I scramble to my feet and snatch the shirt from the floor. Holding the wadded material to my chest, I race after him.
When I reach the elevator at the entrance of the penthouse, he’s already inside, staring at the floor with a hard, unflinching expression.
“Trace.” I sprint toward him, my voice shrilling with desperation and fear. “Don’t leave.”
His gaze lifts to mine, his features empty of emotion. The elevator closes shut.
“Please, don’t leave!” I slam against the doors, too late, and burst into sobbing tears.
Sliding to the floor, I let myself think the worst. He’s done with me. He’s going out to find someone else, someone stronger and better, someone he doesn’t have to share with another man.
My stomach cramps miserably, the tears endless and hot on my face. And I have no one to blame but myself.
I’ve been holding two men in a state of flux for a month. I should’ve made a decision by now. I shouldn’t have broken my own rule about sex.
What do I do now? Does he want me to stay here or leave? If I leave, he’ll think I’ve given up and gone home to be with Cole. If I stay and he returns with another woman…
Turnabout is fair play.
My insides constrict. He wouldn’t do that. Maybe he just needs to cool off. He’ll be back.
He’ll come back to me.
I wait for hours, curled up in his bed.
I wait all night, texting and calling his phone like a crazy, obsessed girlfriend.
When the sun rises over the St. Louis skyline, I finally sleep, but it’s restless and fretful. I wake two hours later, and it’s already seven in the morning.
He never came home.
Did he stay in a room in the hotel? Did he spend the night with a woman? Maybe he slept in his office. I lean toward the last option and decide to go check for myself.
Showered and dressed thirty minutes later, I take the elevator one floor down and stride through the lobby toward his office.
I spot him immediately, his tall frame leaning against the reception desk as he speaks with his new assistant.
Marilyn is an older woman, maybe mid-sixties, with a warm disposition and a pretty smile. She glances in my direction, and a grin lights up her eyes.
Trace follows her gaze and looks at me. No, he looks through me. Then he turns and walks away, veering into his office and shutting the door.
I flinch, and my heart shatters on the floor.
We’re strangers again.
Strangers sharing the same soul.
Determined and slightly hysterical, I pound on Trace’s office door until security gently yet firmly escorts me to the parking garage. Livid doesn’t begin to describe my state of mind as I’m shoved into the back of Trace’s sedan and driven away from the casino.
My hands shake so badly I can’t type out a text, which is probably a good thing. The words I want to send to him are viciously resentful and seething with fuck you’s.
He didn’t just send me away. He had me physically removed from his property.
Is this just a temporary reflex in pissedoffedness? Or has he written me off forever?
I squeeze my fingers around the phone as my heart takes a nosedive into sobbing regret.
I’m not giving up. He can be angry and hurt and shut me out all he wants. But that’s not how this ends. I will not choose one of them by default. When I know who I belong with, it will be decidedly, absolutely, without doubt or fluctuation.
He’s the one who told me to let the decision happen on its own. He told me he’d wait. A month ago, he sat there on my couch and agreed to date me while I dated Cole. He knew this wasn’t an exclusive arrangement. And as intelligent as he is, he knew it was only a matter of time before I broke my stupid no-sex rule.
He just thinks I broke it with the wrong guy.
Did I?
Deep down, I don’t feel a wrong or right answer when it comes to them. I just feel love—bottomless, devoted, undying love times two.
The driver drops me off in front of my house, and Cole greets me at the door the moment I trudge in.
I don’t have to look at a mirror to know my eyes are bruised and swollen from crying and lack of sleep. My shoulders weigh a hundred pounds each, and I can’t stop my chin from trembling.
Cole takes one look at me, and his demeanor shifts from friendly dimples to hard-lined tension.
“What happened?” He cups my face, probing my gaze with alarm in his eyes.
“Trace knows we slept together.”
His forehead wrinkles, and a huff of air escapes his lips. “Is he being a little bitch about it?”
“Don’t.” I shove out of his hold and slip past him with anger burning my cheeks.
He charges after me and catches my elbow in the hall, whirling me around. “What did he do?”
The past twelve hours knot and twist in my gut. Trace seemed angrier about me keeping a secret from him than anything else. I won’t make that mistake again.
“What would you do?” I whisper, staring at the hand on my arm.
“What would I do…” Cole tightens his fingers around my bones. “If you fucked him?”
I close my eyes, nodding stiffly as fear trickles in. I can’t bear the thought of one of them despising me, let alone both of them.
Lifting my chin, I give him my tearful gaze. “We had sex last night.”
He yanks his touch away and shoves his hands in his hair, his voice guttural. “Why?”
“Why?” I stare at him, wide-eyed and blinking rapidly. “I love him, Cole.”
With a great shuddering heave, he rubs his face, his neck, and turns to pace in the small square hall.
“You act surprised by this.” I step into my bedroom and slump onto the bed. “I was going to marry him before you—”
“Do you love him more?” He stands in the doorway, gripping the frame.
“If I knew that answer, we’d be having a different conversation.”
I’d be saying goodbye.
He hangs his head, his chest rising and falling. “Look, I know this is more than you can handle.”
“More than I can handle? Don’t say it like that, like I’m a naive little girl playing in a big man’s world.” I grind my teeth. “Let’s not forget that I waited for you. I waited two lonely, miserable, goddamn years after you died before I even looked at another man. Meanwhile, you’re off fighting wars that don’t exist with the expectation that I’ll run into your arms—celibate and alone—when you miraculously return from the dead.”
“Danni—”
“I didn’t fall in love with Trace out of spite or betrayal or selfishness. I lost you, Cole. I was grieving and miserable with my eyes locked on the rearview mirror. I needed to look forward, move forward, and Trace helped me do that. Then you came back and upended all the progress I made.” I draw in a ragged breath. “You say this is more than I can handle, and I say I’m holding it together pretty fucking well.”
“You’re right.” He pushes off the doorframe and prowls toward me. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. It’s one of the million reasons why you’re the only one I want, now and always.”
He kneels in front of me and runs his hands up my knee-high boots, slipping beneath my denim skirt to caress my thighs.