Page 182 of The Grand Duel
“I made you feel like shit, Lissie. Regardless of telling you the day you walked into my office or the way it eventually came out, it never would have been a good time, and I knew that.” He reaches out and thumbs away the tears on my cheek. “I should have told you, regardless. I just didn’t know how to explain what I am and how this works for me.”
The ache in my chest spreads, and I frown. “And what are you?” I ask, my words laced with a broken, simmering anger.
He huffs out a humourless laugh and looks up at me. “I don’t honestly know anymore.”
“I do,” I say without missing a beat.
He shakes his head as he looks into my eyes. “In here…” He taps his chest. “I know what I want to the point it drives me crazy with need. But in my head…” He sits back, and my stomach drops. “I don’t think I can physically give myself in that way yet. And not because I don’t want to but because I literally don’t know how, and you don’t deserve that.”
“What are you saying?” I ask, rolling my lips to stop my chin from trembling.
“Nothing about the way I sleep with women is normal. What I want from you isn’t normal.” His jaw goes taut. “You’re young, and you are…beyond beautiful. There isn’t a word good enough. And I won’t put you through?—”
“What do you want?” I force out past the lump in my throat.
“Something that’s not fair.”
“The club?”
He stares through me as his brow furrows. “You couldn’t ever convince me to ask it of you. I…”
“Be honest with me,” I tell him. “Please. It’s me. Tell me the truth.”
“I have.” He frowns.
I nod, simply staring up at him.
He stares right back, his eyes ablaze if not a little lost.
After a minute, he shakes his head. “I don’t know what I want anymore, Lissie.”
My stomach twists, his candidness making my heart pound.
“And if I take a minute and think about that for too long, I tend to get the same answer.”
“What’s that?”
He swallows, tracing my lips with his warm gaze. “The club might not be what I want anymore. You couldn’t make me ask you to be a part of that life because it’s not how I want to do this with you.”
We sit in the quiet booth and watch one another, so much said and so much still trapped in the fear of trying.
Eventually, I lean forward and slide my arms around his neck, running my nose across his skin there. His arms wrap around me tightly, a shuddering breath ruffling through my hair.
“I don’t know if there’s space to try a different way,” he rasps.
I run my hands through his hair, my insides feeling like they’re pulling me impossibly closer towards him. “That’s okay.”
I ease back after a minute, uncurling myself from his lap as an idea comes to me. “I have something to show you. Do you want to see it tonight?”
He frowns. “What is it?”
“A surprise. But one I think is needed.” I take his hand, squeezing it in mine, letting him know without words how much him telling me about Phoebe means to me.
How everything makes so much more sense now.
He links our fingers. “A surprise? Why would you get me anything?”
“I planned it before everything happened,” I confirm. “Just after we got back from Italy.”