Page 197 of Wait for Him

I reach for the door, and his hand closes around my wrist.

"Is this really who we are now, Rosalie?" he asks quietly. "Strangers in a hallway?"

I look down at his hand before meeting his eyes.

"I don't know how to be anything else and keep my heart safe in the process, Jackson. I told you to move on with your life. You did. And I'm truly happy for you. I am."

He takes a step closer, his hand still around my wrist. "But?"

As expected, there's a but. He knows me too well to let me get away with the press-release version.

"But you touched my face and called me baby, then introduced me to your fiancée in the next breath." I make myself hold his eyes because if we're doing honesty now, we're doing the whole ugly package. "And yes, I'm happy for you. But I have to take the man who called me baby and put him away. I have to learn how to love Rian Fields's husband from a distance instead."

His grip loosens slightly.

"That's our reality now. We're not strangers. I don't think we could ever be strangers if we tried. But we're different."

"Did you?" he asks.

"Did I what?"

"Move on. With your life."

"No." I wrap my fingers around the doorknob, then make myself turn back.

This whole healing-truths thing is such bullshit. I want a refund.

"I'm not sure I'll ever be able to. But that's my problem, not yours. I'd better get inside."

His face gives him away before he can stop it. His eyes widen, his breath catches, and for once Marcus Jackson has absolutely nothing to say.

I don't rescue him from it. I don't take the words back or soften them into something easier for either of us. A year ago, I would've buried the truth under six qualifiers and a joke until neither of us knew what I'd actually said. I'm not doing that anymore.

I love him. He's marrying someone else. Both things are true, and neither one requires me to lie.

I open the door and step back into the noise of my family without looking behind me.

He can decide what to do with the truth on his own.

Jackson

My mind has been reeling since I left Bennet's apartment.

What did she mean, she'll never be able to move on? I've replayed those words so many times I could probably reproduce the exact pitch of her voice. And fuck, she felt good in my arms again. Watching her with James, the way the two of them fed off each other's energy, I caught myself smiling so many damn times. I haven't smiled like that in months. I know exactly what that means, too. I've known for a while. I've just gotten very good at looking anywhere else.

"Marcus. Where are you right now?"

"I'm here, Rian."

"Really?" She climbs off me and lies on her side, head propped against her palm. "Because I just had your dick in my mouth, you're not hard, and you haven't made a single sound. We haven't had sex in a week, and you are gone. Mentally, physically, all of it. Exhibit A."

Fuck. She's right, and I've got nothing. No defense, no explanation that isn't a confession, no version of I'm just tired that either of us would believe. I'm lying in bed beside the woman I'm supposed to marry in three weeks, replaying a sentence another woman said to me earlier today, and Rian figured out where my head was before I did.

She always knows. That's the hell of it. She's not stupid. She's the smartest person in every room she walks into, and I've been asking her to pretend she isn't.

I lean in and pull her into a kiss, dragging my tongue against hers and willing my body to get with the fucking program. I graze my teeth along her jaw and she lets out a soft groan.

Yes. Okay. More of that.