every time Leah saw Robyn and Rich look at each other, it felt like she was intruding on a private moment. They were in their own little world, so wrapped up in each other, so conspicuously in love. It was extremely humbling to be around.
Leah said good-bye to Holly and Robyn on Sunday afternoon, wishing Robyn a wonderful honeymoon and telling Holly she’d talk to her later that week. She hadn’t told her about her plans with Danny that night for fear of getting a lecture about not taking things slow enough.
Before Leah left the hotel, she texted Danny, and he asked her to meet him at his apartment around seven. He also told her that she shouldn’t eat anything because he’d have dinner ready for them, a notion that left her apprehensively intrigued.
She spent the afternoon running errands before she showered and headed down to his place, and as soon as she neared his building, a series of flutters started low in her stomach. She had thought of Danny so many times that weekend, wondering what it would have been like if he had come to the wedding with her. Picturing him in a suit, his black hair in sexy disarray, smiling his adorable smile. Laughing with her, holding her hand as she introduced him to people.
Kissing her softly as they danced.
Leah parked at the end of his block, and the fluttering in her stomach doubled as she rode the elevator to his floor.
When the doors finally opened, she approached his apartment and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before she opened them and knocked. There was a muffled rustling sound, followed by the muted thud of footsteps.
A few seconds later, the door swung open, and the fluttering moved up into her chest. His dark hair was tousled to perfection, and he had a hint of a five-o’clock shadow defining his jawline. He was wearing a pair of worn jeans with a gray zip-up hoodie over a white T-shirt.
And her favorite dimpled smile.
“Hey,” he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek before he stepped to the side to let her in, and she was immediately greeted with the smell of Chinese food.
Leah hummed as she walked past him into the apartment. “Good call. That smells amazing.”
“You got here before I could take it out of the containers and put it in pots and pans on the stove.”
Leah laughed as he took her coat and hung it by the door. “Right, because I totally would have believed that.”
“Hey, I can cook,” he said in feigned offense as he walked over to the table and pulled a chair out for her.
“I know,” she said as she sat. “I was there for the Hot Pocket.”
Danny laughed, shaking his head. “Why did I ask you to hang out again?”
“No clue. Maybe you’re a masochist.”
Danny pushed her chair in before he walked around to the other side of the table. “Sometimes I think so,” he said, but his voice was strangely devoid of humor.
Leah glanced up at him, but by the time he sat across from her, his dimples were back on display.
“So how was the wedding?” he asked as he started opening containers. He looked up at her, his smile still intact.
Maybe she’d imagined it.
“It was really fun,” Leah said, reaching for the bottle of water in front of her. “Robyn looked amazing. Everything went smoothly.”
“It went smoothly? What’s to mess up? Both people say ‘I do,’” Danny said, holding out a pack of chopsticks and a fork for Leah to choose from.
She grabbed the fork. “Girl stuff again. But there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that can get messy if it’s not well planned. Or if the bride is a bitch.” She smiled. “Thankfully, neither was the case this weekend.”
Danny placed two opened cartons of food in front of Leah before he started opening the others. “Do those bitch brides actually exist? I thought that shit was just for TV.”
“They exist,” Leah said, looking inside the containers. One was filled with sesame chicken, and the other contained pot stickers.
Leah’s mouth dropped. “How did you know to order this?”
“What?” he asked, his eyes trained on the chopsticks he was unwrapping.
“Sesame chicken and pot stickers? What made you order this?”
“Because it’s your favorite,” he said simply as he reached into his container with his chopsticks and pulled out a piece of broccoli.
“How did you know that?”
He popped the broccoli in his mouth. “You told me,” he said around his food.
“I did?”
He laughed softly. “Yeah. It was Tuesday night. Or maybe Wednesday. One of the nights I spoke to you this week.”
“Huh,” Leah said. “I don’t remember that.” She reached into the container and pulled out a pot sticker.
“I pay attention.”
Leah glanced up, and he winked at her before he grabbed his water bottle and twisted off the cap. She watched him take a long sip, suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to swat the bottle away from his lips and replace it with her mouth.
