Kiss Me Now - A Billionaire Boss Romance

I’m setting boundaries. Creating a new pattern for myself. Just like I promised myself in therapy.

For once, I leave a meal with my mother actually smiling.

25

Cassidy

The smile lasts until I make it home from our lunch. It falters, however, the second I pull into the parking lot outside my apartment complex, and I register the shape leaning against my front door frame. Even with his back turned, even though I only glimpse him briefly as I’m stepping out of my car, I know at once who it is. I’d recognize him anywhere. Not just his face, but his height, his lanky body, his way of standing and his posture and even his gait when he walks, shoulders thrown back and chin high with confidence.

He doesn’t look so confident today, though. He’s slumped against my door, and his hair is a tousled mess. Even before he turns to face me, I already guess his face will look gaunt, drawn with stress.

Lark.

It’s only been a few days since I last saw him, yet it had already started to feel like a lifetime. As if my time with him were a dream, pleasant and all-consuming when I was in the middle of it, but painful as hell to wake up from. It made the real world stark and gray by contrast.

As I start up my steps toward him, a welcome counter-emotion floods in. Anger. He has no right to keep showing up like this. We made it clear the last time we spoke. Things were over between us. I thought he was finally respecting me, giving me the space I needed to get over him. But now…

The anger, however, is short-lived. It falters the moment he hears my foot on the steps behind him and turns to look at me.

God. I knew he looked dejected, but seeing his face… His eyes are red, lined in deep purple bruises, like he hasn’t slept since I saw him last. He’s still handsome, of course. Handsome enough that I want to shove him for it, back up against the door he’s leaning against, and then grab his lapels and pull his face down to—No. I stop myself right there.

Handsome or not, sad or not, he still lied to me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. My voice comes out harder than I intended, but I don’t apologize for it. He’s over the line right now.

“I’m sorry,” he says, immediately. “I know I shouldn’t be here. But I tried calling. I didn’t get an answer.”

I think about my phone, shut off for the duration of my lunch with Mom. I didn’t turn it back on afterward. I was still buzzing from finally standing up to her. That, and I didn’t want to see if she called me afterward, to leave me guilt-tripping voicemails about how I’d just acted.

“You can’t just show up like this,” I say, shaking my head. “We talked about this. About how I need space now.”

“I know, but.” He takes a step toward me, hands outstretched, and for a moment, I catch his scent, the familiar, heady musk that always makes me want to close my eyes and sink into his arms. To let myself go, to feel safe in his embrace—even if that safety’s a lie. “I can’t stop thinking about you, Cassidy,” he says.

My stomach tightens. That makes two of us.

“I just… I know I messed up. I should have told you everything, from the beginning, and let you decide whether you wanted to get mixed up in my damn drama. I realize that now. Keeping this from you was wrong. Which is why…” His throat bobs with a tight swallow. But he holds my gaze. The whole time he’s saying this, those green eyes of his never leave mine. “I want to tell you everything now. The full truth.”

I bite my lower lip. Glance away, toward my front door, hesitant. This is pretty much the opposite of what I promised to do in therapy—to set boundaries and hold them firm. I told him we were over. To let him in now would be…

As if reading my mind, Lark lifts both hands, palms extended toward me. They hover in the air between us. Even his hands seem nervous, trembling a little, the nails bitten down to the quick. “No strings attached,” he says. “You don’t have to take me back or give me another chance or anything. But even if we never see each other again, you deserve to know the truth.”

That, at least, I can agree with. I press my lips together, still internally debating. But searching his gaze, curiosity rises inside me, overwhelming the part of me that says it would be safer to tell him to leave. “Fine,” I say, eventually, and his shoulders sag, relief blooming across his face. I hold up one finger, though, to stop it. “But you’re right. No strings are attached. This doesn’t mean I’m giving you a second chance or anything. You do owe me the truth, though.”