Abe stirred. “I can stay on the couch.” His voice rumbled against her, his frown apparent in his tone. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
Swallowing past the tears thick in her throat, Sarah shook her head, then forced herself to push away. He released her with obvious reluctance, watched her rise to her feet in silence. Those dark eyes, so beautiful and evocative, she’d dreamed of them so many times since the day their marriage shattered. “I’ll be all right.” She touched her fingers to his jaw in a quiet good-bye before dropping her hand. “Thank you for staying with me today, but I need to be alone now.”
It was such a horrible lie. Sarah hated being alone, had had too much of it in her life. But she’d learned to bear aloneness even when it hurt… and she had to protect herself from Abe. High, he’d brutally hurt her. Sober, he could destroy her.
Because love? The kind of love she’d had for Abe? It never really died.
Getting up, Abe tucked a curl of her hair behind her ear. “You call me if you need anything.”
Sarah nodded, knowing she wouldn’t call. This was it. The farewell they’d never really had. “Good-bye, Abe.”
ABE COULDN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT SARAH. A week after they’d come together in that primal and passionate coupling that had left him happily wrecked and truly satisfied for the first time since she’d left him, and he couldn’t get her out of his head. He hadn’t so much as looked at another woman in the interim. And despite the fact Sarah had made it clear he’d receive no return invitation, Abe hadn’t stayed totally away.
He’d sent her flowers the next day.
He knew how much his wife—ex-wife—loved flowers, and he couldn’t simply have sex with her, hold her, then let it go without acknowledgment. He hadn’t known what to put on the card, what words she’d accept from him, so he’d just written: For you – Abe
She’d replied by text message: Thank you.
That was it. Not even the most hopeful man could read any kind of an invitation in those stark words. Abe wanted to anyway. He’d been so fucking stupid to let her go; she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. She’d loved him. Not Abe the rocker who was one quarter of a multiplatinum band, or Abe Bellamy the heir to a large family fortune. Just Abe. He’d been too drugged up, too obsessed with drowning his grief to see the value of what he was destroying.
“Yo, Abe, you with us?”
Abe looked up from his keyboard at Fox’s gritty voice. The lead singer’s dark green eyes were intent, as if he’d see right through Abe’s skin. Breaking the eye contact, Abe played his fingers across the keys. “Just thinking about that last line.” He, Fox, Noah, and David were jamming together in the music room at his place, playing with ideas for their new album.
He hadn’t thought about the ramification of having the session here, but now he realized he’d been an idiot. Because every time he looked around, he saw Sarah running from him that night, saw the tears streaking down her face, relived the hurt he’d inflicted. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
His fingers wanted to pound down on the keys.
“Uh-huh.”
Abe glared at Noah. “You have something to say?”
“Nope.” The blond guitarist—so handsome as to come perilously close to pretty—strummed a few chords.
“How’s Kit?” Abe asked, not trusting the glint in Noah’s eye.
The glint became emotion of an intensity so deep Abe could almost touch it. “Good, she’s really good.” A grim smile. “Now that her fucking stalker’s locked up, she’s starting to breathe easy.” He moved his fingers on the guitar strings.
Abe joined in, as did David on the drums and Fox on another guitar, and they played for a while. The glint was back in Noah’s eyes when they paused. “You heard from Sarah recently?” he asked Abe.
Abe forced himself to shrug. “Why would she contact me?” He didn’t intend for even his closest friends to know he and Sarah had fallen back into bed—or rather, onto a kitchen counter. The moments had been secret, a private gift. “Fox, you and Molly heard from her?” Sarah had stayed with the couple after that bastard Vance assaulted her. It had kept her safe and protected and out of the media spotlight while the band’s publicist—and David’s fiancée—Thea, took care of organizing a locksmith to go in and change the locks at Sarah’s place.
It was a smart precaution, but Abe didn’t think Vance would be back. The man was a coward, and since Sarah had physical proof of his violence toward her, he wouldn’t take the risk of aggravating her and her calling the cops.