Footsteps sounded behind me, and when I heard someone sit two chairs down, I didn’t need to look up to know it was Reeve.
I let out a long slow breath. “It’s over.”
“Yes. It’s over.” He sounded as tired as I felt. “We just have the scattering of the ashes, if you still want to do that, but when you’re ready. No rush.”
I looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time in weeks. Maybe the first time ever. When I first saw him, I’d thought of him as mysterious and dangerous, a playboy who cared only about himself and his own wants and needs.
That wasn’t the man sitting with me now, a man who cared for me in ways that I’d never imagined a man would. Ways that weren’t sexual or materialistic.
“I mean us, Reeve. I mean it’s over between us.”
If he were the type, I imagined that he would have rolled his eyes. “Don’t be —”
I shifted to face him, cutting him off. “I’m not.” I was calm, in control. Barely, but it counted. “I’m not emotional or ridiculous. I’m not being melodramatic. I’m not making snap decisions. I’m not being anything but completely serious. This is over. We have to be over.”
“Why?” He was equally calm, and it suddenly seemed absurd that he’d even have to ask and that either of us could be so restrained as we talked about the woman who’d been such a crucially important person in both our lives.
I burst up from my chair. “Because she’s dead! Because I was with you when I should have been with her.” I’d barely spoken since her death, but that had given me plenty of time to think. “Because I can’t be certain you had nothing to do with it.”
His eyes widened then immediately narrowed. “You think I had a hand in Amber’s death?”
“Why were you already dressed that morning?” I’d turned that fact over and over in my mind and hadn’t been able to come up with a satisfactory answer.
He sighed. “I told you. I woke up. I couldn’t go back to sleep.”
“So you got dressed? And then went back to sleep? Why would you do that?” I wouldn’t let myself imagine what else had happened – how, while I was packing, he might have woken and slipped into her room. I wouldn’t imagine it but it sat there in my head, like a door with a spotlight above it, begging for me to put my hand on the knob. Whatever was on the other side was as pervasive in my mind with the door closed as it potentially could be wide open.
Reeve stood, strengthening his response. “I went to my office, okay? When I got back to my room, I was tired, and I didn’t bother getting undressed again.”
“You didn’t notice Tabor wasn’t around when you went out?” It was an unfair accusation – I hadn’t noticed the guard absent from duty when I’d first gone in to see her either.
“No. I didn’t. Forgive me for being distracted.” There was bite to his words, the first hint of bitterness he’d shown me since her death.
“Distracted by what? Me?” By the fact that we’d just spent the whole night fucking? “So it’s my fault?”
“No.” He took a step toward me, a bit softer now. “I’m not blaming you. Of course I was still thinking about you. But I was distracted by what I was doing. I went to my office to send an e-mail and that’s all I was thinking about.”
I didn’t want him soft. I wanted him hard. I wanted to fight. “What e-mail? To who?”
Frustration flooded his features. “Does it matter? Even if I opened up my account and showed you a time-stamped e-mail, it would only prove I sent an e-mail. I could still have done whatever it is you think I did to Amber then, isn’t that right?”
There it was. Point-blank. “Well, did you?”
“I shouldn’t have to answer this.”
There was a familiar glint of pain in his eyes. I’d seen it before, when I’d questioned his involvement with Missy’s death. It made me feel cruel to ask again, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice.
Which was the whole problem between us.
“You know what, Reeve?” I pushed back the lock of hair that had fallen from my bun. “It doesn’t matter what your answer is. Because whether you never tell me or whether you tell me you did or you didn’t, there will always be this dark cloud hanging over us. She will pervade any bit of happiness we have. We will always be star-crossed and impossible.”
He moved toward me again. “That’s emotion talking right now, Emily. That’s going to go away. Right now we need each other. Don’t push me away. Please.”
He was right there, in front of me, asking me to reach out or let him reach out to me. Pleading for me to accept his love, again. Always.
But as warm and tempting as he was, I couldn’t accept. His love was the sun, and I was ice, and even though it felt so good to melt in his presence, I didn’t recognize what he’d changed me into. I didn’t know who that person was. All I’d ever been was what Amber had made me into. I didn’t know how to be anyone else.
I folded my arms across my chest and took a step backward.
Taking that one step said everything it meant to say. The pain in Reeve’s eyes spread throughout his entire expression and posture. “You said you trusted me!” he snapped. “Was that a lie?”
“I don’t trust myself anymore, Reeve! I thought I knew what I was doing. I told her I loved you, and she told me to leave, and I said I would, and I meant it, but then I spent the night in your bed anyway.” I was spouting stream of consciousness, barely recognizing this was the first time I’d actually admitted to loving him or to the secret I’d kept from him since she’d told me to go.