“A mistake?”
“Yes. A pleasant mistake,” she smiled, hoping that she was convincing him.
Annoyed with her, Lex got up, disengaging from her touch and putting some physical distance between them. “How many men have you slept with since I left?” he asked.
“That’s none of your business, Lex,” Lu responded, laughing, not rising to his bait while she prayed this would be over soon.
“I’m just trying to figure out if casual sex is your thing,” he responded, a cutting edge to his voice.
“Lex. Why are you mad?” she asked innocently, but the act became harder.
Lex mentally threw up his hands. Talking to her wasn’t working. He walked back to where she was sitting. Grabbing her by the arms, he pulled her off the couch and into his body. His left hand snaked around the back of her head drawing her mouth to his. Her eyes wide with surprise, he kissed her, hoping to knock the shroud of nonchalance from her. She resisted for half a second before her mouth opened to welcome his. He’d meant to jar her, but kissing her felt too good. He felt her arms move up around his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair. Pliant for the moment, he wished she would let him into her thoughts and not just into her body. Remembering May, he broke the kiss.
Lu felt him pull away from her. Part of her relieved, part disappointed. When he pushed her away from him, the look on his face didn’t scream of passion and love as she’d hoped. Instead she saw his mad. Bracing herself, she stepped away from him.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he snapped at her.
She hated her reaction to him. Her body betrayed her every time. Looking at his, she could see the tension radiating off of him, but she didn’t understand why he wanted to push them down this path. What would come of it if she told him she’d waited for him for the last nine years? It would make every encounter difficult. They’d go back to communicating through his lawyer. She just wanted to be able to coexist with him. It was enough for now.
“What the fuck happened to you?” he said.
Startled by his anger and a little pissed that he was mad at her, she snapped back at him. “What is your problem?”
“My problem is you. Who are you? You’re the fucking Ice Queen. Do you feel anything?” Lex was so frustrated he didn’t know what to do with it. Was this really who she was? This woman who had no feeling, who could act like what happened between them was simple chemistry, not any emotion. Did she really think that the sex they had in the Sunday-school room was OK? He’d had nightmares about that encounter, had woken up in a cold sweat thinking he’d practically raped her. How was she OK with that? Why didn’t she react? Had his desertion stunted her so much that she didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t react to anything? He’d forced her to move to England and she hadn’t even batted an eyelash.
Lu flinched.
He saw it and decided to hell with it; he was going for broke.
“I practically raped you that day, Lu. Can you sit there and tell me that it’s OK?” he asked.
She flinched again. “You’d just lost your father and found out that you had an eight-year-old daughter—who I’d kept from you.”
“Really? You’re letting me off that easy?” He shook his head. “What happened to you? Why don’t you defend yourself? Why are you letting everything happen to you rather than trying to have a say in it?”
Lu would never know what part of his tirade finally pushed her too far. She felt betrayed by him in that moment, as if everything she’d done for him and his daughter wasn’t enough for him to allow her the existence that she knew she could handle. But suddenly, her mouth opened and her soul lay bare.
“Have a say in it? What have I had a say in for the last nine years? I certainly didn’t have a say in you staying or going. Even though I believed you when you said you would come back and be with us, even knowing that, I knew you were leaving me. And you never looked back. I was alone and pregnant with my mother hounding me to have an abortion and my sister looking at me with pity because she knew you weren’t coming back. For six weeks I lived in limbo. And then I had to turn to your mother. Yes, she saved our child, but the price I had to pay for that, the price of your absence from our child’s life—that’s a big price. I sold my fucking soul that day. And where were you? Oh, you were off pursuing your dream. The shit part of it, Lex, is that I loved you enough that I convinced myself that it was the right thing for you.
“When Mr. P. died, I couldn’t stay away. I knew I should because I needed to stay away from you. But you wouldn’t leave me alone. I begged you for distance. I tried to stay away, but you kept coming. I knew that I had to tell you about Nina and the only way to do that was to keep the distance between us. But you couldn’t do that. You wore me down. Even then, fuck, even then I wanted to protect you. It was going to be hard enough telling you about Nina without having sex between us. You think I didn’t know that? That’s why I couldn’t look at you. I couldn’t have you inside of me and look into your eyes and lie to you. So don’t you dare fucking come at me about not feeling and about not acting. I’ve been doing nothing but feeling for you for my entire life. And every goddamn sacrifice I’ve made in the last nine years has been for you.”