“And I feel the same way,” I insisted, jerking him closer. “If you think it’s realistic, then you tell me how we can make it work. And I am fucking here for it, Gavin. One hundred percent. But you have to tell me how we can handle your career, and the cold hard truth that people finding out about us, which is inevitable, has the chance of ruining things for you.”
Gavin shook his head and tried to pull away, but I jerked him closer. So close our foreheads pressed together and his eyes were inches from my own.
“Tell me, if that happened,” I said urgently, “if you lose the only thing you’ve ever loved, the thing that’s held you together for all these years, that you wouldn’t resent me. You wouldn’t resent our relationship. You wouldn’t have enough regrets to fill this big, empty mansion. Tell me all of that, and then we can talk about a future together being realistic.”
Gavin closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.
“Can you tell me that, Gavin?”
His hands came up to grip my forearms, firm and then tighter, until a glimmer of gold was visible beneath his eyelashes again.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t tell you that.”
I’d expected it, and it still packed a punch so hard that it was hard to breathe. He seemed to sense it because he held me tighter against him. When my eyes grew damp, I squeezed them shut the way he’d just done, and he kissed my lids.
“Fuck,” I whispered. “This hurts.”
He nodded, burying his face in the crook of my neck, and held me as cheers from the game filled the house.
Chapter Seventeen
Gavin
Noah was beautiful in his sadness.
I sat on the edge of his bed, watching him pack. Even though he was leaving, and I wanted to be angry, I was just as taken with him now as I’d been the first morning he’d walked into Joe’s office. Only this time, I didn’t hide my entrancement with a glare. I openly admired his large, round eyes, his long, dark lashes, wide mouth, and his long, lean limbs. I watched as his fingers carefully folded each article of clothing, and wondered whether anyone else had ever noticed that he should have been playing the piano as a kid.
He glanced up at me after several minutes of silence. “Are you going to say anything?”
“What’s there to say?”
“I don’t know. If this was a movie, you’d be begging me not to go.” Noah smoothed his hands over a Star Wars T-shirt. “Or making outrageous promises if only I didn’t leave.”
I sat up, hunching forward with my forearms resting on my knees. “Would you reconsider?”
“No.”
“Then why make a scene when our last day together could be peaceful?”
Noah’s lips stretched into a smile, and his eyes twinkled behind his glasses. “I feel like four and a half months ago those words would never have come out of your mouth.”
“Heh. Maybe. Four and a half months ago I didn’t see a need to not drive people away.”
He kept smiling at me, and after a beat, my own mouth tipped up at the sides. I reached across the bed to draw him closer, and sighed when he was in my arms. His body felt right fitted to mine. I couldn’t believe this was the last time I’d get to hold him.
“You don’t have to quit,” I said into his hair. “I wouldn’t be a dick and make it awkward.”
“I don’t think you would, but I also don’t think either of us is capable of riding out the next month and a half without things getting more intense.” Noah sighed, and it came out shuddery. “And I have to be honest and say it started to feel . . . not great to be getting paid by the man I was going to bed with. Those are two things I don’t want to mix anymore. Either you’re my boss or my lover. I can’t have it be both anymore.”
There was nothing I could dispute there, except my desire to be his lover. His boyfriend. His everything. I shook my head slowly, eyes closed, and wondered when exactly he’d become so important to me. Somewhere between him telling me to take a few seats if I couldn’t act like an adult and seeing through my tough-guy bullshit.
“Can I text you?”
Noah kissed my forehead. “You don’t even text me now.”
“I can start.” I pulled away just enough to see him. “If you tell me this is our last time ever speaking to each other, I really will make a scene. That’s not fucking cool.”
“I’m not going to tell you that, I was just being skeptical. I plan to text you. Especially when I’m watching football. I like it when you get all serious face and explain the rules to me like my understanding is life or death.”
I smacked his ass. “Shut up.”
Noah’s eyes narrowed slightly and his grip on me tightened. I knew that look. The darkening gaze and dilated pupils, how his mouth opened just slightly so he could suck in a quickening breath. All indications that he was having dirty thoughts. And now I was having them too.
Closing the miniscule space between us, I brushed our lips together. He inhaled deeply, fingers sliding into my hair, and parted his lips enough for me to sweep my tongue inside. He was so addictive. Like candy. Or drugs. One taste of him had me fiending and my heart beating out of my chest.
“I need to go,” he uttered.
“Not yet.”
I invaded his mouth again, slicking our tongues together as he gripped my hair tight enough to tug at my scalp. Any second, he should have been pulling away. Both of us should have, because this wasn’t just his choice. I couldn’t deny the inevitable dysfunction of us trying to have a real relationship. It would never be full. Never be satisfying. There would always be the threat of someone ruining it, and of my career falling apart if someone else outed me.
Us parting ways was mutual. He was just the only one who could walk away. I was stuck here in my lonely mansion, and I’d spend the next six weeks remembering how letting myself feel for him had felt so much like freedom. Maybe not from this house, but from my own self-imposed walls. The ones I’d constructed as a kid to protect myself from people who’d taken advantage and used me.
“Fuck,” I said against his wet lips. “I need this. I need you.”
Noah tilted his head back, probably to see me, but I attached my mouth to his throat and sucked on his Adam’s apple.
“Why?” he asked hoarsely. “Why do you need me?”
“You make me feel alive.” I kissed down to his collarbone. “Make me feel real.”
“You are real. And if you stop hiding the best parts of yourself, everyone else will see it too.”
“I could give a fuck about everyone else, Noah. I only care about you.”
He didn’t protest as I slid down so I was on my back with him straddling me. It was the most natural thing in the world for him to lean down and kiss me again with his thighs spread on either side of mine, and my legs hooked over his, keeping him in place. Tangled up and lost in each other, and channeling my sadness and hopelessness into an increasingly frantic kiss inside of letting it transform into frustration and anger.