“What?” he asked as he put the bottle down and picked up his chopsticks.
“Nothing,” Leah said. “Just…watching you show off.”
“Show off?”
She nodded to his chopsticks, and he laughed.
“I’m not showing off. This is how you’re supposed to eat this stuff.”
She shrugged, spearing a piece of chicken with her fork and bringing it to her mouth, and he smiled, putting his container down and leaning across the table.
“Here,” he said, taking the fork from her hand and replacing it with the chopsticks. He manipulated her fingers around the sticks, his brow furrowed in concentration, and Leah kept her eyes trained on his face.
Maybe it was the fact that she had anticipated being with him all weekend, but right now, everything about him—his touch, his laugh, his voice—was driving her crazy.
“There,” he said, pulling his hand away. “Try it now.”
Leah strained to keep her fingers in the position he’d placed them in as she brought them down to her food, unsteadily gripping a piece of chicken between them. She raised it carefully from the container, grinning with pride as she glanced up at Danny, but the sticks shifted in her hand. She tried to pinch them together quickly, but they slipped and snapped together, sending the chicken flying across the table into Danny’s chest before it bounced into his lap.
She pressed her lips together, staring at him, and he looked down at his lap and then back up at her before they both started laughing. Danny grabbed the piece of chicken and popped it into his mouth before he reached across the table and took the chopsticks.
“Okay, you’re cut off,” he said, handing her back the fork.
Leah smirked as she took it from him, spearing a piece of chicken just as the double beep of her phone alerted her to an incoming text. She reached down with one hand and pulled the phone out of her purse, swiping her thumb over the screen to read the message.
She laughed softly before replying.
“What’s so funny?”
“My dad,” Leah said, finishing her reply before she pushed the phone away. “He just asked me how old my brother was when he stopped sleeping with his stuffed dinosaur, which could only mean my brother is at his house right now and they’re having a heated discussion over this very topic. I’m sure I’m being called in as a referee.”
Danny smiled. “How old was he?”
“Fourteen. My brother’s gonna say I’m full of shit, but that boy was fourteen.” She watched as Danny lifted his chopsticks and grabbed some lo mein; with a quick roll of his wrist and a twist of his fingers, he had the long noodles twirled into a neat roll on the end of the sticks. He glanced up at her and brushed his shoulder off haughtily before bringing it to his mouth, and Leah rolled her eyes, causing him to chuckle.
Her phone beeped twice and she leaned over. “My brother,” she said before tapping the screen. Leah smiled as she held the phone up, turning it around for Danny to see.
YOU ARE SO FULL OF SHIT!
Danny laughed as she placed the phone back on the table. “Told you,” she said.
“Your family seems cool.”
“They’re the best,” she said, taking a bite of a pot sticker. “You gotta have a thick skin to roll with us.”
“I believe it,” he said with a laugh.
“What about you?” Leah asked, taking a sip of her water.
“What do you mean?”
“What’s your family like?”
He laughed humorlessly. “Not like yours.”
Leah twisted the cap back onto her water. “You don’t get along?”
“We get along, I guess.” He shrugged. “We’re just not that close.”
“Do you have a big family?”
“Just me, my mom, and my sister.”
“What about your dad?” she said.
“I don’t know my dad.”
Leah watched him for a second before she dropped her eyes. “Did he pass away?” she asked, sifting through the chicken with her fork.
“No, he left before I was born.”
“Oh.” After a few seconds of silence, she said, “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “It’s fine. I mean, I’m not f*cked up from it or anything. I guess I could have been, but I had a family. It just wasn’t my real one.”
“Your mom wasn’t around either?”
Danny exhaled, running his hand through his hair. “No, not really.”
Leah bit her lip before she said, “We don’t have to talk about this.”
“I don’t mind,” he said. “I mean, if you don’t mind hearing this shit.”
She shook her head. “I want to know about you. Even the shitty stuff.”
He smiled sadly, his eyes dropping for a second before he said, “Here’s the thing about my mom. She did her best, but life dealt her one crappy hand after the other. She got pregnant with my sister when she was eighteen. Supposedly that guy had the decency to hang around for a year after she was born before he took off.”
