As she stared out the window away from me, my eyes lingered on her. I was still blinded by her beauty. I couldn’t help the physical attraction. It was undeniable and palpable. I doubted my body would ever stop reacting to her. The memory of what it felt like to be inside her was all too real. The memory of her vulnerability, of the way she’d given herself to me…was all too real.
Raven fidgeted and still wouldn’t look at me.
“Why do I make you so nervous?” I asked.
She turned to meet my gaze. “I don’t know,” she barely whispered.
“It’s okay if you’d rather just let this all go. But for me…I feel like there’s a lot left unsaid between us. If I hadn’t seen you again, maybe I could have lived with that. But you’re going to be in my life because of Dad. We will see each other again, and I don’t want it to be uncomfortable.”
She nodded. “I get that.”
Raindrops pelted the windows as a typical, late-afternoon Florida shower came in.
“Can I ask you a favor, Raven?”
“Okay…”
“Will you be real with me? If I ask you something, will you be honest?”
She was quiet for a really long time, but finally nodded.CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE* * *RAVENHe wanted me to be honest. Was that even possible? I took a deep breath. He deserved as much honesty as I could give him without hurting him.
“Do I...upset you?” he asked.
My heart thumped against my chest. “No.”
“You just look so sad when I’m around. I could swear you’re about to cry sometimes.”
This beautiful man thinks he upsets me. He doesn’t realize I still love him so much it hurts.
I needed to look into his eyes for this. “I promise you don’t upset me. I have a lot of regrets about how I handled us. You being back has brought them to the surface again.”
“You weren’t happy when I told Paige about us, though. You were very upset at me that day.”
“Well, yeah, okay, that upset me. You promised you wouldn’t say anything. But I understand why you did,” I added quickly. “She’s your fiancée. You need to be honest with her. And I’m sorry I asked you to keep the truth from her. That wasn’t fair.”
He nodded. “Thank you for understanding why I told her. But I did feel like shit. You’ve been so good to Dad, and you work so hard. I didn’t want to cause you stress. I can see why you didn’t want things to be awkward.”
“It’s okay, Gavin.”
Though I was avoiding his eyes, I could feel his stare with every inch of my soul.
His next question jarred me. “Have you been in love with anyone?”
Not since you. Not by a longshot.
“No.”
“You’ve had boyfriends, though.”
“Yes, I have. But I never fell in love. My longest relationship was two years. His name was Ray. We worked together at the hospital. He was a nurse, too. He cared very deeply for me…wanted to marry me. I wanted to love him, but in the end, I couldn’t get to the point where I could see myself spending the rest of my life with him. So I let him go.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s married with a couple of kids, actually.”
Gavin seemed to let that sink in. An emotion I couldn’t quite identify clouded his face. “Okay.”
I had to ask him a question, too. I wanted to hear his answer out loud.
“I’m assuming, since you’re marrying her, that you’re in love with Paige?”
He glanced out the window at the rain. “I do love her, yes. I mean…I’m at peace. I haven’t had a feeling of contentment with a woman until her.”
And that was precisely why I couldn’t tell him. He was happy. At peace. Paige had put him back together, made him feel loved. Even if I told him the truth, he would choose her over me, and I wouldn’t survive that devastation.
“But love manifests itself differently with different people, you know?” he added suddenly. “What I have with her is a more mature type of love. What I felt for you…was different.”
Different. “How so?”
He closed his eyes and laughed a little. “It was...crazy. So fucking crazy. Intense. But now I wonder if that’s because maybe…it wasn’t real.”
I looked up, my eyes meeting his for the first time in a while. “Wasn’t real?”
“What I mean is…maybe it was premature. Too much too fast. Your true feelings at the time proved I was in way over my head, right? I was apparently the only one who felt that strongly. I sometimes wonder if what I experienced with you was love or if it was something else, like a deep and powerful infatuation. All I know is I’ve never felt anything like it since.”
I’d had him doubting whether he ever truly loved me? I struggled silently against my tears. The thought of him doubting what we had, thinking it was something other than love, caused an ache deep within me.