He walked out of my office, but not before he turned to look over his shoulder to give me one last look. A look that was a mix of desire and desperation. I wanted to follow him. To push him against the wall and show him that I had missed the feel of his hands and lips on me. I wanted to not be the rational, responsible, off-the-market me that I was, and admit the many things I’d been thinking since he’d returned to Halstead. Including making a reality of my reoccurring dreams I’d been having about him. Images of the two of us in my office would surely replace the track and what we did on his dirt bike would happen on my desk now.
Damn dreams.
But, it wouldn’t do me a bit of good to actually make a choice like he suggested. If I ended things with Beau and chose to be with him I’d just end up alone when he left me again. My heart broken into a million pieces. I’d barely managed to put the one I had back together.
When my boss returned, I told him that I had a few errands to run and houses to ready for showings and that I’d be out of the office the rest of the day. Best part of being a realtor was how easy it was to get out of the office when you needed to. I would have used any excuse to get away from what just happened in there. I tried to sit back down at my desk and pretend he hadn’t just been there, but all I could sense was him. The rough feel of his fingertips against my skin and the heat of his breath on my neck. I could smell the scent of him with every breath I took. He tainted my office with his virility.
“What are you doing home?” Georgia asked when I walked in the door, slamming it behind me. “And, whoa... let’s not break the door off the hinges.”
“Sorry,” I huffed, throwing my purse on the coffee table and falling on to the sofa.
“Rough day?” She surmised. The eye roll and shake of my head were enough to let her know the answer. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Well too bad,” she said, sitting down to face me, her legs tucked underneath of her. “I’ve got thirty minutes before I leave for work and I’m not going until I know that you are in a better mood.” Georgia worked as a volunteer at the hospital. It wasn’t enough for her to just go to nursing school, she also spent every waking minute at the hospital. Even after my parents told her that they would pay for her education and that she should focus on her studies, she refused to quit working. “It’s good practice,” she had told them, even though all she did was check patients in and a bunch of other trivial things. I knew the real reason that she kept working and going to school was because if she sat idle for too long, she started missing Jamie and thinking about the future they were supposed to have together. “It will look good on job applications, and when I do my clinical hours there I’ll already be familiar with everything,” she’d added and managed to convince us all that she wasn’t just using it as an excuse to keep busy.
“Reid showed up at my office this morning,” I finally gave in and told her. Her puppy dog eyes and eagerness to help me solve my problems—and avoid thinking about hers—was too much.
“And...”
“And, he is refusing to leave me alone.”
“How does that make you feel?” she asked.
“Switching your major to Psychology, Dr. Bennett?” I chuckled, and sat up to face her.
“I might. You alone could keep me in business.”
“Very funny,” I deadpanned.
“Let’s continue our session,” she said, pretending to open a notebook and readied her imaginary pen. “You were getting ready to explain how it made you feel that Reid is being persistent.”
“If you must know, it made me angry. And sad. And kind of turned on,” I admitted, feeling guilty as the words rolled off my tongue. The heat that swept my face had to be a tell-tell sign that having this discussion was making me uncomfortable.
“Let’s talk about the turned on part,” she pressed on, ignoring my embarrassment.
“Do we have to?”
“I’m the therapist, remember?”
“Fine. He was all up in my face, telling me how he knew that I still had feelings for him,” I explained. “I didn’t know if I wanted to slap him or kiss him or both. He’s messing with my head. He really needs to just go away,” I groaned. He was messing with me awake and asleep now. I considered telling Georgia about my dreams, but her inner therapist would have had a field day with that information and I was already regretting the discussion we were having. It felt weird to talk about these things, especially when I was talking about doing them with someone who wasn’t my boyfriend.
“So you can pretend like you don’t have feelings for him?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I guess I still do. What does that matter, though? I’m with Beau. Reid dumped me, plain and simple. I don’t think I can forgive him for that.”
“You don’t think you can? Or you don’t want to?” she asked. Her therapy game was a little too spot on. “There’s a difference.”
“I don’t want him to hurt me again,” I confessed. “You know how I was when he left. You know what it did to me that he just left and never looked back.”
“I do.” She reached over and rested her hand on my shoulder. “But I also know, from personal experience,” she added. “What it’s like to leave things unsaid and unfinished.” I knew she was referring to her not telling Jamie that she didn’t want him to join the service. It was his dream to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the Army, but it wasn’t hers. The second he enlisted, she’d been sick to her stomach with worry, and I knew that she felt like if she’d just asked him to stay, to go to college or get a regular job instead, he might still be alive.
“You think we’re unfinished?” The thought that we were anything but finished was threatening to crumble the wall of finality that I’d built up when it came to him. Between wondering what it would be like to be with him again and the actual physical presence of him, Reid was like a wrecking ball. Hell bent on making me feel things I didn’t think I wanted to feel.
“I can’t answer that.” She frowned. “I wish I had all the answers for you, but it’s your decision to make. Whether you tell him how he hurt you and tell him to piss off for good, or you give him a second chance, it’s your call. I just don’t want you to regret not knowing... whatever the outcome is.”
“You’re right,” I admitted. If nothing else, maybe explaining to him how I felt when he left would get him to back off this redemption mission he was on. Did I have any other choice but to tell him how he’d crushed me? Did I have to revisit those feelings of everything that happened when he was gone? There was so much more to the story and I wasn’t sure I could handle a retelling. “I guess I never really planned on ever seeing him again, you know?”
“Yeah. But he’s here and he wants a second chance.”
“I just don’t know if I’m really ready to give him one.” We sat in silence for a moment, neither of us having the answers to my current conundrum. “I’m going for a run,” I said, standing up. I couldn’t sit here any longer with my thoughts. At least if I was running I could burn some calories while I tried to figure out what I was going to do.
* * *
A half-hour into my run, I realized that in my hurry to get out of the house, I’d forgotten to grab a water bottle and decided to make a pit stop at my parents for hydration. Imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner on my normal route to see Reid’s truck sitting in my parents’ driveway.
Son of a bitch.