Danny looked up as he said, “I’m sure it sucked. I mean, I can’t imagine being left with a baby that young. And I guess at that age, the only way she could think of to fix it was to find a replacement for him. She went looking for a guy who could take care of them. And she thought she found him.”
“Your father?”
Danny nodded. “I still don’t know if she got pregnant to try and keep him or if it was an accident, but either way, he obviously wasn’t into it.”
Leah frowned, and he said, “So she ended up a single mom to two kids from two different guys who wanted nothing to do with her.” Danny reached over and spun the bottle of water on the table. “She had to work two jobs just to pay the bills, and when she wasn’t working, she was out trying to find the next man who would take care of our family. So we never really saw her. I mean, the two jobs thing couldn’t be helped, but I just wish she had realized we didn’t need the man. We would have been fine without a father as long as we had a mother.”
Leah pressed her lips together as Danny shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe the man was more for her than it was for us anyway. God knows she must have needed the validation.”
“That’s really sad,” Leah said softly, and he nodded.
“I know. So I don’t resent her. But I was left by myself most of the time because of it.”
“What about your sister?”
“My sister was older than me. She stayed away from the house most of the time because she could. And as soon as she became a teenager, I was lucky if I saw her twice a week.” Danny’s hand moved from the bottle of water to the cardboard container in front of him, fiddling with the lid as he said, “I don’t blame her either. I mean, I got out of there as soon as I could too.”
Leah nodded, and he said, “Things got better when I was in second grade. That’s when I met Bryan, and after that I spent pretty much all my time with him. He lived with his grandmother a few blocks over.”
“Catherine,” Leah said, and Danny nodded.
“Yeah. His mom had him young too. Younger than my mother was. So Gram was the one who raised him so his mom could finish school.”
Leah dropped her eyes and swallowed. So, Catherine didn’t lose a grandson.
She lost a son.
“I’d come home from school and go to Bryan’s house instead of my own. And Gram would feed us, help us with our homework, tell us to wash our faces. You know, normal mom shit.”
“She calls you her boy,” Leah said, and Danny smiled.
“She called us both that.” He looked down, poking at his food with the end of his chopsticks. “That’s how I got into cars, you know. Bryan’s grandfather was amazing with them. He was always messing with something in his car, even when it wasn’t broken. It drove Gram crazy,” he said with a laugh.
Leah smiled, and he said, “When we were older, we used to wait for him to get home from work so we could watch him mess around with the car. Eventually, he started letting us work on it too.”
He picked up his drink, taking a quick sip before he said, “When he died, Gram put away his life insurance policy. She always said she was saving it for a rainy day. But when Bryan and I decided to open our shop, she ended up giving us that money and then some so we could make it happen. Pretty much cleaned out her bank account for us.”
“Wow,” Leah said softly, trying to fathom how much she loved these two boys. “So it was Bryan’s shop too?”
Danny nodded. “D&B Automotive.”
“Danny and Bryan,” Leah said.
“Danny and Bryan,” he repeated. “He always complained that he should get a higher cut of the profits since I got to have my initial first.” He smiled at her before he said, “I still cut the profits fifty-fifty. I give Bryan’s share to Gram. She wouldn’t take it at first, so I used to just hide bits and pieces of it around the house, thinking I was slick. She was on to me, though.”
Leah smiled sadly. “You take such good care of her.”
“She deserves it,” Danny said. “I would do more if I could.”
Leah nodded, and it was quiet for a minute as the two of them fiddled with the food in front of them. Suddenly Danny cleared his throat as he shifted in his seat, and she knew this conversation was over.
“So,” he said, taking another bite of food. “Is your brother older or younger?”
“Older,” she said. “He’s twenty-nine.”
Danny nodded. “Does he make your boyfriends run the gauntlet now?”
“What do you mean?” Leah asked, dipping a pot sticker in soy sauce.
“After what that piece of shit did to you. Has he been tough on all your boyfriends since then?”
“Oh,” Leah said, averting her eyes.
