All of Me (Confessions of the Heart 2)

Me: I’m not much of a one-night kind of girl. I’m afraid it might hurt a lot.

Ian: I’d tell you that you shouldn’t be afraid, but that would be a lie.

I hesitated, contemplating how to answer, wishing there was a way when it was clear we’d hit a dead end.

Me: Then I think this should be goodbye.

Ian: I guess it is midnight. You’d better run, Cinderella. It seems to be what you do best.

Nine

Ian

Groaning, I peeled my eyes open to the blaring alarm. Darkness still permeated my bedroom, just the barest hint of the approaching morning hinting at the edges of the window. I slapped at my phone to silence it, feeling totally wrung out and off.

Not sure what the fuck I’d been thinking last night.

Pressing that girl the way that I had. Needing something I had no right to go after and wanting to pursue it, anyway.

Seriously. What the hell was wrong with me?

Grace had thrown up so many red flags that I should have been out of the game.

Whistle blown.

But it had started feeling like something that wasn’t close to being only a distraction or a diversion. Didn’t feel like amusement or entertainment.

It’d grown into something bigger. Something that, for the first time in my life, had me wanting to step out and take a chance. Ask for more. Even when I knew I had so little to give. So little to offer.

God, I was fucked up in the head because I didn’t know this girl, and she sure as shit wouldn’t want to know me.

She didn’t know my true nature.

The demon inside. The monster that raged.

Didn’t matter anyway, though, did it?

I’d pushed her, and she’d pushed right back.

Shutting it down.

What I should have done the second she had that foreign feeling rising up and taking hold. The compulsion to possess and protect.

Flopping over onto my back in the middle of my enormous bed, I scrubbed my palms over my face and prayed it might break me out of this fuckery, bring me to my senses, knock me back into reality.

I blew out a strained breath toward the ceiling, dick still goddamned hard from just the few minutes I’d spent talking to her last night. Me picturing her in her bed. Probably surrounded by some Pinterest shit. Chic and modern and pretty.

Just like the girl.

I’d officially become a pussy. A pussy who was picturing a girl’s fucking bedroom.

I needed to get laid, and I needed to do it fast so I could scrape this girl from my mind.

Forcing myself to sit up on the side of my bed, I sighed and grabbed my phone so I could check my emails.

It was routine.

What I always did to prep for the day.

Peoples’ emergencies always seemed to spike in the middle of the night.

Annoying but true.

My life centered around other peoples’ drama. Their heartache. The goal pretty much to turn around and cause more.

Payback and revenge in the form of dollars and wealth. It was always what it amounted to.

Money.

Greed.

I guessed I’d landed myself in the right industry, after all.

A breath left me on a gush when I saw I had a shit-ton of unread texts. Heart rate kicking, hammering like a beast.

The messages had come in about two hours earlier. Probably right after I’d finally drifted into a restless sleep after spending hours aching in my bed. Dying to get lost in that body and those legs and that mind I could feel sucking me inside.

I quickly read through them.

Grace: You’re right. The real problem is that I want to say yes.

Grace: But I also wasn’t lying when I said I have too much going on in my life.

Grace: The truth is, I’m scared. I’m scared of losing anything else. I’m scared of being hurt. I’m scared of putting myself in danger. I’m scared that, once you know me, you’ll walk away.

Grace: But I need you to know something. I might be beaten down. Crippled and fractured, but that doesn’t mean I’m broken or crushed. That has never been me. Someone who is too timid to live her life. Someone who is too terrified to step out and take a chance.

Grace: But sometimes taking those chances might be risking too much.

Grace: I just want you to know . . . someday . . . someday . . . I will get the chance to live again.

My chest tightened.

Painfully.

And I wondered what that might be like.

To live again.

To fully breathe.

To give rather than to take.

To love rather than to hurt.

I just didn’t know how the fuck that was possible when it was the only thing I’d ever known. But there was something about this girl, something overpowering, overwhelming, too perfect and sweet and enthralling, that made me want to try.

* * *

I wove my way through the crowd on the packed sidewalk. Hands shoved into my pockets, the evening air gathering around me, heart manic where it knocked against my ribs.