He sighed and rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I … I’ll call you later?”
She recognized that tone. He wouldn’t.
“Just help me understand, Sam.” Her voice went pleading. “I thought we had a good thing, and I get that we’re not going to continue the sexy stuff, but I don’t get why you’re leaving—”
“She said I’m no good!” he exploded. “She said I’m no good, and she’s right. I’m especially no good for you.”
Riley took a step backward in surprise. Sam rarely talked about Helena, and that alone had been a clue that Helena wasn’t exactly of the cuddly mother variety. She’d known they weren’t exactly doing cozy Sunday brunches on a regular basis.
But this?
She’d had no idea that Sam’s mom was downright vile.
What sort of mother would say that to her own son?
“Don’t look like that,” he muttered. “It’s not the first time she’s let me know that I’m a bad son, a bad friend, and was a bad husband.”
“She’s wrong,” Riley shot back. “She’s dead wrong.”
His eyes met hers. “Is she? What is it that I’m good at? It wasn’t as an investment banker. I quit that. It’s not making whisky. I’m not selling that. She’s right about the bad-husband thing, I really sucked at that.”
“Because none of those things were right for you. Well, actually, I think the whisky thing could be if you gave it a chance, but you never wanted to be an investment banker. And Hannah …”
Hannah wasn’t the one. I am.
He stepped backward.
“I don’t want to hear it, Riley. And I sure as hell don’t want to talk about it. When you cool off, you’ll see that I’m right. In the morning, you’ll be relieved that we didn’t do this.”
“I bet,” she snapped. “You know, on the plus side, I’ll get a great story idea out of this. Female blue balls: a real thing!”
“Riley—it’s just sex. I’m sure you’ll find someone else to scratch the itch.”
Oh God.
She’d been wrong. Female blue balls were the least of her problems.
Being rejected by this man hurt.
She inhaled a deep breath through her nose to keep from responding. She knew he didn’t mean to be cruel, but his flippant dismissal of what had almost happened between them was the ultimate reminder that this was so much less to him than it was to her.
For him it was a failed attempt to defuse the simmering sexual tension between them. For her, it mattered. And not just because it would bump her sexual encounters out of the once-a-long-time-ago category.
It mattered because it was Sam.
And Sam mattered to her.
And his rejection was so much worse than she could have imagined.
A lump formed in her throat, and she dug her nails into her palms to keep from begging him to stay. Or worse, from begging him to feel about her the way she did about him.
She wanted to be everything to him.
But the expression on his face fell somewhere between guilty and indifferent.
She took a long breath to steel herself. The physical rejection was bad enough. No way would she set herself up for emotional rejection too.
Riley lifted both hands up in surrender, giving a casual little shrug. “You know, you’re probably right. I am feeling a little, um … unfulfilled, but I guess that’s nothing another guy can’t take care of, right?”