“You are. You absolutely should do and be those things. Just not with me,” he said quietly, although the thought of her with another man gutted his insides worse than a prison shank.
He forced himself to rise and move away from the sofa, away from all her sweetness and warmth. “Claire, I feel things for you I’ve never felt for another woman. Never wanted to feel. The truth is, I’m more than halfway in love with you. I think I have been since I was too stupid to know the prettiest girl in town would one day grow into a smart, kind, incredibly sexy woman.”
She stared at him and he saw a hundred emotions flit across her expressive eyes. Shock and uncertainty and the remnants of that hunger. And, he thought, a sharp flare of joy, quickly hidden. “Riley—”
“I love you, Claire. But despite how incredible I know it could be between us, not this—” he gestured to the sofa “—but all of it, some part of me can still only think about running, just like my old man did. Like I’ve always done when anyone gets too close. I won’t hurt you like that. I can’t.”
“What do you think you’re doing right now?” she asked, her voice low and filled with pain. “Do you think I would be here with you like this if I didn’t care about you, too, Riley? I haven’t been with another man in my entire life except my ex-husband. My plan was to wait until the kids were a little older and things were more settled before I even thought about...about letting another man into my heart. And then you came home and everything changed.”
He had never hated himself as much as he did in that moment, never wanted so desperately to be a different kind of man.
He wanted to tell his conscience to screw off so he could just take what he wanted. But the images of all the women he’d failed in his life seemed to be crowding his brain, starting with Lisa Redmond, pregnant and scared at sixteen. He thought of Oscar Ayala’s chica, killed in front of him while he did nothing, of his sisters and his mother.
Of Layla.
If he did this, indulged himself in her arms and her body, Claire would expect things. That was the kind of woman she was. The hell of it was, he wanted to give her those things. He had a crazy vision of living with her here in this house, of helping her raise her children, of cuddling in bed at night while the January snows blew under the eaves and piled up on the driveway.
That picture seemed rosy and wonderful right now, but how long would it take for him to start panicking and edging toward the door?
Better to just do it now before he could do serious damage.
“I can’t, Claire. I’m sorry. So sorry.”
*
For about ten seconds after the front door closed behind Riley, Claire sat clutching the edges of her shirt, stunned and achy and still trying to cope with the jarring shift from delicious heat to this icy, terrible cold.
What just happened here? She drew in a shaky breath and tried to button her shirt with fingers that trembled. After a moment she stopped with a frustrated cry and just whipped the whole thing off and picked the soft knit throw off the back of the sofa. She huddled in it, shirtless, limbs trembling.
Hot tears burned her eyelids, but she refused to let them escape. Damn him. Oh, damn Riley McKnight straight to whatever hell that had spawned him for doing this to her. How could he tell her he loved her with one breath and then walk out the door without looking back again, leaving her lost and reeling?
It’s not you, it’s me. He hadn’t said it in so many words, but his meaning had been the same. She wasn’t buying it. She felt old and desiccated, about as appealing as a frost-killed flower garden.
Covering her face in her hands, she rocked for a minute there on the sofa, aching and more lonely than she’d been one single moment since her divorce.
The worst part of all of this? She was in love with the idiot. Somehow Riley—with his solid strength and his blasted charm and his innate ability to make her laugh—had slipped into her heart, filling all those cold, empty corners.
What was she supposed to do now?
Those tears pressed harder and she wanted nothing so much as to give in to them, just sprawl here on this sofa and weep and sob and rail against him.
Chester chose that moment to nudge her leg with his nose. His eyes drooped at her with such empathetic sorrow that, conversely, she gave a shaky laugh and buried her face in his warm, furry neck.
For some strange reason, Claire suddenly remembered that silly horoscope she’d read the morning after her store was robbed, minutes before Riley came back into her life.
Fun and excitement heading her way. That’s what the thing had claimed.
Stupid freaking horoscope.
Right now she was pretty sure she would prefer to spend the rest of her life staring down excruciating monotony if it meant she could avoid this agonizing sense of loss for something she’d never had in the first place.
Eighteen