my Tesla jarred me. I swiped my thumb over the time. It had to be wrong.
If it was right, I’d been gone from Elise for nearly an hour. That was impossible. There was no way I’d fucked up so monumentally.
My head was throbbing from listening to what had felt like hours of bullshit from Peters that amounted to a big problem I was going to have to handle.
This wasn’t how I’d envisioned the night going.
“Elise.” I reached across the center console, taking her cold hand in mine. “I’m sorry, baby. I never meant to be gone that long. The deal with Peters is unraveling because he doesn’t think our strict oversight is necessary. We’re up against a rock and a hard place with the end of our contract with Brian Lewis—”
I cut myself off. Elise was staring placidly ahead, and if she was listening, I couldn’t tell. Not that anything I was saying mattered.
“That shouldn’t have happened tonight. The minute I recognized what was going on, I should have told him I’d meet with him another time.”
I brought her hand to my lips, kissing her knuckles one by one.
“I fucked up, baby. I was being the CEO of Andes instead of your boyfriend and that was absolutely the wrong choice to make. It will never happen again.”
Worse, I’d walked away from Peters angry at his blustering and carried that attitude across the dance floor, straight to Luca and Elise. The sight of her tucked in his arms, her eyes closed, Luca smirking like the cat who’d caught the canary, had nearly blinded me with rage.
I’d reacted before thinking, and now, I didn’t just have to find a way to make it up to Elise, Luca was due an apology too.
At the moment, my focus had to be on Elise—where it should have been this evening.
“Talk to me, baby.”
She blinked, turning her head slightly toward me. “I don’t really want to talk. I’m tired.”
I squeezed her hand tighter, holding it against my lips. “I’m sorry.”
Silence.
When we finally arrived home, she rushed out of my car and to the elevator, slapping the button for her floor. With a growl, I hit the code for the penthouse and banded my arm around her waist to hold her back flush with my front.
“I’m going home,” she uttered.
“Not tonight. You’re coming with me.”
“Weston—”
“If I let you go right now, you’ll disappear.” I held her tighter. “I’m not letting you disappear.”
When the doors opened on her floor, she shimmied from side to side, attempting to loosen my hold, but there was absolutely no way she was sleeping in her apartment.
“I don’t have the energy to fight you,” she whispered as the doors slid shut.
“The last thing I want to do is fight with you.”
Once we were inside my apartment, I locked the door and leaned against it. Wariness of what was to come slipped down my spine.
Elise stalked through the entry, pausing to bend down and slip off her heels. She carried them with her to the bedroom, her dress flowing behind her.
I followed.
She was fumbling with the zipper on the back of her dress. Stepping up behind her, I gently nudged her fingers aside and unzipped her, pressing kisses to the bare skin of her shoulders. She crossed her arms over the front of her dress so it didn’t fall, then broke away from me to go into my walk-in closet.
I followed again, yanking off my bow tie and shrugging off my jacket.
Elise had taken off her dress, leaving her in a bloodred corset and matching panties. My breath hitched. My stunning, sexy girlfriend was standing there in lace and my diamonds, and she wouldn’t even look at me.
“Elise—”
She pulled on a pair of joggers then started working on the hook and eye closures down the front of the corset.
“Please don’t try to make me talk about this now.” Her eyes lifted, sweeping over my face before lingering somewhere around my chest. “If you give me some space, I’ll be able to have a conversation. Right now, though…I’m closed down and don’t think I could stand to listen to you try to explain away what you did tonight.”
My chest constricted with the weight of her honesty. I knew her well enough to recognize she’d gone cold. I would give her time, but space wasn’t really an option for me.
Tonight had begun with Elise slipping on the exquisite lingerie she’d no doubt chosen with me on her mind. I should have brought her home, undressed her, and taken my time appreciating what was underneath.
My inability to set aside my job for one fucking night had catapulted us to the opposite end of the spectrum. The corset fell open, and Elise threw it aside, covering her breasts with her arm while she shook out a T-shirt and tugged it over her head.
While she went into the bathroom, I sank down on the end of the bed, my head in my hands. Patterns of my past were repeating. My past failures mocked me.
