“I’m sorry. I just can’t see you. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s not, it’s not allowed,” he grumbled.
“Why? I don’t understand. We’re not Romeo and Juliet, for heaven’s sake. No one is telling us we can’t be together. I don’t even have a family. I don’t see what prevents us from being together. Some law I’m not aware of?” I sniped.
Suddenly, anger rose up in me, making my face and chest flush with the burden of it. He’d evaded my question about how he knew I’d been looking for him. Maybe the owner, John, but the guy didn’t seem like he’d play people that way. Of course, in telling him, he may have thought he was helping.
“I can’t explain it. I can’t see you has to be enough,” he spat back at me as his hands fell to the wall on either side of my head.
“It’s not. You’ll have to do better. If you don’t like me, just say it, stop making up lame excuses,” I sniped. The words left my throat dry.
“Not like you? Shit, that’s not the problem,” he said as he shook his head. “The problem is that I should have never allowed myself even so much as a taste of you. That was selfish of me. I should have stayed away. I knew better. You can’t be with someone like me.”
“Someone like you? What are you, exactly, other than a club singer?”
“I’m forbidden to say,” he let out in a hushed roar. “Please don’t ask me again!”
“Fine. At least answer how you knew I was looking for you? Was it John?”
“John?”
“The owner of the club?”
“Him? No. I saw you, okay?”
I let my eyes fall to his denim-covered legs. He’d seen me here last weekend and he’d avoided me. What more did I need? He didn’t want to see me couldn’t be more clear.
“What? What did I say?” he asked, placing his hand gently on my cheek.
I leaned into his touch only a second before I pulled away from it. Though his skin left a warm tingling sensation on mine, I had to stay strong. This guy didn’t want me.
“It’s what you didn’t say. You see me and go the other way says it all. You don’t like me, fine. I was just an easy lay, some fun for a night, fine, say that. Be a man about it. But don’t give me some lame excuses about being someone that can’t date. That’s absurd. Even the secret service get to marry. As far as I know, only priests can’t, and you certainly aren’t one of those since they tell the truth! Just say you don’t want me, you never want to see me again. I don’t need excuses,” I raged.
I’d no idea where the stream of words had come from. I usually wasn’t so witty in a heated conversation, not that I’d really had any practice at them. Born a peacemaker, it wasn’t in my nature to incite a fight. Of course, this man didn’t bring out my typical nature. Maybe that’s where all the attraction came in.
“You think I don’t want to be with you?”
I only took in a deep breath and huffed it out. I wouldn’t dignify the stupid response with an answer. I’d gotten answer enough. Now, if my legs would just stop shaking, I’d make the best rushed exit I could in these idiot heels I’d insisted on wearing.
“Shit!” he exclaimed. “You don’t get it at all.”
“Really? Then explain it to me,”
“I wish I could. With everything, every fiber of my being, I want to. But, I honestly can’t. What I can say, though it probably is ill-advised, is that I want you in the worst way. If I could find a way, and I’ve thought about it non-stop since that night at your apartment, I would have come back to you, that night, a second after I walked out the door. I’d spend every moment I could with you. It takes everything in me to stay away. I want you! Don’t doubt that. But, I have to make clear that we can never be together. And, as much as it pains me, I can’t tell you why. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled.
“Huh?”
“Nothing, just sick of the phrase,” I sighed.