Page 91 of Vow

Haven shook her head, and more tears slipped from her eyes. The ache between her thighs, and his cock still hard and heavy there would have usually meant satisfaction and love. Right then, it only felt like shame and sadness.

“Just …” Haven dragged in a hard, ragged breath. “Just leave. Just go, please.”

His hands on her thighs gripped tighter. Like he wasn’t going to let her go for anything. His fingers were going to leave bruises, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care about that. For now, she just needed to get this man away from her.

She’d wanted him close; now she needed him to go.

“You won’t even let me explain,” he uttered through a clenched jaw with his eyes blazing. “Let me fucking explain. This is not what you think it is, I swear it isn’t.”

“It’s just another thing on an already huge pile, Andino. Please go.”

“Baby—”

“The club is sold. The house is next to go. I’m leaving, and you’re going to let me. You’re going to stay far away from me in the meantime. You’re going to do that, Andino, because I want you to. Do you understand?”

“Haven.”

Saturating his voice was pain. She was almost happy about that. She took a small sense of satisfaction in the fact that just maybe this man might understand all the hell he had put her through.

But who knew?

“Go,” she said.

Barely above a whisper.

Barely there at all.

“Just go, Andino.”

It took a second, and then two. It took another squeeze of his hands on her thighs, and his gaze nailing into hers—a silent plea. She answered none of it. She couldn’t if she was going to somehow survive this crash and burn, and come out better for it.

Haven knew that much.

“You might not think so,” he said quietly, “but we’re not over, Haven. This can’t be over. It was always real for me; it still is.”

Finally, he moved away from her. Well, it was more like he tore himself away from her as though he had to force his body to move. All the while, even as he fixed himself and she remained half-naked on the cupboard with her thighs opened and leaking with the proof of their last mistake, he never once looked away from her.

That was fine.

She didn’t look back. She didn’t move, or breathe, or think until he was gone. She didn’t cry, or beg, or break until he was already gone.

He couldn’t see it, then. She wouldn’t let him.

He didn’t deserve even that.

• • •

Haven met the gaze of the man sitting across the table from her. It was almost amusing because he looked like the stereotypical private investigator. Right down to the rounded stomach, old leather jacket tossed over a cotton dress shirt with the top two buttons undone, and the aviator sunglasses that he’d pushed high on the top of his head. She’d never seen him actually have a camera in his hands, but if he did, he would fit the bill perfectly. She assumed he did have a camera, and whatever else he needed to do this job, but she never cared to ask.

She paid him money, and he gave her information. That was the deal, or it was supposed to be.

“Hot day, isn’t it?” Wally asked, patting his sweaty forehead with a white napkin from the table. Haven was slightly happy that she had eaten before he arrived. That would probably make this whole meeting a little easier to handle. “June never gives me a break.”

Haven smiled. “I like the heat, personally.”

And she did.

She loved jogging on a hot day, and coming home to a cold shower. That was the best feeling in the world next to sex, she would swear on it. She wasn’t about to tell this man that, though. They were sitting in this café for other reasons today.