Nights like this had ended a couple short-term relationships. I’d brushed myself off and moved on.
Most of the time, I hadn’t even paused to mark the end.
I would not let Elise go. I refused.
Balance was possible. It had to be.
She padded out of the bathroom, her face washed, curls brushed out of her hair. As she walked by me, I snagged her around the waist and pulled her to me, pressing my face to her middle, holding her tight.
She was stiff at first, but her muscles slowly uncoiled, and her fingers sliced through my hair in languid strokes. Neither of us said anything. She didn’t want to talk, and quite fucking frankly, I needed to get my head together, so I didn’t say the wrong thing when she allowed it.
I rose to my feet and cradled her face in my hands. “Are you sleepy, baby?”
She exhaled, her parted lips rosy and chewed on. “I’m just…ready for tonight to be over.”
“I’d like to do it over.” I rested my forehead on hers. “Tell me what you want.”
“You won’t give me space, so what’s the point?”
“Space isn’t the answer. Ask for something else.”
She worried her bottom lip with her teeth then sighed. “Zombies.”
“Should have known.”
We spent the rest of our waking hours watching zombie movies on my couch. Elise let me hold her, but she didn’t speak or touch me the way she always did. I had her, but not really. By the time we went to bed, I was going out of my mind.
But I bit my tongue until it was bloody. I hadn’t given her the night she deserved or the space she’d requested. Silence was all I had in me, even if it killed me to do so.
I woke up to a nightmare. Pictures of Elise and Luca dancing the night away were all over social media. I knew this because Luca had personally emailed me links.
She looked breathtaking, and it killed me because she hadn’t been in my arms.
If I knew Luca, he took great delight in rubbing my face in my screwup.
I had one chance to fix it.
With a tray of coffee in one hand and a bag of pastries in the other, I kicked my front door closed. When I turned around, Elise was standing a few feet away, rubbing her eyes.
“Good morning, baby. I have coffee.”
She covered up a yawn with her hand and eyed the cups on the tray. “Is that from Patterson’s?”
“Mm-hmm. I had it delivered.”
As soon as I set the tray down on the kitchen island, she plucked her iced coffee from the cup holder and opened the drawer where she had started keeping a stash of metal straws.
I set the pastries on a plate. She chose a chocolate croissant and carried it with her coffee to the table.
I followed with my cherry Danish and steaming cup, taking the chair across from her.
“Sleep well?” I asked.
“Better than I thought.” She sipped her coffee. “You were tossing and turning.”
“Yeah.” I dragged my fingers through my hair. “Spent a lot of time thinking.”
“I might have slept through it, but I didn’t notice you leaving the bed to go to your office.”
I huffed a dry laugh. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until you’re mine again.”
She leaned back in her chair, wiping her mouth with her napkin. “If you don’t want me out of your sight, can you tell me why it was so easy for you to do at the fundraiser?”
“No.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t easy. I didn’t want to do anything other than spend the night with you on my arm, but I’d already agreed to talk to Peters, and with the direction our negotiations were going, it wasn’t something I felt comfortable backing out on. I kept thinking once I handled him, I would be able to get back to you and give you my full attention.”
“I understand you have obligations. But you made me feel like an afterthought, and I was expected to grin and take it.”
“You’re my first thought, Elise. Always. I know my actions directly contradicted that, but it’s the truth.”
I got up from my chair, rounding the table to crouch beside her, and took both of her hands in mine.
“I fucked up. I genuinely lost track of time. It was not a conscious decision to be away from you as long as I was. That is absolutely no excuse, but I need you to know I didn’t purposely set you aside. I know the result is the same and I made you feel unimportant, but you are unequivocally the most important person in my life.”
I brought her hands to my mouth and finally caught her eyes with mine.
“Nothing like that will happen again. Please forgive me so I can make it up to you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How could you possibly make it up to me?”
“Would you dance with me?”
Her lips were pursed. If I thought for a second she’d be happy about it, I would have kissed her. We weren’t there yet, so I held her chin and rubbed my thumb along the crinkled bottom one until her mouth relaxed.
She gripped my shirt with both hands and sighed. “You really disappointed me, Weston.”
