My next orgasm tore into me, and a second later, I felt him follow me right into the abyss. For a minute while I was coming down, I wondered if he really would follow me there. Follow me anywhere, as long as it meant we wouldn’t have to be apart.
In the aftermath, he collapsed next to me, breathing hard. He pulled me into his arms. That sense that perhaps things could be okay between us lingered in the warmth of the afterglow, but as soon as I felt his breathing slow, he suddenly unfolded his arm from around me and sat up.
Dread pooled like a python in my stomach. He started getting up only a second later, and I knew things were not okay between us after all. In fact, I had the strangest feeling that this was the least okay Jesse had ever been.
CHAPTER 43
JESSE
Almost as soon as I caught my breath, I knew I shouldn’t have set foot in this hotel room. I didn’t regret what had happened, but it’d been way too easy to fall right back into her—literally—and I couldn’t let that happen.
Well, not more than I already had. I couldn’t just pretend that nothing had changed. I couldn’t lie here in her garden-variety, hotel double suite and act like everything we could be had just evaporated the second the door closed.
I sat bolt upright, immediately swung my legs off the bed, and got up. My shirt was halfway across the room, but my pants were right at my feet. Without looking at her, I bent over, swiped them up, and put them back on without knowing or caring where my underwear had gone.
If I stayed for one more second, I was going to forget why we couldn’t do this, pull her back into my arms, and then fucking cuddle her until kingdom come.
“Jesse?” She said my name just as I was doing up my fly. “Where are you going? Why are you leaving?”
I didn’t turn to face her. I didn’t trust what she’d see if I looked at her. After I finished buttoning up, I strode across theroom and picked up my shirt, and only once I’d put my arms in the sleeves did I finally glance at her.
She was sitting up now, the sheets pulled around her chest and her hair a mess, but her features were soft, confusion and vulnerability in her eyes. Maybe even a little hurt.
As soon as it occurred to me thatIwas causing those emotions, I considered backing down. I could go back to bed and soothe her. I knew all the right words to say. I could reassure her. Maybe even lie and tell her I just had somewhere to be.
In the past, that was exactly what I would’ve done, but I’d kept all of this bottled up for so long. I’d constantly tried to do theright thingby her, thinking that meant I had to be supportive. Give her space. Keep my mouth shut when every instinct I had was screaming at me to do the opposite.
But I was done with that now. Enough was enough, and honestly, I’d had way more than that.
“I’m leaving because I can’t do this,” I said, my voice coming out a sharper than I’d wanted it to, but hey.
Her eyebrows pulled together. “You can’t do what?”
“This,” I repeated, gesturing between us before moving my hands back to my shirt to do up the rest of the buttons. “Whatever the fuck this was supposed to be, I can’t do it.”
She blinked hard, clearly caught off guard. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.” My head shook a few times. I let it drop forward and focused on the floor for a beat, trying to rein it all in. I really did, but I failed. Miserably. “You can’t pull me in like this and then act like it didn’t mean anything tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” She frowned. “Why are we talking about tomorrow when it’s not here yet and how did I pull you in?”
I scoffed, anger, fear, and maybe even a bit of desperation tangling together in the very depths of my soul as I stared back at her. She’d pushed and pushed, but this was my breakingpoint. I couldn’t keep going like this, and while some of the responsibility belonged to me, a lot of it was hers.
“How did you pull me in? Shit, Jacque. How did you not? I went along with it willingly, sure, but I don’t want to be your fuck buddy.”
It sounded harsher coming out than it had in my head, but I didn’t take it back. My chest was too tight, everything I’d been holding in finally spilling over. “I don’t want to be the guy you call when it’s convenient. I don’t want to be thefriendwho occasionally falls into bed with you. That’s not what this is for me.”
Her eyes widened slightly, like she hadn’t expected me to say any of this.Too bad.
I’d been patient. I’d tried to wait her out, but she wasn’t coming to her senses. In fact, she felt further away now than ever before. “I want you, Jacqueline. Not just for fun. Not just for now. I want you. Period.”
She swallowed, her grip tightening on the sheet. “I told you, I?—”
“Yeah, I get it. You just got out of an eight-year relationship. You want your independence. You think being tied to my family…” I let out a short, humorless laugh. “Ourfamily is some kind of trap, but stop pretending like I’m the problem here. LikeI’mthe one who can’t commit or who’s going to wake up one day and just decide that I’m bored.”
“I never said that you couldn’t commit.”
“You didn’t have to,” I snapped. “You implied it. Every time you talk about how I’ll ‘move on,’ or how this isn’tsustainable, or how youdon’t fit.”