All for This (21 page)

I have to get away from this fucking party, from Asher’s knowing eyes asking questions I don’t have the right to answer. I head upstairs to call Janelle, but my phone isn’t in the basket where I left it. Before I can think where it might have gone, I spot Hanna on the patio, my phone in her hands, and I’m instantly moving in her direction. She’s staring at the screen, scrolling through something, and I hope to God it’s our text messages. I want her to see. I want her to remember.

Her cheeks are flushed and her lips are parted, and when she lifts her head, she pulls in this little gasp. It sounds so much like the noise she makes when I put my mouth between her legs that my fucking cock goes hard.

“See anything good?” I ask.

Her pink cheeks turn crimson. “Why would I risk everything?”

Right. Losing Max is the risk. Fuck. Nothing changes. “You’d have to ask your fiancé.”

“You know why I can’t do that.” Standing, she pushes her chair back and lifts her chin. “I want to understand. I need you to talk to me.”

“No, I don’t.” Because she’s made her choice. What would come of rehashing our mistakes?

“You don’t understand what this is like. Not remembering? I’m planning a wedding to this man I’ve wanted most of my life. Don’t I owe it to him—don’t I owe it to myself—to have the truth out there before we promise until death do us part?”

Planning a wedding
. The words are like red-hot ice picks in my chest.

“I just need answers,” she says. She steps closer, tempting me without knowing it. “I need the truth,” she whispers.

“The truth? Is that what you really want, angel?” Suddenly, I want to give it to her. I want to put my mouth against her ear and describe in outrageous detail all the things I did to her body. I want to slide my hand between her legs and prove she still wants me—even if she can’t remember.

I take another step closer, and when she turns away, I close the distance between us, trapping her between the house and my body as I lower my mouth to her ear.

“Do you want to know what it was like between us?” I ask.

“Yes.”

I groan. “Should I start with how wet you were every time I touched you? Or maybe how you begged me that first night?”

“I didn’t.”

“Have you been telling yourself some wicked rocker seduced you? That I tricked you into my bed? Sorry. You asked for the truth. You begged. Right there outside the club, you begged me until I ripped your panties off and you were too busy biting my neck to talk anymore. Is that what you’re hoping to remember? How you wanted me so badly you let me finger you out in the open, against that building where anyone could have seen?” I just want her to remember. I need her to remember it all and then look me in the eye and tell me she’s choosing him.

She lifts her hands to my chest, but right when I think she’s going to push me away, she curls her hands into my shirt, and I groan again because my control is hanging by a thread and threatening to snap.

I can’t help myself and I put my mouth to her earlobe, nip at it with my teeth in the way I know makes her crazy. The crack of thunder overhead reminds me of our first night together, the way the sky opened up outside the club and we got soaked. Then, later, when I peeled those wet clothes off her and warmed her with my hands and mouth.

“You might have forgotten me,” I whisper now, “but you still like dirty talk, don’t you? And maybe if I made you come now, you’d still scream my name. Because you always screamed my name, Hanna. Never his.”

She gasps. “You are horrible.”

“What are you really upset about? That you wanted me? Or that even as you stand here wearing his ring, you’re secretly hoping I’ll tell you about it. Secretly wishing you could remember all the details.”

“I don’t.” She shoves me back then, and I’m grateful because I was seconds away from taking her mouth like I’m so desperate to. “Tell me why I did it,” she says. “I need to understand.”

Looking away, I fight to steady my breathing. What the fuck did I think I was doing? “I made you a promise,” I say carefully. I’m reminding myself more than telling her. “I promised that when you made your decision, I would respect it. That if you took his ring, I wouldn’t try to change your mind.”

A promise I all but broke just now. And as much as I want her—need her—more than she’ll ever know, I could never forgive myself if I stole the future she chose.

“I always knew you deserved better than me,” I say, still not looking at her. “I hope he’s worthy of you. I sure as fuck wasn’t.”

Only when my breathing is steady and I think I have the strength to touch her without losing my mind do I turn. I take her hands, meaning to retrieve my cell phone, and for three painful beats of my heart, my gaze snags on her lips and I indulge in the fantasy of one last kiss. She’d let me. I can see it in her eyes. She feels something for me, even without her memories. I want to tell myself that means something. If we have a connection without her remembering anything about me, doesn’t that have to?

But nothing changes the fact that she chose him.

I take my phone and walk away into the night. When the skies open and rain pours down, I welcome the deluge and wallow in the memories it brings.

I’m sitting in the dark on Asher’s front porch soaking fucking wet when Asher finds me.

“I’m sorry I bailed on the rest of the party.” I offer him the joint burning in my hand, and he sneers at me.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” he asks.

“Sorry.” I snuff it out and slide the rest of the joint into my pocket. It wasn’t doing shit for me anyway. Nothing can erase Hanna from my mind. “Didn’t mean to piss off the straight-edger.”

“This isn’t about the pot and you know it.”

I lift my gaze to his. “What’s it about, then?”

“What’s between you and Hanna?”

“Nothing,” I mutter.

