He’d driven with complete competence. “That’s dumb. You’re an excellent driver. You just wanted to get back so you could get away from me.”
His eyes seemed to find the ground. “Maybe.”
Her heart sank. “Well, don’t let me intrude. I’ll try to avoid you from now on.”
She would do just that. She wasn’t going to force herself on the man. It hurt too much. Why? She’d only known him for a day, and she didn’t really know him at all. So why was her heart breaking? Why did she think she was missing out on something good? Why did she think she would regret not being with him for the rest of her life?
“Damn it, Nell.” His hand shot out, grabbing her elbow and stopping her from walking away. “I’m not good for you.”
Yeah, she got that. “Fine. Then let me go.”
His fingers tightened. “I tried. Do you have any fucking idea how hard it was to let you go in the first place?”
“I think it was pretty easy since you did it without batting an eyelash. Let me go, Henry. My feet are getting so cold.” It was sinking into her skin. She was going to embarrass herself by shaking and chattering.
He leaned over and shoved one muscular arm under her knees, hauling her up before she could protest.
“What are you doing?” She’d never been picked up before. She couldn’t think of a time she’d been cradled in another human’s arms. She’d been a baby, most likely. This was what it felt like to be adored and cuddled and beloved. And she had to make it stop.
He didn’t let her go. He started walking toward the doors, his long legs making quick work of the distance. “I’m taking you inside where you’ll be warm.”
“I can walk on my own.”
“But you don’t have to. See. This is the problem. You want to be a completely independent female, and I want to carry you around and protect you and do all the dumb crap you shouldn’t have to do.”
What game was he playing? He was saying one thing and doing another. “Let me down, Henry. You made your choice when you dropped me off, and I’m going to do us both a favor and make you keep to it.”
“Then you shouldn’t have walked outside. You shouldn’t have let me get another shot.”
He was so frustrating. “I wasn’t giving you another shot, you Neanderthal. I was trying to forget you.”
He kicked open the door and started walking down the hallway. At this time of night, it was deserted. “And I was trying to forget you, and you made that utterly impossible by walking out into that courtyard. Did you know there are three separate courtyards in this compound? This one is the furthest one from your room.”
She kept her voice down. The community was very tolerant, but they did enjoy a bit of gossip. “If you’re trying to say I came looking for you, I didn’t. I don’t even know where your room is.”
“It’s two doors away from yours,” he said. He wasn’t even winded. He seemed to support her like she didn’t weigh anything at all. “We both walked the furthest destination we could and at roughly the same time. I’d been sitting there for five minutes and wondering if I shouldn’t go inside. Either one of us could have taken a simple left or right and we wouldn’t have met tonight, but that didn’t happen. You walked all the way here and I walked all the way here and we met.”
“And we can unmeet, Henry.”
His head shook. “No, I thought we could, but now I’m wondering.”
“You said you were bad for me.” She kept arguing, but a little bit of hope was starting to light inside her.
“I am, but I’m starting to wonder if you might be good for me.” His arms tightened slightly, cradling her closer.
She loved how small she felt in his arms, but she didn’t love what he was saying. “That’s not fair, Henry.”
“The world isn’t fair. That’s why you do half the shit you do.”
“It’s not shit, and that’s precisely why you should put me down.”
He stopped in the middle of the hall, setting her down. “Fine. If that’s what you really want.”
He pushed every single button she had. Nell started to turn to go, but she just couldn’t. Not without giving him a piece of her mind. He’d shoved his mean-spirited beliefs at her and made her feel dumb. She should walk away. It was what she did, but she couldn’t. Not when he was standing there looking so secure and blasé, like he didn’t really care. “You think what I do is shit?”
“I think it’s naïve,” he corrected. “It’s braver to just accept the world as it is. Smarter, too.”
An ember of anger was settling in her gut. “You know what I think?”
“I think you’re probably going to tell me.”
“I think you’re the coward. I think everyone who just accepts that the world is unfair and doesn’t do a thing about it, they’re the cowards. We push every day to find new medical breakthroughs. We push to invent new technology. And I push every day so this planet is a better place for everyone, and you can look down on me and call me a kook, but people like me are the reason for democracy. We’re the reason women can vote. We’re the reason we have words in our vocabulary like human rights. Philosophers, thinkers, activists are the reason for every breakthrough humanity has made in becoming a more fair place. You think we’re not fair now, buddy? Go back a hundred and fifty years and try being a slave in the South. Activists changed that. And they were considered naïve and foolish, too. The things we accept as normal and fair today were once fought for and won by people like me, so I will keep my naïveté and you can keep your cynicism. I hope you two are very happy together.”
She turned to go. She wouldn’t think about him again. She’d said what she needed to say. Now she could forget him and move on.
Except his hand reached out, grabbing her elbow and spinning her around.
Nell gasped, her body off-balance. She started to stumble, but Henry’s arms went around her, hauling her back up. She was right where she’d been before, cradled against his big, strong chest. “What are you doing?”
“Something dumb.”
“You put me down.”
“I can’t. I tried, but you just keep talking, Nell.” He walked across the smaller courtyard, the one she should have gone to but didn’t. It took him about five long strides to get inside the wing where their respective rooms were. “I was going to leave you alone. I was going to play it smart.”
What had changed his mind? “Henry, stop.”
“I tried to stop. I tried to be the gentleman, but I’ve decided that the universe doesn’t want that.”
“You don’t believe in a higher power.”
“No, but I’m starting to believe in you.” He looked down at her, those deep brown eyes of his hot on her face. He’d said the exact right thing to make her melt. She knew she should call him a liar, but she didn’t want to. She wanted him. She wanted to know what it was like to be in Henry Flanders’s strong arms. He would leave, but she would know what it meant to be held by him, loved by him.
“Oh, Henry, are you going to make love to me?”
He managed to get his door open without ever putting her down. He was in the room in two strides, placing her on the bed. Like all the single rooms at the Mountain and Valley, it was a small double bed.
He looked down at her, one hand finding her hair. “Make love to you? Yes, I think I am. It’s going to be a change of pace for me.”
She had no idea what he meant by that, but her head was whirling and she wasn’t sure she was capable of making a decent decision, and that was kind of cool. Mistakes. She rarely made them, and life was made of brilliantly beautiful mistakes. Her heart might break later, but she would know what it meant to feel this passion.
She wanted. She wanted in a greedy way, and it was lovely. So much of her life was about giving that this moment seemed perfect because it was shared by two people who wanted one thing. Pleasure. Connection. Love. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that making love meant forever, but in a way it did. She would remember it forever. He could forget all he liked. She didn’t control that, but this experience would remain in her heart for as long as she drew breath.