Look After Me (45 page)

I’m dating a guy called Devin. He’s nice. I met him at the local grocery store about a month ago. We both went for the last tub of Ben and Jerry’s peanut butter cup ice cream and, like a gentleman, he told me I could have it but only if I agreed to go on a date with him. And because I wasn’t willing to give up my ice cream—ice cream I’d been craving all day because of a bitch of a period—I agreed.

He’s picking me up shortly for a lunch date, which will be our fourth date. It’s going well. As well as a new relationship can be when you’re still hooked on the love of your life. I feel like I could be happy with a guy like Devin; that he could give me what Sebastian could never give me, but I have to stop loving Sebastian first.

I startle at the sound of my office phone ringing, causing my cell to slip from my hand and drop on the floor, sliding under my desk. Placing my hand on my chest, I take a calming breath as I look at the caller ID; it’s Molly from reception calling. I press the loudspeaker. “Hey, Molly,” I say with a jittery breath, trying to get my heart rate under control.

“Hi, Addison. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. What’s up?” I ask, leaning back in my chair and closing my eyes.

“There’s a guy asking for you at reception. A
hot
guy,” she finishes with a whisper.

“Oh yeah, that’ll be Devin. He’s taking me out to lunch. I’m going to be another ten minutes or so. Can you send him to my office, please?”

“Yes, of course.”

I end the call before hurriedly wiping my tear stained face, removing any evidence of my broken heart before Devin enters my office. Once I feel composed enough, I get on my hands and knees and crawl under my desk to retrieve my cell, but because I can’t see a damn thing under here, my fingers force the phone further away from me, causing it to slide out the other side of the desk. Sighing with frustration, I begin to crawl back out but, through my flustered state, I miscalculate the edge of the table and my head collides painfully with the desk with a loud whack.

“Motherfucker!”

Shifting a couple of inches, I get to my feet but stumble forward, knocking the telephone and stationary holder onto the floor as well as a glass photo frame that shatters at my feet.

“Crap!”

I bend down and begin to clear the mess up. A moment later I hear a knock on the door. “Come in!” I pick up the pens and markers that have spread across the floor. I hear the door opening and sigh. “You’ve kind of caught me at a bad time.”

“Nice ass.”

My body freezes at the sound of his familiar voice; the husky, sexy, brilliant voice of the man I haven’t heard in over two months. A familiar sense of déjà vu hits me and my heart goes into overdrive at his words, causing heavy palpitations to thrash painfully against the inside of my chest, making it almost impossible to breathe.

I slowly and cautiously rise and turn around and my lips falter as I take in the perfection of the man I’m hopelessly in love with. “Sebastian?” I whisper.

“Hi.” He smiles.

“Wh-what are you doing here?”

His eyes drink me in, slowly and appreciatively, like a starving man who hasn’t had a decent meal for years. His adoring smile is one that makes me feel a little lightheaded. He opens his mouth to say something when suddenly his eyes go wide with alarm. “You’re bleeding.”

Slowly, in a delayed daze I look down to my hand and realize I’m holding a piece of jagged glass from the broken photo frame, having no recollection of even picking it up. I wince when the sharp pain begins to register and I quickly drop the shard of glass to the floor.

Every hair on my skin prickles when he steps towards me, taking my hand in his, his very touch causes an explosion of tremors to erupt up and down my body. My eyes flutter closed when his sweet masculine aroma hits my senses. I’d forgotten how incredible his scent was until this very moment. I want to wrap his scent around me like a blanket and lose myself within it, within
him.
And then I nearly lose it on the spot when his warm silky breath blows lightly over the open wound.

At this moment, any progress I might have made getting over him in the past two months is obliterated in a matter of seconds. Just seeing him here, in front of me as perfect as ever,
smelling
as perfect as ever, is enough to forget why I needed to get over him in the first place.

“It looks okay. You’ll probably have to put a Band-Aid on it.”

I finally open my eyes to find his own piercing into mine. The intensity awakens me from my stupor and I pull my hand out from his, taking a much-needed step back.

“What are you doing here?” I ask with a shaky breath.