“You don’t have to tell me. I was just wondering. I’d grill the shit out of my sister’s boyfriends if it were me, and we’re not half as close as you guys seem to be.”
“No, it’s not that I don’t want to,” she said, twisting the fork between her fingers. “It’s just that...I don’t have an answer.”
Danny furrowed his brow, and Leah took a small breath before she said, “I haven’t had a boyfriend since Scott.”
“None?” he asked, unable to hide his surprise.
Leah felt warmth in her cheeks, and the knowledge that she was blushing only caused her to blush more deeply.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he said gently. “I’m just surprised. No one’s approached you in two years?”
“No, I was approached. I just…” She trailed off with a shrug.
“Didn’t trust anyone?”
“I didn’t trust myself. I spent years thinking Scott was this amazing person. I would have sworn to it. I turned my back on people because of it. And it just messed with my head that I had been so wrong. After that I just didn’t trust my own judgment anymore.” She shrugged. “Besides, my dad needed to be taken care of for a while after that, and I just threw myself into that because…”
“Because it was like your penance.”
It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
“So you haven’t dated anyone in two years?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“What about…” He trailed off, running his hand through his hair. “Have you been with anyone since Scott?”
She shook her head again, and she saw him fall back against his chair with his brow raised. “Whoa,” he said so softly, she couldn’t even be sure he’d said it.
She needed to change the subject.
“So what did you want to show me?”
He smiled softly, seeing right through what she was doing, but he played along.
“Do you want to see it now?”
“Sure,” she said, and he nodded, pushing his chair back from the table before he stood. He motioned with his head for her to follow him as he made his way toward the door.
“Are we leaving?” she asked.
“No, it’s in the building, it’s just not up here,” he said, grabbing his keys off the small table in the entryway. He held the door open and allowed her to step outside before he closed the door behind them and locked it.
They walked to the elevator in silence, and every few seconds he would glance over at her. He seemed nervous, although Leah was aware that she might just be projecting her own anxiety on to him.
As they stepped inside the elevator, Danny pushed the button for the basement.
“The basement?” she asked.
“It’s in storage,” he said simply as he looked up to watch the lighted numbers go out one by one as they descended the floors.
With one final ding, the doors opened, and Danny stepped off the elevator, turning back when Leah didn’t follow.
She stood there, wide-eyed and completely immobilized.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and she shook her head slightly. He stared at her until understanding washed over his face, followed by a slow smile, and then he reached down and clasped her hand, intertwining their fingers.
“Come on,” he said. “I know my way around down here.”
He stepped out of the elevator, pulling Leah behind him into the darkness of the basement. It was a long corridor, nearly pitch black except for two exit signs at each end of the hallway, which only served to cast an eerie red light in each direction.
Leah inhaled a deep breath, and he gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
“You’re fine,” he said through a tiny laugh just before a loud metallic banging gave way to a creepy humming noise. Leah yelped, tugging on his hand so that he stumbled back into her.
“It’s just the heat kicking on,” he said with a laugh. “We’re almost there.”
After a few more steps Danny stopped walking, and Leah could hear the jingling of his keys as her eyes began adjusting to the darkness. She could just make out the outline of a door before them, and then she heard it swing open as Danny took a step inside and reached above him, pulling a string that illuminated a tiny dim light in the room.
It was a small space, about the size of a walk-in closet, filled with boxes and crates and plastic bins. Danny walked farther into the room and Leah followed, still gripping his hand.
“Can I have my hand back for a sec?” he said through a barely contained smile. “I need to move some stuff.” Leah nodded before she released him, crossing her arms over her chest as her eyes combed the tiny space.
“Can we hurry? I really don’t like it down here.”
He laughed as he turned from her, lifting a box off one of the piles before moving it to the other side. Leah watched him move two more boxes before he stepped back, wiping his hands down the sides of his jeans.
“Okay,” he said, turning to her as he held out his hand, and she took it as he pulled her gently toward him.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and moved her so that she was standing in front of him. Leah’s eyes scanned the area before them. At first all she could see was a few crates full of books and what looked like old car magazines.
And then she saw it.
