I study him for a moment. He’s really telling the truth. “Wow. You’re nothing like Aaron, are you? This”—I wave my hand— “aside.”
“I have money, Liv, and I have a lot of it. Like I said, I sold my share of my parents’ back to them. I don’t have to work if I don’t want to. I could live very comfortably for the rest of my life.”
The waiter two mugs of coffee in front of us. I lift mine.
“How rich is rich?” I ask. “Out of curiosity. You talk about it like it’s…nothing.”
His smirk is evident even over his cup of coffee. “I’m a millionaire. Several times over.”
I choke on the hot liquid in my mouth. Holy fucking Batman shit. “Seriously?”
“As serious as I’m sitting here right now. Like I said, I have money, I just choose not to use it a lot. My job pays for my apartment and my car and your underwear.” His lips tug up. “The rest of it is…just there. It’s a trust fund. Untouched for the most part.”
I set my cup down on the mat in front of me. I drop my eyes from his and run my finger around the rim of it. “Is that why you don’t have relationships? Because you’re afraid they’ll use you for your money?”
“I’m not afraid of relationships. I have an addiction to sex, not a phobia of commitment.”
His words sting. They do. Right from my head to my toes.
“But yes. That’s the main reason I never pursued a relationship in London. Everyone there knew who I was and what I was worth. Here in Seattle, well. I guess I just never found someone worth having a relationship for.”
His gaze burns into me.
“Until now,” he finishes.
“I wish I could be that girl.” My words are so quiet that they’re practically a whisper.
It’s true.
I wish I weren’t afraid. I wish I could tackle him with the impulsiveness I tackled Aaron’s new bar with. I wish I could throw every piece of bullshit away and give him the thing he wants, because godfuckingdammit! He deserves it.
He deserves happiness. He deserves smiles and security and certainty. Something I can’t offer.
Tyler reaches across the table and links his fingers through mine. He lifts our hands from the table and stares at me. Just stares, his gaze intense and shiver-inducing. And constant—until I finally give in to the buzz from his hand and look up.
“You are, baby girl. You’re that person and so much more.” He brings my knuckles to his mouth and kisses each one slowly. “You’re the woman I never knew I was waiting for. The one I never knew I wanted or needed.”
I take those words. I take them and I curl my fingers around them and I pull them to my chest. I lock them away in my heart, inadvertently giving it a reason to beat. A reason to keep going through the doubts and the worries and the insecurities.
I give it the reason to stay.
No, I don’t. He does.
With a handful of words, he’s changed everything. With something so simple, a phrase so small, I know nothing will be the same. I know my decision is harder.
Because he’s everything I never knew I wanted. He’s the thing that makes me tick. He makes my skin hum with life and my stomach tighten with anticipation. He makes my eyes burn with tears of pleasure and my lungs tighten with emotion.
Tyler Stone is everything. Everything I shouldn’t want. Everything I should stay away from. Everything dangerous, everything risky, everything that toes the line between good and bad.
Everything addictive. Everything obsessive. Everything tempting.
I squeeze his hand. In this moment, I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to feel the chill of the air against my palm when his hand leaves mine. I don’t want to feel the emptiness.
So I pull our hands toward my face and rest my cheek against the back of his. “I’m scared,” I whisper. “I’m scared that, one day, I’ll be so obsessed with you, so in love with you, that I won’t be able to survive if you leave me.”
I close my eyes as I feel the truth in my words. I don’t know why I said them. I never meant to say them. They were supposed to be inside my mind, silent to everyone except me.
“I promise I won’t leave,” he whispers back, uncurling his fingers from mine and settling them against my cheek. “I promise I’ll always be there.”
“You’re not the only person to say that, you know? You’re not the only person to promise something you couldn’t keep. Why do you think I won’t answer you? Why do you think I can’t commit to you?”
“Liv,” he breathes, holding my cheek tighter.
“It’s not because I’m flighty or indecisive. It’s not because I’m a slut or a bitch. It’s not because I don’t care or that I don’t want to. It’s because I’m so fucking afraid that, one day, I’ll destroy you. One day, I’ll hurt you, Ty. One day, my addiction could become so relentless that I could take everything you’ve ever known and twist into something you don’t know. I could take your whole goddamn world and make every spin about me. If you knew, if you truly, truly knew how bad it is already, what I fight against every single second, you wouldn’t be so flippant about it.”