“Do I?” I let out an incredulous laugh. “So then you’ve paid up on that bet you made with Trick and Hayes, then? The one where they said you’d eventually meet a woman who’d mean something to you?”
His torso rocked back in shock. “What—How did you know about that?”
God, this hurt. I wasn’t sure how it was possible, but this hurt even worse than when I caught Alex and Krista in that bistro together. “You’ve said it yourself, Micah, it’s a small town. So, if we aren’t just fucking, you paid up, right?” His hesitation was answer enough. “I see,” I whispered, nodding in sadness. I twisted, prepared to walk away when he cut into my path, taking me by my arms.
“We’re more than that, and you know it, Hayden. You feel it. I haven’t paid up on the bet because it’s more than just meeting a woman I care about. They were talkin’ marriage—”
He was just making this worse. I pulled from his hold and moved three steps back. “Oh, okay. I think I’m following. So, you do care about me, but you don’t see a future with me.”
He took another step toward me but stopped when I moved back. “It’s not like that! I’ve never felt like this with any woman I’ve been with. I’m out of my element here, Hayden. I’m just tryin’ to keep you safe.”
“I don’t need you to keep me safe!” I shouted, throwing my arms wide. “I don’t need a protector, Micah. I need a partner. God, this sucks,” I lamented on a hollow laugh, “because while you’ve been keeping your secrets, holding yourself halfway out of this relationship this whole time, I’ve been falling in love with you.”
His eyes went wide, flashing with something I was too lost in pain to try and identify. “Hayden—” he choked out, but I wasn’t finished.
“You don’t trust me.”
“That isn’t—” I held my hand up, warding him off when he started for me again.
“I’m such a fucking idiot. I fell for you; meanwhile, you don’t trust me enough to give me anything.”
“That’s bullshit,” he argued angrily. “I’ve given you more than any woman has ever gotten from me.”
“Then I guess that makes me selfish, because I want more. I want it all.”
After laying it all out like that, I stood there silently, my heart in my throat as I waited to see what he’d say. Like an idiot, I waited and I hoped.
And he gave me nothing.
“I think it’s best if we call it a night right here,” I told him, feeling the cracks start to form in my heart and spiderweb wider and wider.
“No,” he declared vehemently. “We aren’t doin’ that. We can work through this. But you can’t shut me out. You have to talk to me.”
A humorless scoff bubbled up my throat. “You see the irony in what you just said, right?”
“Red, don’t—”
“Micah, I need to think, okay? I need some time to myself to figure out what I want, and I need you to give me that.”
His nostrils flared, and for a second I thought he resembled a pissed-off bull about to charge.
“This isn’t over,” he finally clipped seconds later. “You need some space, I’ll give it to you, but this . . . us, it isn’t over. You can’t tell me you’re in love with me then end it. I’ll give you some time, but we will talk this out.”
I didn’t bother saying anything to that, mainly because I didn’t have a clue what to say. So as much as it killed me, I turned on my heel and started toward the property line that separated his house from mine. In the time I’d been there, that expanse had never felt so wide.
And as I walked away, I made sure not to look back, knowing if I did, I’d cave.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Micah
It had been a week since Hayden announced she needed space. That was seven days in which I didn’t get to see her or touch her whenever the hell I wanted. Seven nights in which I’d slept in my cold, hard bed all alone. Seven miserable fucking days where I didn’t hear her voice.
It became blindingly obvious how much I needed her when my mood worsened with each passing day. There was no light to shine on the dark, no good to break up the bad. There was nothing to look forward to after unbearably long hours spent beating my head against a brick wall.
I’d been such a miserable bastard that everyone at work was giving me an extremely wide berth.
Stomping through the bullpen, I headed for my desk without making eye contact with a single person.
Yanking my chair out, I plopped down and reached out, hitting the button on my computer to boot it up. Nothing happened. “Son of a bitch,” I groused, mashing the button down again. When the screen remained black, I let loose a low growl and smacked the shit out of it.
“All right, that’s it,” Leo declared, tossing down the file he’d been looking over in an attempt to ignore me. “This shit’s gone on long enough. For Christ’s sake, just go talk to her already.”
“She said she needs space,” I grunted, keeping my gaze on the computer screen as it finally blinked to life.
“That’s what she said, but what she meant was she needed you to tell her the fuckin’ truth. So tell her already, for Christ’s sake.”
I looked around to make sure we didn’t have the attention of anyone else before leaning forward and lowering my voice. “I don’t wanna tell her because I don’t want that shit touchin’ her. She thinks I don’t trust her, but that’s bullshit. I’m tryin’ to protect her, for fuck’s sake. Why can’t she see that?”
“You ever stop to consider that maybe she needs you to talk about what’s happening because she needs to be there for you?”
My body locked up tight, because until that very moment, I hadn’t stopped to consider that.
“Look, brother, I get wanting to protect your woman, believe me. If I could shield Dani from everything bad out there, I’d bend over backward to make that happen. But life doesn’t work that way. And even if I could, she wouldn’t let me. She knows I need to lean on her just as much as she needs to lean on me.
“I had a woman who didn’t ask questions because she didn’t want my job to bleed into her nice, cushy life so I swallowed down all the shit I saw on a daily basis, keeping it to myself until I felt it eating away at my insides. From the beginning, Dani’s made sure I had her to talk to so I could get all that ugliness out instead of letting it fester. She gives me that so I know, when I come home, I got nothin’ but good waiting for me. When you find a good woman, man, she wants to be that for you. You want to protect her, but what you gotta realize is she wants to do the same damn thing for you.”
Leaning back in my chair, I exhaled most of the air in my lungs and reached to grab the back of my neck as I hissed, “Shit.”
Leo smirked like an asshole. “See it’s finally startin’ to sink in. That’s okay, man. It’s not like you’re used to bein’ in a real relationship. You’re on a bit of a learning curve.”
I flipped him off and turned back to my computer, pretending to study whatever had just popped up on the screen. But the truth was, I couldn’t concentrate to save my life, because I was too busy trying to think of a way to win Hayden back.