She gasped loudly as both hands flew to her mouth, and she felt his hands slide down from her shoulders and rub the tops of her arms.
“I hope this was worth the trek down here,” he whispered.
She turned her head to look up at him, her eyes wide with shock and her hands still clamped over her mouth. He smiled gently before urging her forward, and she turned back around and dropped to her knees, her hands falling from her mouth as she ran them over the rough concrete.
She dragged them over the jagged LM that had been etched in the stone. She used her fingertip to trace the CM and SM next to it.
And then she reached the DM.
She didn’t trace it. Instead, she just pressed the pads of her fingers into the grooves, as if she could somehow embed the initials into her skin. Leah carefully slid her hand up until it sank into the indentation of her mother’s handprint.
It was a perfect fit now.
A soft sob fell from her lips, and she was suddenly aware of his hand on her back, rubbing gently as he crouched behind her.
“I repaved that yard last fall because some of the blocks sank in, and there were raised edges all over the place. I was afraid Gram was gonna trip over one.” He continued rubbing up and down her back, his voice a soothing murmur as he said, “I spent the entire day breaking up the concrete in the yard, but I couldn’t do it to this one. The little handprints, with the big one…”
He trailed off, and Leah felt him run his hand over the back of her hair. “It just hit a nerve with me. So I got a crowbar, and I pried it up. I didn’t know what to do with it, but I just couldn’t junk it. I ended up burying it under some stuff in Gram’s basement. She never even knew I did it.”
Leah hiccupped on another sob, and he ran his hand down her hair again. “When you told me about this at The Cheesecake Factory, I wanted to tell you. I really did. But I wasn’t sure it was still there, or if it was still in one piece, and I just wanted to make sure before I got your hopes up. I went down to Gram’s and brought it up here while you were at the wedding this weekend.”
Leah stared at her hand resting in the imprint of her mother’s, and she said the only thing she could think of to say, even though it didn’t come close to expressing what she was feeling.
“Thank you,” she whispered as two more tears rolled over her cheeks.
“You’re welcome,” he said, his voice soft, and then she felt him press his lips to her temple before he stood. “I’ll bring this up to you whenever you want it.”
Leah sat there for another few minutes, letting her fingers meander over every dip, every bump, every line. Danny stood behind her, allowing her the silence and time she needed.
Finally she stood, turning to look at him for the first time, and his eyes met hers as he ran the backs of his fingers over her cheek, wiping away the remnants of her tears.
“Are you ready to go back upstairs?”
She nodded, and he held his hand out for her to take. “It’s gonna be really dark out there again because your eyes are used to the light. Just hold my hand. We’ll walk quick, okay?”
She nodded again, and he clasped her hand before he reached above them and pulled the string, submerging them in darkness. They walked the few steps out into the hall, and Leah stood behind him, holding his hand in both of hers as he locked the storage unit before they made their way back toward the elevator.
They rode the entire way back up to Danny’s floor in silence, but the air between them seemed to sizzle and crackle with electricity. She kept sneaking fleeting glances at him, wondering if he could feel it—the current in the air that made every hair on her body stand on end. By the time the doors opened, her heart was racing, and she was struggling to keep her breathing even.
They walked to his door in silence, and she stood behind him as he fumbled awkwardly with his keys. She heard him inhale slowly, and she reached forward, bringing her hands to the sides of his waist as she pressed her lips to the back of his shoulder.
His head fell forward as the breath left him in a rush, and his hand tightened around his keys for a moment before he lifted his head and opened the door.
Danny tossed the keys onto the entryway table as he walked briskly into his apartment, and Leah took a step inside and closed the door softly behind her, leaning back against it with her eyes trained on him. He was standing a few feet ahead of her, his back to her and his head down.
“Danny,” she said gently, and his shoulders rose with a slow breath before he lifted his head, turning to face her.
They stood there, motionless, both staring at the other.
And then he moved.
With three long strides, he was suddenly in front of her, grabbing her face as he crashed his mouth to hers.
Leah’s hands slid up under his arms, gripping the backs of his shoulders and pulling him against her as her heart thundered in her chest.
