I whirl on him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” he says.
“What makes you think you have the right to barge in on me like that?” I ask. “I was out with someone, and you just walk up to my table? Again?”
“Come on, that wasn’t really a date,” he says.
“I don’t care what it was,” I say. “I could have been planning on fucking that guy’s brains out tonight. You had no idea.”
A flash of anger crosses his features. He did not like hearing that.
“But you weren’t,” he says, stepping closer. His calm tone is maddening. “And we both know why.”
“So, what is this?” I ask. “Do you consider this an apology? Because you’re terrible at it.”
“I haven’t even started to apologize,” he says, his voice low. He gets closer. “I have a lot of apologizing to do.”
The heat between my legs only makes me angrier. He should not be able to make me feel this way. “You are such an asshole.”
He stands right in front of me. I should move. He’s so close, I can feel his body heat. He wraps his hand around the back of my head, twining his fingers through my hair. God, I love how he does that.
No, I don’t. I’m angry. Furious.
“Listen to me,” he says. “I told you the second time we got together it wouldn’t be a mistake, and it wasn’t. I’m the one who screwed up, and fuck if I don’t know it. This is all on me, Selene, and I will literally do anything you want if you’ll just listen.”
“Fine, talk.”
He doesn’t let go. His face is so close our noses nearly touch. “I know I don’t have the right to kiss you yet, but fuck, Selene, I missed you so much.”
I almost kiss him, right there—my body aches for him—but I can’t let this be about sex. I move back, and he lets go.
“You said you wanted to talk,” I say.
“Do you want to sit down?” he asks.
“Not really.”
He lets out a breath and I try to keep my eyes away from his crotch, but he’s standing at attention and it’s so distracting.
“What?” I say when he doesn’t start talking. “Out with it.”
“I was scared,” he says. “You scared the fuck out of me, and I literally haven’t been scared of anything since I was in a car accident in college.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sarah said she told you about the accident, so you know what happened,” he says. “The bottom line is, Mike and Chelsea both died, and there was nothing I could do for them. I tried everything to keep them alive. I’ve never felt so helpless. And afterward, Selene, I should have died, too. I walked for two days to get help and my injuries were infected. When that trucker found me, my fever was so high I was delirious.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty for surviving,” I say. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know,” he says. “I’ve never thought of it as guilt. But that accident changed me. I stopped feeling fear. I guess I figured if I lived through that, nothing was going to kill me. So I started taking bigger and bigger risks. The rush was addicting. It was the only time I felt real. The only time I felt alive. I started chasing the high, going after bigger and bigger challenges. It wasn’t just the sports, although it felt like nothing would ever be high enough, or fast enough. I lived for any kind of challenge. It was the only thing that made me feel like I hadn’t died at the bottom of that cliff.”
“Then why were you scared of me?”
“Because you trusted everything to me,” he says. “Your career. Your body. Your life. Your heart. After we went skydiving, all I could think about was how I failed Chelsea. I didn’t save her. What if it happened again? What if something happened to you? I didn’t think I could live through that again.”
“Ronan, you can’t expect to protect me from everything,” I say. “Even if I never jump out of an airplane again, I could get killed just driving home from work.”
“I know. It wasn’t just the thought of you dying. I realized how deep I was with you. Your whole life was wrapped up with mine. It scared the shit out of me, and I’m a man who hasn’t felt fear in years. I didn’t know how to cope with it. But the truth is…” He gets close and wraps his hand around the back of my neck again. “No matter how much you scare me, you’re the only thing that’s ever made me feel alive that isn’t likely to kill me.”
“I don’t understand.”