“I’m so sorry, baby. Remember that second chance I made you promise to give me when I inevitably screwed up? This is it. I’m cashing it in.”
“So soon?”
“Yeah.” I stood and pulled her with me. She was still clinging to my shirt. I slipped my fingers through the back of her silky hair. “I’m surprised I lasted this long.”
I wouldn’t have had Elliot not told me what an idiot I was being. It was unfortunate he hadn’t been there last night. Then again, I really shouldn’t have needed him sitting on my shoulder, telling me not to leave Elise alone for an unacceptably long time.
I took each of her wrists and wrapped them around me, then I gathered her in my arms. She was finally looking at me, meeting my gaze. Her big brown eyes blinked up at me, and words were trapped in my throat. There was a lot I wanted to say. A lot I was feeling. But as I stared down at her, at the face I’d known for most of my life but had never gotten used to seeing, I could only think of one thing.
“I need to tell you I’m completely in love with you.”
Her fingers curled into my back. “What?” she breathed. “You are?”
“I know the timing is wrong for telling you this. I’m not trying to manipulate you into forgiving me. It’s the simple truth.”
She chuffed at that. “There’s nothing simple about you being in love with me. Jeez.” Her forehead knocked against my chest, then she tipped her head back and furrowed her brow. “Really?”
I nodded solemnly, bracing myself to be told to fuck off.
“Well”—she licked her lips, and her fingers dug into my back a little harder—“if you love me, you should dance with me right now and I’ll consider forgiving you.”
My phone was in my hand before she finished her sentence. Music was playing in the next moment. Something slow, so I could hold her against me the way Luca got to.
After a minute of dancing that was more like swaying, Elise spoke. “It was worse because you were with her.”
My head fell forward. God, what a massive fuck up. If she’d been off with Patrick—
No.
That I couldn’t contemplate.
Not right now. Possibly not ever.
“I get that. I feel nothing for her, but I completely understand why that compounded an already bad situation.”
“You were angry when you saw me with Luca.”
“I was.” My hand made long, smooth strokes up and down the length of her back. “The meeting with Peters was an exercise in frustration, then I saw you in Luca’s arms and it was more than I could reasonably handle.”
She rubbed her face back and forth on my chest before laying her cheek over my heart. “It might be wrong of me to feel or say, but I’m glad you were jealous. You deserved to feel a stab in the gut from seeing me spending time with another man.”
“Elise—” My hold on her tightened, and my jaw clenched.
“I would never purposely provoke that side of you. That’s not who I am. But” she lifted up on her toes so her nose was even with mine—“knowing you were jealous makes me feel wanted by you.”
“I want you every second of every day. Do you know how often I want to tear a hole through the floor of my office so I can watch you all day?”
Her eyes rounded. “No. How often?”
A dry laugh burst from me. “A lot. I curse the fucking ground for keeping us apart.”
“That’s a little crazy, Westie.”
Westie. I never thought I’d be relieved to hear her call me that. That meant I had a chance.
“I’m telling you, Elise, I really love you.”
The corners of her mouth curved. “You can’t do that to me ever again.”
“I won’t.” I rested my forehead on hers. “My work has been my life for a decade. It’s important to me, but not more than you.”
“Prove it,” she challenged.
“I will.” Somehow. Some way. “Be patient with me?”
Breaking myself of a ten-year habit I’d structured my role in my company around would take time. That wasn’t Elise’s problem, and I refused to lay my burden at her feet.
“As long as you don’t forget about me.”
“Never.” That I could easily promise.
Her sigh brushed my lips, then she tilted her face, so it was her lips brushing mine.
“I love you too, you know. It scares me how deep I am with you and how easy it would be for you to devastate me.”
Her admission pummeled me straight in the solar plexus. The beauty and ugly of what she said dug into me until all I could do was hold her against me and bury my face in her hair, breathing her in.
“Don’t be scared. I’ve got you.”
She sniffed and clung to the back of my shirt. “You put yourself between me and a mountain lion. I believe you.”
“Overgrown kitty cat,” I muttered.
She laughed then yanked on my hair to raise my head. Her mouth was waiting for me. I’d wasted a lot of opportunities in my life, I would not waste another second not kissing Elise.