It was like their first kiss all over again; the second his lips touched hers, a thousand butterflies exploded in her stomach, sending searing tingles down her spine and across her skin.
His hands left her face as he wrapped his arms around her waist, hoisting her up and causing their lips to break contact, and Leah wrapped her legs around his hips as he buried his face against the side of her neck.
“Leah,” he said roughly, pressing her back against the door before kissing the skin just below her ear, and she tilted her head to the side, giving him better access.
Her breathing quickly grew labored as he lavished her throat with attention, kissing up the column of her neck and over her chin until their mouths met again. She slid her hands up into his hair and curled them into fists. He rewarded her with a throaty moan against her mouth, and then his hands were clutching the backs of her thighs as he spun abruptly and began stumbling through his apartment.
She continued to kiss him, panting and sighing into his mouth as his fingertips dug into the flesh of her thighs. Her shoulder hit something and it crashed to the floor, but he kept his pace, staggering blindly through the living room until finally they turned into his bedroom.
Leah assumed he was taking them to the bed until her back hit the wall with a thud, and all at once she could feel how hard he was—the incredible, firm pressure between her legs.
She ripped her mouth from his and gasped, and he groaned deep in his throat.
“We have to stop,” he said, kissing down the side of her neck and over her collarbone, interspersing his kisses with little nips that lit her skin on fire and set off a steady throbbing low in her belly. Her hips moved of their own volition, rolling against his, seeking friction.
“Leah, we have to stop,” he panted, but he pressed his hips back into hers, eliciting a low moan from her lips.
“Oh God,” she breathed, tightening her legs around his hips before bringing her mouth back to his.
He kissed her hard, gripping her waist before lifting her slightly, and Leah unwrapped her legs from his body before sliding down the wall. Danny kept his hands firmly on her sides as she slipped down the front of his body, causing her shirt to lift slightly. He seemed to hesitate for just a second before she felt his fingers curl under the hem, and in one swift movement, he pulled it up and over her head.
“Goddamn it,” he said hoarsely as he brought his hands back to her body, cupping her breasts as he leaned down and kissed along the lacy edge of her bra, and Leah slipped her hands up under his shirt, lightly raking her nails down his stomach. He hissed in pleasure before claiming her mouth again, his kisses shifting from passionate to desperate.
Leah reached forward, hooking her fingers in the front of his jeans and giving him a firm tug, bringing his hips flush with hers again. She could feel how badly he wanted her, and the knowledge alone made her entire body ache.
“We can’t,” he murmured against her mouth, placing his hand on her bare stomach and pushing her back slightly, and Leah gripped his wrist and slid his hand down the flat plane of her abdomen until his fingertips dipped under the waist of her jeans.
“Shit,” he breathed, and she felt the muscles in his forearm flex in protest for just a moment before he plunged his hand down, sliding beneath her panties. He touched her gently, and that single cautious stroke sent bolts of electricity rocketing up through her body. She sucked in a sharp breath as she threw her head back, slamming it against the wall. Under any other circumstance, she knew it would have hurt, but the only thing she could feel was the pressure of his touch right where she needed it, slowly working her into a frenzy.
She moaned softly, writhing against his hand, and he dropped his head to her shoulder. “Jesus Christ,” he rasped out. “Leah, please.”
He began to remove his hand from her pants, and she grabbed the sides of his face, pulling his mouth back to hers and kissing him with every ounce of want he had awakened and revived and kindled inside of her. Never before had she been so aware of the thin line between pleasure and pain. Every touch, every kiss, felt so incredibly good, and yet her desire for him was agonizing.
“Danny,” she breathed against his mouth. “We don’t have to stop. I want you.”
She felt his body tense, and then he pulled away from her abruptly, taking two quick steps backward before he sat on the edge of his bed and ran both hands down his face. “I can’t, Leah.”
“Please,” she said, her chest heaving with her labored breath. She realized she should have been embarrassed at her behavior, at the fact that she was begging, but she was too wild with desire to care. She wanted him. She wanted to touch every inch of him. She wanted to hear his sighs and his moans and her name on his lips. She wanted to make him feel that good.