For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything. He just continues to stare at me with his fierce, hungry eyes and a smile curved at his lips. I clasp my hand over my chest in a bid to calm my heart rate down, but it doesn’t calm me down in the slightest.

“I kind of had a plan. I went over and over it in my head on the plane, what I was going to say to you and how I was going to say it. But now that you’re in front of me—looking as beautiful as ever, by the way,” he adds with a nervous smile. “I can’t remember what the hell I’ve spent the last day rehearsing. You’ve made me lose the ability to think. So you’ll just have to give me a minute to figure out how I’m going to tell you what I came here to tell you, okay?”

I watch intently as he opens his mouth a few times but when nothing seems to escape, my heart rate skyrockets, making the anticipation of what he wants to say unbearable. He relaxes his eyes and takes a few soothing breaths before his gaze lands on me with a purpose that terrifies me, and I can’t figure out if it’s a good or a bad thing.

After a nervous gulp and a hesitant smile, he finally speaks, and the three simple words he says are the words I never thought I’d hear.

“I love you.”

My bottom lip trembles and in seconds my entire world begins to spiral out of control. As the realization of his words register, I stumble a couple of feet backwards until I brace against the edge of my desk. He takes a step closer to me until his chest is flush with mine and lifts his fingers to my cheek, stroking delicately and causing goose bumps to shiver across every inch of my skin.

“My plan was to ease you into that, but everything else I rehearsed didn’t seem to matter and nothing seemed important except for those three words. I can’t tell you when it happened, but I have a feeling it was sometime between locking eyes on your amazing ass, the first time,” he smirks, “and the moment you walked out on me to begin your new life. Sometime between then, I fell in love with you. I fell in love with your smile. I fell in love with your inner goodness. I fell in love with your ability to read me. I fell in love with your sassy attitude. I fell in love with your beauty. I fell in love with every single thing about you.” His eyes are locked on mine, with a piercing look of determination, a strong and courageous determination.

Strength. Courage.

I reach my trembling hands to his neck and I audibly gasp when my fingers touch a metal chain. I gently pull until it escapes from the confinements of his shirt and I’m holding the two dog tags between my fingers. I struggle to fight back the tears as I take in the beautiful words.

After spending what feels like an eternity gazing down at them, I clench them tightly within my grip before returning my gaze to Sebastian.

“You’re wearing them?”

He smiles. “They’ve been with me since Christmas Day.”

“Oh wow. I, um . . .” I clear my throat. “I got them engraved before I knew I was leaving,” I breathe out a shuddering laugh. “I can’t believe you’re wearing them.”

“They’re the strength that got me through these past two months. They’re the only things that enabled me to put one foot forward and get through rehab.”

“You went back to rehab? Did you—”

“Relapse? No, but I almost did, and everything that surrounded my near relapse is the reason why you ran away. And I know you said you weren’t running, but you’re not the only one who can read between the lines. This new life that you were desperate to build for yourself was you running from me.”

I begin to shake my head, but before I get the chance to deny it, his finger moves across my lips, cutting me off before I’ve even started.

“I hurt you, Addison. I broke your heart and continued to do so because I was too stupid and blind to see what was right in front of me. You walking away from me was the best thing that could have happened because it made me realize what I had to lose—in every aspect of my life—and I had to take action before it was too late. I wanted to be the guy you deserved, even if I didn’t get to be that guy for you.”

I let out a long breath of air, overwhelmed by his words. Then he continues to overwhelm me with even more words.

“These past two months have been hell. I’m not saying I’m fixed or that my addiction has completely gone away because you of all people know recovery isn’t measured by months. But I’m the healthiest I’ve been in a long time. A year ago my entire world changed and I thought my life was over but then this beautiful, sassy little thing stumbled into my life and my entire world changed again, but this time was for the better. I thought I’d found the one, but I was wrong, Addison. You’re the one. You’ve always been the one. You came into my life when I was at my worst, and you looked after me when I pushed everybody else away—when I thought I had nobody else. You put my jagged heart back together. It’s surprising what the heart can survive when you have the right person standing next to you.”

I don’t realize tears are streaming down my face until he tenderly wipes them away. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he urges, his eyes never once leaving mine.

