Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 418(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 279(@300wpm)
Yet, from her point of view, he’d walked out, and he hadn’t communicated. How the hell was she supposed to know he was coming back? Had he actually told her so? He couldn’t remember. And it didn’t matter. Being older, he should have been the more mature.
There was nothing left to say but the absolute truth. “I was an idiot back then who couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I thought chasing fame and fortune would make me happy. But nothing has ever made me as happy as I was when you and I were together.”
He’d never stopped loving her. Not then and not now. He felt it all so clearly. He’d known the day she walked into his office that he’d never forgotten her, that no woman had ever measured up to Ava. That he had screwed up royally.
His leaving, their lack of communication, the texting blackout, had all lost her to him. Because he’d never been able to explain what he was thinking.
It was too late to say all that. They had to deal with each other in the now, with this moment’s issues, not the ones from their past.
Taking a step closer, so she could scent him, feel the heat of his body, he said, “Now you’re the one shunting me off to an assistant because you don’t want to deal with what never ended between us.” Another step. He wanted to round the desk and haul her into his arms. But he lowered his voice to a gentler note. “You’re not just hiding from me now. You’re hiding from fifteen years of our unrequited feelings for each other.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he held up a hand. “Don’t tell me that you haven’t felt something for me all these years.”
He’d been furious when he came in. And as she stalked around her desk to meet him toe to toe, she was beyond furious now. “What I remember is how you treated me. How the entire world revolved around you and your needs and your wants, never what I wanted.”
They were getting down to the nitty-gritty. And he didn’t let up. “How did I do that? I was going to give you the world.” Yet he had discounted her dreams. He had taken her acquiescence to his plans for granted.
But she couldn’t read the thought bubble that was surely hanging over his head. “Seriously?” Blood dripped off the point of the word. “Give me the world? You were going to make up some random position in your company as you hauled me from city to city while you made your name. That was giving me the world?”
He’d subjugated her dreams to his. Or at least he’d tried to. Her words chastened him. She’d read his thought bubble and said exactly what he’d been thinking more succinctly… and less in his favor.
But he wasn’t the complete ass she made him out to be. After all, she’d walked out without letting him explain. She could have stayed and talked it out. She could have said yes, they’d have had an amazing adventure, and she could have returned to her studies in a year, or two years. Would that have really been so terrible?
“Any other twenty-one-year-old woman would have jumped at the offer,” he said.
She reared back like a rattler ready to strike. “One—” She stabbed her index finger close to his face. “I completely disagree.” She raised her middle finger, luckily without lowering the first. “And two, that’s how you saw me? Like any other woman?”
He’d known his mistake the moment he’d said it. But she’d heard it even worse. “That isn’t what I meant.”
She laughed, a sound so lacking in humor it was as brittle as glass. “Funny, your words used to come out wrong a lot.” So close to him now she could spear him with her gaze, her voice was deadly. “Do I have to remind you how you pretty-womaned me? Do I have to remind you how you ghosted me, just erased me from your life? And do I have to go through it all again like I did fifteen years ago?”
He was shaking his head. “Pretty-womaned you? I don’t even know what that means.”
That seemed to make her even angrier. “You just flew away for your big important meeting and left me behind.” She waved at the sky outside, where a jet was passing overhead. “That’s the problem. You don’t know what I’m talking about because you couldn’t even bother to watch one little movie.” She stabbed his chest with each of the last three words.
He was losing her. He’d come here completely justified in his indignation, and she’d turned it around on him. Because she was right. He remembered it all now—her reference to that movie. And he’d blown it off. Watching it had never even been a consideration. It was just a chick flick.