He dropped his hands from his face, gripping the edge of the bed on either side of him, but he wouldn’t look at her. She took the tiniest step toward him, and a muscle in the side of his jaw flexed before he said, “I think you should go.”
She froze, unsure if she had heard him correctly. Several seconds passed, but he still wouldn’t look at her. He sat there with his eyes trained on the floor and that muscle in the side of his jaw flexing over and over.
“You want me to leave?” she asked, her breath still unsteady, and he closed his eyes.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
Leah continued to stare at him, and as the intensity of the moment dissipated and her desire slowly ebbed, she realized how exposed she was—physically and emotionally. She crossed her arms over her uncovered breasts, turning to scan the floor for her shirt, and as soon as she found it, she bent and scooped it up, holding it over her chest as she walked swiftly from the room.
Once outside, she pulled her shirt over her head as she passed through the dining room, grabbing her purse from the floor and her cell phone from the table. Just as she walked out the front door, she heard a sharp bang that sounded like Danny had hit something.
Leah bypassed the elevator and went directly to the stairwell, refusing to chance the possibility that he would come out while she was still waiting for it to arrive.
Her body was responding to what he had asked, carrying her down the steps, bringing her out to her car, starting it up and putting it in drive; she was going through the physical motions of leaving, but her mind felt like it was on a time delay. It was such an abrupt and jarring shift to go from swimming in desire that potent to drowning in rejection, and her thoughts were still scrambling to catch up. And she knew that when it happened, when she finally began to process what had just transpired between them, she would want to be as far away from this place as possible.
Leah cranked the radio, trying to put some noise in her head. She just wanted a little more time before she was forced to think. With the unnecessarily loud music eradicating any possibility of it, she focused only on the curve of the road, the white and yellow lines rushing toward her windshield, the taillights of other cars, and she sank into the comforting numbness of it all.
When she pulled into her parking space and cut the engine, somehow the sudden silence seemed even louder than the music it had replaced, and she sat there staring out of the windshield, trying for a few more minutes to keep her thoughts at bay.
The double beep of her phone snapped her out of her daze, and she reached into her purse apathetically, pulling it out and glancing at the screen.
One new message from Danny.
I’m so sorry Leah. That wasn’t about u, it was about me.
A breathy laugh fell from her lips as she tossed the phone back into her purse. He’d had almost an hour, and the best he could come up with was the “it’s not you, it’s me” routine?
She shook her head as she exited the car, and a rush of cold air hit her in the face, pulling her from her fog and forcing her to feel. And then it all hit her at once.
Confusion. Rejection. Embarrassment. Resignation.
As she entered her apartment and walked straight back to her bedroom, she was certain of two things: she had feelings for Danny, and his issues went far deeper than she initially thought.
In another time, in another life, she may have been able to tough this out with him, to ride out the storm and let him figure himself out while she sat on the sidelines, rolling with the punches and taking a few hits every now and then. But Leah knew she didn’t have it in her to do that now. She promised herself that she would never let a guy screw her around again, and while she knew Danny and Scott weren’t even close to being cut from the same cloth, the bottom line was, he obviously wasn’t ready for what she wanted.
The back and forth, the push and pull, the mixed signals—she had thought they were past all that after their conversation last weekend, but apparently that wasn’t the case. And she valued herself too much to be treated that way, even if she knew it wasn’t coming from someplace malicious. She wouldn’t allow herself to settle for something less than what she wanted, or to wait around hoping for something she might never get.
Life was too short, and she’d already wasted so much time.
Holly had been right; she had gone too fast with Danny. There were things he needed to figure out, broken pieces of his life he needed to fix. And she needed to walk away and allow him to do it. It would be best for both of them at this point. And maybe when he figured everything out, when he could give her one hundred percent of himself, they could try again.
Leah kicked off her shoes and pulled the blanket up over herself, not even bothering to change out of her clothes.
She knew what it felt like to care about him, what it felt like to want him so badly it erased all rational thought from her mind.
And as she closed her eyes, she began dreading what it would feel like to miss him.