One is a Promise(62)

Anger quivers through my body, curling my lip. “Are you sure you don’t want to look around some more? See if you can find a personality that doesn’t suck?”

His detached gaze connects with mine as he steps outside. I follow, flexing my hands with the need to strangle him. His direct eye contact only pisses me off more. He sees how upset I am, and he’s unmoved. Climbing into his car without a care in the world.

“Fine. Go.” I shove my hands on my hips. “I was saving myself anyway. For Mark the siding guy. Remember him? Turns out the foreveraloner has a foot-long boner. And he’s not afraid to use it!”

What a childish thing to say. But the fury reddening Trace’s face? Worth it!

He slams the door, throws the car in reverse, and burns rubber out of the neighborhood.

Choking on fumes of frustration, I trudge back inside and stand before the mirrors. What does he see when he looks at me? A defeated, trapped, eternally grief-stricken woman?

Blonde hair hangs in waves around my face and down my chest. My cheeks glow with a pink flush, my lips swollen and parted. And my gray eyes are bright, unblinking, and full of yearning.

I look like I’m in love.

Because I am.

I’m in love with Trace Savoy.

“You get off on your own pain, don’t you?” I ask my reflection. “Love could bring you more agony. Are you willing to risk that again?”

The woman in the mirror doesn’t have the answers, but as my temper cools, it becomes easier to break down my confrontation with Trace. For the next couple of hours, I lie on my bed with a framed photo of Cole and me in front of a Christmas tree. Our first and only Christmas together.

He was in and out of my life in ten months. An infinitesimal amount of time for such a lasting impact. His love branded me, left its mark beneath my skin, like swirling colors of ink. I don’t need pictures or an engagement ring to be reminded of the euphoria, the fuzzy whirling dream state that swallowed us in those ten months. I feel his absence in my blood, in my thoughts, every day.

Because love doesn’t end with death. It doesn’t shrivel and disintegrate with the ashes. It hovers, follows, haunts the living.

But after months of missteps and drunken pity parties, I learned how to cope with it. I learned how to breathe again. And in the past four months, I rediscovered my smile in a man who scowls through every emotion.

As much as I bitch about Trace being cryptic and impersonal, I’m magnetically drawn to his confidence, his strength. He challenges me, pushes me, and I need that. Because I’m not without shortcomings.

He wanted to see the basement. I should’ve showed it to him. Hell, I should’ve cleared out the space a long time ago. But he didn’t ask me to do that. He didn’t ask me to get rid of anything, not even the seven-hundred pounds of steel and chrome sitting in the dining room.

Cole might’ve been my favorite smile, but once I discovered the emotional depth in Trace’s scowl, I realized I love it more than any smile. Cole’s charming, animated personality won me over instantly. Contrarily, Trace’s strict, reserved nature makes me appreciate how deeply sensitive he is beneath the suit.

All Trace wanted was reassurance that my heart didn’t belong to another man, and I didn’t give him that. If anything, I reinforced his doubts.

I really fucked this up.

But I have a plan to unfucktify it, and by plan, I mean a slight chance of success based mainly on hope.

He wants all of me? That’s what I’ll give him—the honest, barefaced, take-a-leap-of-faith answer to his question. Because he was right. I have a choice to make. A decision between the past and the future.

I choose the future. I choose Trace. And tonight, I’m going to tell him I love him.

When his driver picks me up for my three o’clock shift, my stomach twists into knots. I recognize this feeling, this vulnerability. I’m opening myself up, letting Trace in. He could make me blissfully happy. Or he could crush me beneath his shiny shoe.

At the casino, I let the restaurant staff know that I’m leaving early tonight. In the four months I’ve worked here, I’ve never taken time off. But waiting until midnight to talk to Trace is out of the question.

For five hours, I dance on the stage, wrapped in the moving beam of light. Every table in the dining is filled, and the usual crowd gathers outside the glass walls. Some are just passing by and pause to watch me before meandering on. Others linger through several songs, their eyes fixated on the swing of my hips, hypnotized.

My dancing has a similar effect on Trace. He watches me every night, if only for a few minutes as he passes through the dining room or from afar when he makes his rounds on the casino floor. But I haven’t spotted him once tonight. Neither in the restaurant nor the gaming area. By the time eight o’clock rolls around, my mind is a spinning tunnel of doubt.