I shake my head. I won’t, can’t answer that.
Will does, instead. “Because it’s not just about the sex, Brooklyn.” He shifts forward, and now there’s no space between us at all, my breasts are crushed against his chest. “The intensity of the sex is a symptom, not the cause.”
I can’t breathe. He’s too close, too much. His eyes burn into me, bore into me. “A symptom,” I echo.
He nods, a subtle downward tilt his jaw. “A symptom of something much bigger—muchmore intense.”
There’s nowhere to go to get away from him—he fills my senses, he’s my entire field of view, my nostrils are full of his scent, my skin is afire with his proximity. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“I didn’t want to come to this conclusion,” he says. “Yet there it is. Can’t deny the truth forever, apparently. How’s that saying go? The truth will out.”
“I was fine lying to myself.” I close my eyes, try not to feel his big hard body up against mine, his breath on me, try not to hear the hammering of my heart. “We can keep doing that.”
“No, we can’t. It wasn’t working for me, and I’m willing to bet it wasn’t working for you either.”
“Damn you.”
“I didn’t create this,” he says. “I’m as much a victim as you are. Fate or whatever you want to call it apparently has other plans for us, and we don’t get a say in the matter.”
I rest my forehead against his chest. “I don’t know how to do this, Will,” I whisper. “I can’t deny that everything you’re saying is exactly what I’ve been going through, but that doesn’t mean I know how to—how to do this with you.”
“I don’t, either.”
“So what, then?”
He shrugs. “We do it anyway.” A bitter laugh. “Not knowing how doesn’t mean we can’t try. I think we have to. I don’t think we have a choice. We could keep playing pretend and try to live our separate lives, but…” he growls wordlessly. “I’ve been fucking miserable, Brooklyn, and I’m making everyone around me miserable. I’m quickly coming to the conclusion, as scary as it is, that I’m just somehow not built to survive without you. I made it this far in my life simply because I hadn’t met you. You revealed a hole in my life, and only you can fill it. I can’t explain it, Brooklyn, I just know it’s true.”
I finally have to fix my eyes on his. “You’re not built to survive without me?”
“I don’t know how else to put it.”
“That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever heard.” I shake my head, try to breathe normally. “You can’t put your survival on me, Will.”
He just shrugs. “Like I’ve said, I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“How can you even…think that? Feel that? We were together barely twenty-four hours.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And you think you…” I almost laugh, trying to get the words past my teeth. “You think you love me.”
“Tell me you haven’t been struggling with the same thing.”
I breathe another giggling laugh. “I’ve been struggling with something, yes.”
“And you’ve been calling it hating me.”
I sigh. “I wish it was that simple. Hating you requires strong enough feelings and a connection to that hatred, and I don’t feel that way.”
“You don’t want to have any feelings for me.”
“No, I don’t,” I agree. “I want to forget everything that happened.”
“But you can’t.”
I shake my head. “No. I can’t forget any of it. I can’t pretend the whole experience on your stupid ranch didn’t…change me, somehow.” I suck in a breath. “I’ve been all over the world, hobnobbed with celebrities and the world’s most powerful politicians, bought and sold and developed hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate. I’ve seen and done a lot of crazy, weird, scary things in the name of business. None of it has ever affected me the way that day on your ranch did. And I don’t know why. Or, rather, I want to pretend I don’t know why.”
“But you do know.” Will’s voice is soft, quiet, gentle.