“I saw the way you looked at her tonight, and you’re a terrible fucking liar.”

“Better than an accomplished one, I guess,” I say, parroting Hanna’s words from the night we met.

“What are you doing?” Asher presses.

“I’m not doing shit. She chose him.” I release a humorless chuckle. “And now, conveniently, she can’t even remember me.”

“Please tell me you haven’t been fucking around with Hanna. I told you she has a boyfriend.”

Yeah, he told me that the night we met, but it wasn’t true. But that’s Hanna’s secret to share, not mine. “I believe he’s now her fiancé.”

“He’s a good guy, you know,” Asher says.

“That’s what everyone seems to think.”

Asher turns his back to me and looks up at the starless sky. The rain has stopped, but the clouds loom overhead, dark and ominous. “Did you know an anonymous investor set Hanna up with the bakery?”

“Yeah.”

“It was Max. That’s the kind of guy we’re talking about here. The kind of guy who would sell his house and live in a shit apartment to give the woman he loves her dream. The kind of guy who would do it without getting any of the credit or the glory.”

“Then how do you know?” I ask.

“I know people.” Asher shrugs then turns back to me. “I’m not trying to be an ass, but I care about Hanna, and I want what’s best for her.”

“And you know that’s not me?” That hurts. Especially from Asher.

“Think it through for a minute. You dodge commitment, and Hanna deserves better than that. And even if you were willing to give her more, how’s that going to work? Are you going to move to New Hope to be with her and leave Collin in LA?”

Resting my elbows on my knees, I lean forward and study my shoes. Asher’s pulling out the logic I’ve been trying to make myself accept ever since I saw that fucking ring on her finger. Hanna belongs here, in this little picture-book town with its friendly people and quiet streets. And I belong in LA. Near Collin.

“Do you have any idea how much I hate being away from my daughter?” Asher says. “Three months in the summer, two weeks over Christmas and a couple of long weekends here and there—that’s all I get until I can convince her mom to give me custody. You know I have reasons beyond Maggie for staying away from the city, but I don’t see you making that kind of sacrifice for a woman. Am I wrong?”

“She chose him,” I repeat, because—
fuck
—I don’t need to hear this. There’s nothing to figure out. She doesn’t want me. She’s wearing his ring.

And I have to find a way to be okay with that, because a big damn part of me knows she chose right.

M
Y APARTMENT
is a clutter of half-packed boxes, and my mind is a jumble of questions and missing memories.

When I walk into my living room, Nate is bare-chested and sitting on the couch with his bare feet propped on the ottoman. For a minute, I forget how to walk. My feet seriously don’t recall the order of operations necessary to get me from this spot at the edge of the kitchen island to the family room coffee table, where I left my cell phone.

Because Nate. Because bare-chested. Because hormones eating away at all the functioning parts of my brain and leaving only the parts that want sex.

I don’t know if his presence—his
body—
is evidence of a divine power that loves me or one that wants to torture me. My mouth is dry and my hands itch to touch, to trace the lines of his tattoos and the faint trail of dark hair from the center of his chest all the way down past his navel and into his jeans.

I’ve followed that trail with my mouth before, and sweet, sweet memory, I know what waits on the other side.

When I drag my eyes back up to his face, he’s smirking at me. “See anything good?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. And then I was going to ask you to please refrain from watching porn in my family room.”

“Wanna watch with me?” He wriggles his eyebrows and spins his iPad so I can see the screen. Comics. Of course.

“How’d you get in here?” The question comes out with a squeak.

“With the key you gave me last summer. God forbid anyone see us together if I was in town, so you gave me a key so I could come in the middle of the night.”

I draw in a ragged breath at the bitterness in his tone.
“God forbid anyone see us together.”
I wonder if it occurred to me how selfish I was being. “Did you ever use it?”

“Once,” he says softly. He sweeps his eyes over me in my robe and lets them settle on the knot tied across my growing belly. “I got off the plane from London and hired a driver to bring me straight to you.” He sighs. “My phone was dead, so I used the driver’s, but you didn’t answer. When I got here, I let myself in with the key you gave me and climbed into your bed. Unfortunately, you didn’t know who I was, and we both know how that ended. Frankly, if you would have given me that knee to the balls before, you probably wouldn’t be pregnant now.”

I bite back a guilty laugh. “Sorry.”

He shakes his head. “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed you wanted me there.”

My legs seem to be functioning again, so I walk over to the living area and sit on the chair. He’s filling in blanks for me, and I’m desperate to see them filled.

“Tell me what else you remember from those days.”

Apprehension flashes across his face. “You’d called me in London. You’d left a message saying you wanted to talk. It was the first time I’d heard your voice since you’d left LA after our fight. You’d been ignoring my calls and my messages. The only reason I knew you were okay was because you were still talking to Janelle, and she assured me you weren’t dead in a ditch somewhere. She said you were thinking. You were trying to make some hard decisions, and I needed to give you space. At one point, she even suggested that she could fly out here herself and check on you if it would make me feel better. But then you left that message, and I thought maybe…” He shakes his head. “Obviously, I thought wrong.”