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She hadn’t realized he was there, and she was caught up in arranging a bouquet out of leftover flowers. Her hands worked deftly, in the way a concert pianist’s flew over the keys. Effortlessly, as if they were intuiting instructions from the divine. He watched, in awe, and with a sense of something else.
Attachment.
Not need
Attachment. It was quite distinct from physical lust. That was a feeling with which he was familiar; a feeling he could handle, because he’d felt it before.
Except…
Had he, really?
Had he ever actually felt anything like the visceral, aching desire that plagued him when he thought of Maddie? Right from the beginning, she’d set his blood racing, igniting fires in his veins that he couldn’t control. He wanted her always, but this was different.
This was admiration. Affection. Feelings that he’d never felt. He’d never wanted to feel. He wasn’t equipped to deal with them. He might have just witnessed his younger brother marry a woman he purported to love, but to Rocco, the whole idea was anathema.
So, what was the strange, cloying sensation in the middle of his chest? What was he meant to do with it?
As he watched, Maddie lifted a hand, curling her hair behind one ear, and his gut twisted with a portent of danger. Run away. Yes, that would be the smart decision. To bring her champagne, toast their time together, and then leave, because nothing good could come from the feelings that were starting to whisper through his soul, coaxing him to take steps to a place he never wanted to go. And he still didn’t—not even with Maddie. Rocco wasn’t cut out for relationships. He wasn’t interested in their fallout.
Be that as it may, whatever was happening with Maddie was carved out separate from that. He might not have wanted a relationship, but he also didn’t want to let her go. How could both things be true?
He took the smallest of steps forward, almost against his will, and perhaps it was the subtle gesture that called her attention, because she glanced in his direction, her eyes widening when they landed on him, her cheeks flushing in a way that made her whole face pretty and kissable.
“I thought you might have forgotten about me,” she said with a lopsided smile.
He strode towards her purposefully then, his mind in disarray courtesy of the disorientating thoughts that had just been knotting inside of him. “Impossible.”
God, could that be true?
He stopped walking, stricken.
He was not callous. It wasn’t that he thought women were expendable, nor meaningless. He was not his father. But at the same time, he’d never let a woman become so much a part of him that he couldn’t put her out of his mind. In essence, forget her, or at least, easily not think of her.
But with Maddie, he wasn’t so sure. He didn’t know that he’d be able to do that. There were parts of her that had started to bind to parts of him. He didn’t know when it had happened, but she’d steeped herself in his soul, and extricating himself seemed like a Sisyphean feat.
“Are you okay?” she asked, eyes wide, studying him with a look of something like confusion. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, not a ghost.” Except, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he been seeing ghosts all his life? The ghost of his father’s failures, most specifically. His inability to love, to let anyone—a woman, or his sons—into his life, after the death of their mother. Hadn’t the ghost of that been dogging Rocco, all this time? Hadn’t it informed his own choices and attitudes, to the point where, without really having planned for it, he’d cast himself in his father’s image, in so many ways?
“Rocco?” Maddie came around to him and put her fingers on his arm. “I’m worried. Has something happened?”
He blinked down at her, brow furrowed. What exactly had happened?
Pull it together, a voice inside him commanded. He’d just watched his younger brother get married. His thoughts were naturally all over the place. Except, hadn’t he felt this before the ceremony? Hadn’t he felt this growing sense of connection to Maddie, ever since she’d put an end date on this? From the moment he’d agreed that it was ‘time’ to call their relationship, he’d been faced with a question: did he really want to?
The truth was, he didn’t know the answer to that—not in the long term. But he did know he wasn’t ready to walk away from her yet.
“Maddie, listen.” There was an urgency to his voice, and even as he heard it, he knew he should make an effort to approach this conversation carefully. To ease into it, because he didn’t want to mess it up. But Rocco was a man who operated on instincts, and instincts alone, and he wasn’t about to start ignoring them now. “About us.”
Her brows lifted. “Us?”
“This,” he confirmed.
She glanced around skittishly.
“No one’s here.” His tone was impatient. Having started down this road, he wanted to have this conversation, to move beyond the words and into a future that was more assured.
She lifted one shoulder. “I was just checking.” She turned back to him more fully. “What’s going on?”
