Offensive Behavior

“I’ll be their chief ideas guy like I was in the beginning. Come up with the next version of Ziggurat and keep re-engineering Plus so it’s a great company. It would never have occurred to me that was a smart move until you. I’ll still work like crazy, but I won’t find it as difficult and Plus will be better for it. It will be fun again, like it was when it started.”

“I’m pleased for you.”

She smiled. It wasn’t bright. It was the vague chance of sunshine on a cloudy day, but it was all he could do not to pull her across the sticky table into his arms. He didn’t know what to do with his hands so he gripped the bottom of the booth seating. “You thought I’d give it

up for you.”

She nodded. “Last thing I wanted.”

“I know.” He was sure of that now.

“You’re so smug.”

Amusement in her eyes. But the odds were against him. He was going home alone, trying to sleep alone, waking alone, remembering how to function alone and doing it because it was what she needed. “But you love me anyway.”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Two. You got some stuff in your checklist wrong.” He’d put her letter on the table when he sat. He unfolded it and pushed it across to her.

She looked at the ceiling, gave a tiny grunt. “You’re correcting me? You are unbelievable.”

He shrugged. “You wanted it to be an accurate record. I’m amending the list.”

She looked at the page. Her eyes came back to his. She closed them. She had to want to look for herself, because if he manipulated her, he’d never know where he stood.

She looked down at the page and he let go his grip on the bottom of the torn booth seat. He’d crossed out her first check box, Had this great thing with a sexy pole dancer and written, Met a woman I’ll love and respect for the rest of my days.

She read it and closed her eyes again. Her throat worked, a fluttering pulse.

In the next line he’d crossed out the word sex so it read. She taught me everything I know about living. When Zarley read it and lifted her eyes to him they were glistening.

He almost got up and walked out then. He didn’t want to make her cry. He’d already taken enough from her. She looked down at the page again and he had to stay.

Tried some kinky stuff became, I learned about myself by learning about her, and Shame our timing was off became, Our timing was perfect in every way.

“Reid.” His name as a protest against all he was forcing her to feel.

“You’re nearly there.”

We will always have Paris became a summary of their whole time together. He’d written. We will always have: defying gravity, obsession from the back booth, kisses that tell stories, concussion in the shower, cheating at Dark Souls, seductive dances, short silky bathrobes, at least two stools, soaks in the bath, improper clothes for bikes, sex with the trees, torn underwear, laughing in the dark and breaking lamps, Indian food for two, heart-stopping dresses, courage, awesome tenderness, lingerie and cat’s ears, strangers to watch and strangers to share, late-night love and sexy role-play, arguing about everything and agreeing to be in love, my first for everything, and breakup sex I never saw coming.

She got midway through the list and her tears fell on the page. But she still read the new equation.

Brave, talented, ambitious girl who can fly + (compassion x challenge) + besotted loner guy (desperate virgin edition) = Marry me.

“Oh Reid. No.” She swiped at her face and wouldn’t look directly at him.

He’d always been a man to whom the word no was an opening salvo. That hadn’t changed. “I’m afraid of living a half-life without you. What are you afraid of?”

She speared him with an agonized look, got up from the booth and disappeared behind the bar, seconds later the stage lit up and she walked out on it. He followed, took a stool at the snub-nose bar where men who tipped her to dance had sat.

She put a hand to the pole and looked up at it. She’d wiped her face, she wasn’t crying anymore. “Silver, not gold, but the only metal I get to keep hold of. I wanted that gold, Reid. Wanted my chance at it and I screwed up because I fell in love.” She put her other hand on the pole and climbed it, crossed her legs around it and sat. “You can’t know what it’s like to burn with ambition but not know what you want to do with all that energy.” She opened her arms wide. “And to be in love and have that love threaten to be the thing that makes you fail again.”

She altered her position, curled up into a ball with her face tucked into her knees. He’d never seen her do that before. She looked tiny and constricted by the skirt, and the pose was so childlike and sorrowful it welded him to the stool. She went back to her seated pose and he let out a stalled breath.

“That’s what I’m afraid of, loving you at the expense of me when there are things I want to do.” She let herself down the pole. “I’m afraid of living a half-life with you, because you make it too easy for me to be happy. I’m afraid I’ll wake up one day and realize I’ve achieved nothing for myself, nothing I can love me for.” She leaned on the pole and lowered her eyes.

Reid slapped the stage floor like punters who’d tried to get her attention had, and her chin lifted. He’d had three things to tell her. “Three. I will wait for you to do whatever you need to do, to be ready to be with me. I will wait for you for however long that takes.”