Seeing as it literally had nothing in it aside from those three items mentioned, I couldn't fathom a reason Lo wanted to meet with me there. There were offices all over if she wanted to get some privacy to talk to me or yell at me.
I felt my stomach twist, remembering how she had gotten me to go back to The Henchmen compound in the first place.
She had threatened me.
No, worse.
She had threatened my job.
I couldn't help but wonder if my relationship and subsequent dissolution of it and departure from the job she sent me on was why she wanted to see me. To fire me. To kick me out. To tear away the one true constant in my life.
Hailstorm, for all intents and purposes, was my comfort zone.
It was all I had in the world.
She couldn't take that from me.
"Lo?" I asked, walking into the empty room, dark, as most of the rooms at Hailstorm were since we had no windows, save for one lamp. "I knew she couldn't have meant the spare room," I said to myself, shaking my head.
Then the door slammed shut behind me, making my stomach drop to my feet, my hand instinctively going to my pocket where I kept a small self-defense keychain with slots for my fingers and very sharp points meant for serious eye-gouging.
I whipped around, throat tight.
And I didn't find Lo.
Oh, no.
I found Renny.
Seeing him, my belly did an intense little fluttering thing that I tried to ignore or find any explanation for aside from happiness.
But I could find none.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, forcing myself to cross my arms, maybe the only way I could prevent myself from walking over to him and wrapping my arms around him.
In that moment, I was starting to wonder if Ashley was right, if I was pushing him away for the wrong reasons. True, he had screwed up. But everyone screwed up. Never having been the type to overreact to, well, anything before, it had been hard at first for me to see that that was exactly what I had done.
"I think my past behavior has proven that I'm not exactly the kind of man who gives up easily."
I felt my lips curve up slightly at that. "You mean your borderline obsessive flirting?"
His smile went a little boyish at that. "I like to think it was me knowing exactly what I wanted and aggressively pursuing it."
"Call it what you want, it was obsessive," I said, trying to not be quite so taken with that smile as he moved closer, stopping just a couple feet in front of me.
"Knew it would be something special," he said, shrugging. "I wasn't wrong."
"Renny..." I said, shaking my head as he got a little closer.
"I fucked up," he offered without even the slightest bit of hesitation, something not like him. He didn't joke; he didn't hedge; he didn't try to make light of it. "I have no excuse. It was a shitty move and I was thinking of myself and not you and that's fucked up. But I can't take it back, Mina. Doesn't matter what I say or do, that's something that is always going to be between us if you can't forgive it and let it go."
"Us?" I croaked out, my voice a strange, raspy version of itself.
"Yeah, see, way I figure it, there's going to be an us. Maybe you'll see I am genuinely sorry and want to make good right now and you'll take me back. Maybe you're going to be pissed for a while and I will have to wait it out. Maybe you're gonna be stubborn and take off and not come back to town and see me for fucking years. But there's not one situation where I don't see this being it for the both of us. True," he allowed, "we could try to move on, fuck other people, try to get to know other people. But you and I both know it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't even be fucking close. Maybe you're willing to settle for that. I'm not. That's why I'm here."
"To... what?" I asked, choosing my words carefully. "To try to convince me to give you another chance?"
He smiled slightly at that, sitting down at the edge of the bed, making me have to turn to face him. He pulled something wrapped out of his pocket and put it down beside him, drawing my attention to the small, thin, rectangle shape, completely at a loss for what it could be.
"I'm not going to try to convince you of anything, Mina. First, because I respect your decision more than that. And second, you can't convince someone of shit. Either they want something or they don't. You either want me, sweetheart, or you don't. It's that simple."
"It's not that simple. You..."