My phone buzzes from the coffee table.
I’m outside. I need to come up. Now
His urgency sets my heart thundering even faster, even harder. I text him back, telling him my apartment number.
I’ll buzz you up
I press down on the button and then listen as the noise sounds, telling me he’s opened the door. Maybe this is about breaking up, not that we’re even officially together.
But maybe that’s why he needs to come here all of a sudden.
He wants to get it over with. He’s not a bad person.
He wouldn’t want to drag it out.
I start concocting escape plans without even meaning to. My gaze snaps to the window as though I’m going to climb down the fire escape. I imagine myself running down the street, looking over my shoulder at my apartment, just so I don’t have to face this.
My breath hitches when I hear the floorboards creak outside the door. The handle turns, and the door opens, but then it stops as the chain pulls taut.
“Fiona?” he says, in that deep husky tenor.
“I’m here. Sorry. I forgot. Hang on a sec.”
He closes the door, leaving me time to deal with the chain. I wonder if I could invent some excuse now, something which would mean I don’t have to face what he’s going to tell me. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes that he wants to end things.
Like a gentleman, he wants to do it in person.
“Mystery girl? Are you still there?”
My heart gives a pang, and my hope flashes despite knowing I should rein it in. But he wouldn’t call me by my nickname if he was here to end things. That would be so needlessly cruel, so unfair.
“Yes,” I say.
“Well….”
There’s a note of heavy irony in his voice.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
It’s like I’m preempting what could be coming, putting up a defensive barrier, making it difficult for him to affect me. Or that’s the goal. Close me off, make myself impervious to his words, his actions.
I can’t break when he says it’s over.
It was only ever a dream, to begin with.
And I can’t assume a nickname means anything, either.
Opening the door, I take a step back, staring as Felix takes a step forward.
He’s wearing a black suit and a dark tie, his expression as bleak as the colors. There’s something different about him in the way he’s looking at me, as though he knows there’s something he has to say, but he doesn’t know how to.
Something like…I’m sorry, but I can’t do this anymore.
“Can I come in?” A smirk touches his lips, then vanishes just as quickly. “Or we can talk out here.”
I shake my head quickly, reflex triggering. It’s bad enough to have to face whatever this is without my neighbors overhearing everything.
Stepping aside, I wave a hand.
When he walks by, I wait for him to turn, grab me, and kiss me. Then I’d know he still feels what he showed in the hotel suite when he turned full animal and couldn’t contain the fire within. Then I’d know it hasn’t all faded away, linked somehow to this third-date revelation, a date that may never come now.
I shut the door, “Can I get you a drink?”
“I’m fine,” he says stiffly, walking to the seating area.
His body looks as stiff as his tone. If people had auras, his would be a swirling mess of lightning, black clouds, and howling wind. Instead, every time he looks at me, it’s like he’s going to roar or charge at me and do something savage.
I sit down opposite him, squeezing onto my knees. His eyes widen when he looks at my hands.
Is that lust, or is it something else?
“So, what did you want to see me about?” I say, struggling to keep my voice steady. “I thought you were busy today.”
“I was. But I realized something. Life’s too short. And I can’t live like this anymore.”
I can’t allow myself to cry, and I can’t allow this moment to break me. I should’ve been ready for this.
“Okay….”
My voice comes out as a croak, the words raspy.
“It’s going to be difficult for me to talk about this,” he says. “So maybe wait until…until I’m done?”
A note of vulnerability touches him, something I never would’ve believed when I only knew him through his online presence.
Felix Franklin is too tough, too unreal for human emotions, but I can sense it. It tugs at the deep maternal part of me, the piece that will do everything to protect our children.
“I understand,” I murmur, but then something flashes within. “But please don’t drag it out, Felix. I get it if you have to say certain things, and, yeah, fine…you want to see yourself as the good guy. So you can’t do it over text, even if we started over text – and I’d prefer it, honestly.”