“I love the sounds you make, how you smell, the way your body responds to me, and, most of all, how you give yourself over to me. But the reason I love all that is because I’m so f**king crazy about you.” Then he stops, takes a beat, and becomes more serious. “Jill, what am I going to do with you?”
“I thought you just told me what you were going to do with me,” I tease as I lay my head against his strong chest, and adjust my dress.
He cups my chin, so I have to look up at him.
“No. Not that. What am I going to do about the fact that I’m not just falling for you,” he says and his eyes never stray from mine. They hold me tight, and I can’t look away, nor do I want to. “I am so completely in love with you that I can’t imagine ever being without you.”
Time stops in a second, and then it unwinds in a flash. Six years unspool behind me, and my blood goes cold. It’s as if the floor is falling out from under me, and I’m tumbling into the past, the past I’ve tried to break free of. Those same words Aaron said to me. His last words. I’m barely even here anymore. I’ve been kicked back in time to the moment when I stopped feeling.
Davis presses a finger to my lips. “I have to go back out there. Wait for me. I’ll have the car meet us at the front in ten minutes and you’ll come home with me, okay?”
I nod, mutely, unable to speak, to move.
Because I don’t want to be loved like that. I don’t want to be loved madly, deeply, and most of all, I don’t want to be loved without reason.
Because I know the outcome.
I know the end, and I’m starting to shut down already.
He presses another kiss against my forehead but I’m numb, blindsided by his words. The exact same things Aaron said before he killed himself.
Over me.
Chapter 20
Davis
She is nowhere to be seen. She’s not waiting in the hallway. She’s not in the Terrace Room, and I don’t see her in the Palm Court. I bump into Shelby as she’s heading back inside.
“Shelby, have you seen Jill?”
“She ran out of here five minutes ago. She said she had a horrible headache and had to go. And she asked me to let you know for some reason,” Shelby says, then shrugs as if she’s not entirely sure why Jill would want to pass that message onto me.
“Thanks for letting me know,” I say, wishing my heart weren’t beating fast with worry. But I already know Jill’s done it. The thing she said she wouldn’t do. Run.
Shelby returns to the Terrace Room, and I’m alone in the hall briefly and I clench my fists then push my hand roughly through my hair.
“Fuck,” I say under my breath, and turn toward the wall, wishing it were a punching bag and I could slam it several times. I should have known better. I should have known it would be too soon for her. That she’d need to take it slow. But hell, I thought she was right there with me. I could have sworn she was feeling the same things. She nearly said as much when we danced. I grab my phone from my pocket, but as I’m about to call her, I spot my sister walking toward me, her head cocked to the side in question. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I answer gruffly. I don’t want to get it into with her, given how she tried to stage her intervention earlier.
She tilts her head to the side, her eyes demanding an answer.
“She left, okay?” I admit because Michele would pry it out of me soon enough.
“She left?” Her voice wavers.
“Yes. And would you like to tell me why you told her to stay away?”
Now she’s steely again as she places a hand on my arm. “You know why, and I don’t regret it.”
I shrug off her hand, and stare hard into her eyes. “What. Did. You. Tell. Her?”
Her lips are pressed together, her jaw is set. She is the most determined person I’ve ever met. “I told her not to play with your heart,” she says with a fierce protectiveness.
“And what exactly does that mean?” My entire body is tense, bracing for words I’m sure I don’t want to hear. “You need to tell me exactly what you said.”
She sighs heavily, as if this pains her as much as it pains me. “I told her if she wasn’t serious about you that she should leave. That if she was making some kind of career move or using you that she should get out,” she tells me, and it feels as if she reached her hands into my chest and grabbed my heart, and is squeezing it. I can’t breathe. There’s a vise around me.
I drop my face into my hands, shaking my head over and over. “No. That’s not what you said. Please tell me that’s not what you said.”
She wraps her arms around me, and whispers in a soft, caring voice. “I’m so sorry.”
But she’s not sorry for what she said. She’s sorry for me. And she should be, because she was right. She was right when she warned me at our dinner. Because this is Madeline all over again.
I knew better. I f**king knew how this would end, and I did it anyway, against all my better judgement. I took a chance and chucked all my rules for Jill. And for what? To have her turn out to be like the last actress I fell for. Damn all the f**king actresses in the world who love playing pretend more than anything. Who put their careers first. Who move onto the next job without even looking behind at the people they discard.
I thought Jill was different, but really that was a stupid hope, because she did exactly what my sister asked her to do.
Leave if she didn’t feel the same.
I hate that I’m standing here in this hotel with my sister hugging me, while the woman who doesn’t love me enough is gone. I hate everything about this and I can’t stand to be here another second.
“I need to go.”
“I’m coming with you,” Michele says.
And that seems fitting. It’s been the two of us for the longest time, and we have to look out for each other. Because no one else will.
I turn off my phone on the way to car. She’s not going to call anyway, so there’s no point in leaving it on. The driver holds open the door and Michele slides in first. I follow, wishing my sister weren’t the woman joining me as the driver pulls out into the late night traffic by the hotel.
I groan and bang my head several times against the back of the seat as I bite off a string of curse words. “This wasn’t how this evening was supposed to go,” I mutter, loosening my bow tie as we drive down Fifth Avenue.
Michele rubs her hand gently along my arm. “I know. But this is for the best. You know that, right?”