Just being in such close proximity to him is making it hard for me to think, especially with how close his lips are to mine right now. The urge to taste his lips overwhelms me in a way that borders on clinically insane. I’m so incredibly turned on that I feel seconds away from exploding from the sheer heat that’s pumping through my veins, but looking into his brilliant brown eyes reminds me of the hurt he caused. I physically want to lash out at him, hurt him the way he hurt me. How can one person make you feel so much at once?

I slam my eyes shut, needing a moment to gather my thoughts before I do something stupid, but I can still feel his essence. Every cell in my body is prickled with a sensory overload, making it hard to think of anybody other than Sebastian because right now Sebastian is all I can see, even with my eyes closed.

After another long moment, I finally find the courage to reopen them, and before his beautiful face erases the thoughts from my mind, I blurt out the question that needs asking. “What about Ava?”

I expect him to falter at the mention of her name, but I’m surprised when I don’t even see him blink. “She’s not you.”

I snort, a humorless smile breaking free. “What does that mean exactly?”

“It means she’s not
you,
” he says meaningfully, his eyes never straying from mine and the intensity of his stare adds to the intensity of his words.

“Do you still love her?” I ask hesitantly, not sure if I can cope with the answer he might give me. When he nods his head slightly, I begin to cower away but he tightens his grip on me, forcing me closer to him, not allowing me to move an inch.

“I did, and maybe I still do, but not in the same way, not anymore. I thought my heart belonged to her, but it doesn’t, and it hasn’t for a long time. It belongs to somebody else.” He smiles. “I was so angry and bitter that it didn’t even register that I was no longer
in
love with her.” With a purposed stare—a stare that has my heart stopping and starting again—he slowly brings his hands up to my neck, tracing along the back of my head until his fingers are cupping my face, my body tingling at his mere touch. “I am, however, in love with you. That’s something I know for sure. In fact, I’ve never been so certain about anything in my entire life.”

Every single inch of my body is trembling. I want to press my lips to his; devour him until I can no longer catch my breath. The tears continue to spill as I feel myself battling between the heartbreak that has kept me up at night crying for the past two months and the love, the heart wrenchingly beautiful love that is buried deep within the very soul of me.

“Sebastian, what do you want from me? What is this?”

“I kind of thought it was obvious,” he says with a mischievous grin, but I shake my head, not in the mood for his humor right now.

“No, you need to tell me what it is that you want from me. You spent months telling me how we could only be friends, that I could never have your heart, that I deserved better. And now you’re saying you love me, that you’re
in
love with me and I’m struggling to keep up. I need you to tell me what you want from me.” My trembling voice becomes hysterical through my falling tears, my breathing ragged.

“I want you.” His voice is gruff with pure emotion and, of course, it makes him sound even sexier. “I want you by my side so I can love you until my last dying breath. I want you because I love you. I love you in a way I haven’t ever felt before, not even with Ava.”

My breath catches in the back of my throat and I watch him—dumbfounded as he continues to tell me what he wants from me. “The moment you walked out of my life was the moment I realized I couldn’t live without you. That I
don’t
want to live without you,” he says with a passion that zeros straight for my heart. “I know it took me a while to figure out my shit, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for hurting you but I’m here now, and I’m finally telling you that you’re the person I want by my side. I’m finally telling you that I love you.”

His eyes take in my face before they come to a final stop at my lips. I gulp heavily as I watch the way his pupils dilate, the way his breathing speeds up, and the way his chest rises and falls. The heat around us thickens and my heart violently stops beating when his soft lips lightly brush over mine.

“I love you, Addison,” he breathes across my lips.

I don’t know if it’s the heartfelt words or the heavenly sensation of his warm breath tingling over my lips, but I lose all coherent thoughts as I press my lips against his. And at that moment, when my lips latch onto his, it’s like the world is right again. Our kiss starts off slow and tender, but when our moans entwine—mine soft, his gruff—it seems our lips can’t move fast enough and we go from zero to sixty in an instant. Barely registering the movement, he lifts me onto my desk, his fingers clawing against my ass, and my legs wrap around his hips, pulling him into me, groaning into his mouth. I’ve missed him. I’ve missed
this.