My heart slams into my throat, and I clamp my legs around his hips. “Trace…”
He pushes my knees away and slides off the bed, tucking his swollen length into his pants.
“What are you doing?” I crawl after him, my stomach tumbling with dread.
He didn’t come.
He fixes his tie and slides on the suit jacket, yanking and straightening his clothes without looking at me. Then he grabs his keys from the bureau.
My blood runs cold. “Where are you going?”
“Out.” He steps into the hall and vanishes around the corner without a backward glance.
I scramble to my feet and snatch the shirt from the floor. Holding the wadded material to my chest, I race after him.
When I reach the elevator at the entrance of the penthouse, he’s already inside, staring at the floor with a hard, unflinching expression.
“Trace.” I sprint toward him, my voice shrilling with desperation and fear. “Don’t leave.”
His gaze lifts to mine, his features empty of emotion. The elevator closes shut.
“Please, don’t leave!” I slam against the doors, too late, and burst into sobbing tears.
Sliding to the floor, I let myself think the worst. He’s done with me. He’s going out to find someone else, someone stronger and better, someone he doesn’t have to share with another man.
My stomach cramps miserably, the tears endless and hot on my face. And I have no one to blame but myself.
I’ve been holding two men in a state of flux for a month. I should’ve made a decision by now. I shouldn’t have broken my own rule about sex.
What do I do now? Does he want me to stay here or leave? If I leave, he’ll think I’ve given up and gone home to be with Cole. If I stay and he returns with another woman…
Turnabout is fair play.
My insides constrict. He wouldn’t do that. Maybe he just needs to cool off. He’ll be back.
He’ll come back to me.
I wait for hours, curled up in his bed.
I wait all night, texting and calling his phone like a crazy, obsessed girlfriend.
When the sun rises over the St. Louis skyline, I finally sleep, but it’s restless and fretful. I wake two hours later, and it’s already seven in the morning.
He never came home.
Did he stay in a room in the hotel? Did he spend the night with a woman? Maybe he slept in his office. I lean toward the last option and decide to go check for myself.
Showered and dressed thirty minutes later, I take the elevator one floor down and stride through the lobby toward his office.
I spot him immediately, his tall frame leaning against the reception desk as he speaks with his new assistant.
Marilyn is an older woman, maybe mid-sixties, with a warm disposition and a pretty smile. She glances in my direction, and a grin lights up her eyes.
Trace follows her gaze and looks at me. No, he looks through me. Then he turns and walks away, veering into his office and shutting the door.
I flinch, and my heart shatters on the floor.
We’re strangers again.
Strangers sharing the same soul.
Determined and slightly hysterical, I pound on Trace’s office door until security gently yet firmly escorts me to the parking garage. Livid doesn’t begin to describe my state of mind as I’m shoved into the back of Trace’s sedan and driven away from the casino.
My hands shake so badly I can’t type out a text, which is probably a good thing. The words I want to send to him are viciously resentful and seething with fuck you’s.
He didn’t just send me away. He had me physically removed from his property.
Is this just a temporary reflex in pissedoffedness? Or has he written me off forever?
I squeeze my fingers around the phone as my heart takes a nosedive into sobbing regret.
I’m not giving up. He can be angry and hurt and shut me out all he wants. But that’s not how this ends. I will not choose one of them by default. When I know who I belong with, it will be decidedly, absolutely, without doubt or fluctuation.
He’s the one who told me to let the decision happen on its own. He told me he’d wait. A month ago, he sat there on my couch and agreed to date me while I dated Cole. He knew this wasn’t an exclusive arrangement. And as intelligent as he is, he knew it was only a matter of time before I broke my stupid no-sex rule.
He just thinks I broke it with the wrong guy.
Did I?
Deep down, I don’t feel a wrong or right answer when it comes to them. I just feel love—bottomless, devoted, undying love times two.
The driver drops me off in front of my house, and Cole greets me at the door the moment I trudge in.
I don’t have to look at a mirror to know my eyes are bruised and swollen from crying and lack of sleep. My shoulders weigh a hundred pounds each, and I can’t stop my chin from trembling.