Apparently she wasn’t going to answer the question.
I don’t remember much of the shower, just that somehow I managed to get back into my bed—and that I was dry. Weird. Had she toweled me off?
Hello rock, meet bottom.
“I’m helping you…” Mil whispered as she pulled the covers over my shoulders and patted my head like a small child, “because even though I think you’re an asshole… getting your heart broken sucks. Besides, I have a proposition for you.”
“Okay.” I turned over and lifted the cover. “But make it quick.”
“Yeah, you need to stop flashing me.” She put the blanket back on me. “Drink some water and we’ll talk in the morning.”
“Why talk when we can—”
She placed her hand over my mouth. “I don’t think I like drunk Chase.”
“Me either…” I grumbled.
“Go nighty-night, sleeping beauty. The morning will come soon enough.” Mil left the room and I fell into a peaceful darkness.
Chapter Fifty-four
Nixon
“How did it go?” I asked once Trace was back in my room. Her eyes were red from crying. Shit. I didn’t think it would go that badly. I mean… what am I supposed to do with that? Comfort her for loving someone else? Say it’s going to be okay even though my own damn heart was on the verge of breaking?
“Awful. Pretty sure he’s passed out drunk somewhere.” Trace walked past me and sat on the bed.
I opened my mouth to speak but she interrupted me. “If you say it’s going to be okay I’m going to stab you.”
I backed away from her. “I’ll just keep standing over here then and pray you don’t find my knife,” I joked trying to lighten the mood.
“You suck.” Trace refused to look at me. “Both of you suck. I feel like a plaything. Old, dirty, used…” Her breath hitched. “Damn it, Nixon!”
Whoa, when did she go from sad to pissed? I backed up again, and was against the door when she charged toward me, beating my chest with her fists. “Damn you!”
“Trace—”
“I give you everything and you have the audacity to go and ask to be killed! Who are you? Romeo? What the hell is wrong with you!”
“I—”
“No!” She pushed against my chest again. “What if it had been me?”
“Trace.” I shook my head. “That’s hardly the same thing…”
Her hands froze in midair as her face contorted. “But it is, Nixon. How can you not see it? I understand why you did it, but you…” She turned away from me and crossed her arms. “I gave you my heart… What if you would have truly died? Do you think I would have recovered from that? Ever?”
I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her. “I knew you had Chase, knew if I pushed you toward him, you’d be fine. Sooner or later you’d forget me, Trace. You would have been fine.”
“Amazing.” Trace shook her head.
My arms tightened around her. “What is?”
“You can outsmart even the nastiest of mafia bosses and yet when it comes to love you have the intelligence of a flea.”
“Ouch.”
Her body slumped against mine. “I feel lost.”
“Let me find you.”
“I feel sick.”
“Let me heal you.” I kissed her head.
“I feel sad.”
“Let me be your happiness.”
She turned in my arms. “And if you truly die? You gonna expect me to follow you into death?”
“No.” I tilted her chin up. “I expect you to live a damn good life. I expect you to listen to me when I tell you there has never been anyone but you. No one. Only you, always you, forever you. And I’m sorry, but I won’t take back what I did.”
Her eyes widened as she tried to jerk free from me.
“Listen,” I commanded, tightening my grip around her body. “I wouldn’t take away one moment with you. I wouldn’t take away my decision to leave you, because in the end, it was the right thing to do. I will always save you. You need to know that… I will always choose you over me. Even if that means walking away, even if that means letting you and Chase be together. Trace, if it means that for the rest of my life all I have to live off of are the memories of your kiss? I would do it. Because it’s never been about me, but you and what I can do for you.”
She exhaled.
“When I wake up in the morning… I don’t think, wow, how can I make her love me more? How can I have my way with her? I, I, I? Not in my vocabulary. In fact, I’m a big fan of the letter u. I eat, I think of you. I drink, I drink to you. I cry, so you don’t have to. I’d die, for you to live. And I’d survive with a broken heart only if it meant mending yours.”