When breakfast is done, Nate serves both of us. I know I won’t eat much of the calorie-laden breakfast—doing so would make me sick at this point—but I don’t argue when he fills my plate.
We sit at the glass table in the sunroom, the slow morning rain tapping on the glass. I wish for clear skies and sunshine to warm my skin through the glass. I close my eyes for a minute, imagining it, the hope it normally makes me feel.
“I’m sorry, Hanna,” Nate says, and when I open my eyes, he’s watching me. “I know you love Max. I just…” His jaw works as he shifts his gaze to something beyond the glass. The bird bathing itself in the garden? Maybe something that can’t be seen.
“What do you want me to do?” My voice breaks on the question. I really want him to answer because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m putting us all through this painful holding pattern until I can get my mind straight. I’m just waiting, assuming the answer will come to me. Or am I really waiting for Nate to offer me more than he has?
His fork clatters against his plate and he shakes his head. “Nothing. I’m not asking anything from you. I’m not him.”
I close my eyes. It’s not fair to want a declaration of love from this man. He was upfront with me from the beginning. He’s not about the relationship, not about the forever.
Pushing back from the table, I stand up and head out to the patio. I stand under the awning and watch the rain dance on the water in the pool.
“It’s not you.” The sound of Nate’s voice sends a tremor of sadness through me. Because he’s never asked anything from me, but part of me wants him to. “You know that, right?” He stands next to me, head tilted back, eyes on the sky. “I can’t offer you more than this. Even when you deserve more. It’s not because I don’t want it. It’s because I made a promise to myself. To my son.”
Turning, I run my fingers across the date tattooed above his left pec. He told me the significance of that date the first night we met. It’s his son’s birthday. The day he says his world changed. “I never asked you for more, Nate.”
He grabs my fingers and squeezes them in his. “But you deserve it.”
“I’m a big girl. Let me decide what I deserve.”
“You deserve everything. Anything you could want.” His grip is nearly painful on my fingers, but I don’t pull away. I’m too worried he’ll stop talking. “But I’m not the man to give that to you. I can’t.”
You won’t, I think.
His eyes scan the dark and angry sky. “My dad left my mom when Janelle and I were eight. It always sucks for kids when their parents split, but he moved out of our house and into Jayda’s. She was already pregnant with his baby, and I remember when my stepsister was born. You should have seen my dad’s eyes when he looked at her. Like she was the most precious thing he’d ever been given. Then Jayda had a second child, and a third. He was so damn happy with them. For a while, he did his visitation with Janelle and me. We’d go over there on the weekends and every other holiday. But it was so painfully obvious that we were the other kids, the other family. We were an inconvenience. We were the mistake he had to deal with now that he’d finally found his real life.”
I understand how it feels when your parent lets you down, and my heart aches for him. “I’m so sorry.”
“By the time Collin was born, my relationship with his mother was already over. We were young, and we’d never been serious, but the first time I held him in my arms, his eyes locked on mine and I knew I couldn’t do to him what my father had done to me and Elle. I promised myself he would be my family. Even if his mom and I weren’t together. It didn’t matter. I promised I would never make him feel like he was second best.”
“You’re a great dad, Nate. You’d never make him feel like that.”
“It’s hard enough to be a kid to celebrity parents. I won’t pile that on too.” His hair falls into his face as he drops his head. “Collin is the most important thing in my life. I can’t give you more without taking something from him. I won’t do that.”
“I wish you’d quit making it seem like I’m asking for that.” My voice breaks because we both know I want more than this. Need more. A home. A life. Babies.
“What happens if we don’t end this, Hanna? You can’t be my mistress for the rest of my life. You can’t keep flying out here when I snap my fingers.” His face twists in disgust, and he steps away from me and into the rain. “Every time I say goodbye, I tell myself that’s it. That I’ll end it. Because you deserve that. But I’m weak and selfish as shit and keep calling you back because I can’t get enough of you.”
“What are you trying to say?”
He tilts his head to the sky and closes his eyes, letting the rain shower down on his face. I study the ridges of his strong back expanding as he breathes in and out.
I step into the rain and press my lips to the damp skin of his bare shoulder.
When he speaks, his question is so quietly murmured I can barely make it out over the rain in my ears. “Are you still in love with him?”
It’s my turn to tense. “I am.” I latch on to the best of my bravery and whisper, “But I’m in love with you too.”
“Don’t say that.”
I back away. Slowly at first and then fast. Then I’m turning and running. Back into the house, up the stairs.
I crawl under the covers still in my rain-dampened robe and curl into a ball on my side.
When I hear him pad into the room, I don’t roll over to look at him. When I feel the bed shift under his weight, I don’t open my eyes. And when his arms wrap around me from behind and he pulls me to his chest, I don’t say a word.
“I was in such an ugly, dark place the night we met. I looked into your eyes, and you were right there with me—my angel in the darkness. You saved me.” He buries his nose in my hair and inhales audibly. “You saved me and I love you.”
I draw in a gulp of air, but it enters my lungs with a sharp, painful edge.
“I think I’ve been in love with you since the night we met. And I know that sounds crazy and implausible—like one of those things the guy says when he’s trying to win the girl—but for me, it’s just true. I love you and I’m terrified that you’re going to ruin your life because of it.” His arms tighten around me and he presses a kiss to my shoulder. “I’m not telling you to take his ring. I honestly believe that if he were worthy of you, you wouldn’t be here with me. But don’t let me be the reason you don’t take the life you want.”
“What if you’re the life I want?”
His arms tighten around me and he presses his lips to my shoulder. “You’re asking me for something I can’t give.”
Present Day
Nate’s sitting on the edge of the big bed, elbows on his knees, studying the floor.
Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I push myself up and lean against the headboard. Next to me on the nightstand, my engagement ring stares back at me. I took it off last night. I should have left it at home. Ignoring it, I grab my phone to check the time. There’s another message.
Nix: Please call me soon!
“I’m sorry. I’ll get dressed and get out of here.” I scramble to the edge of the bed.
He stops me with a hand on my wrist. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod, trying for chipper, but I don’t feel it. “I’ll be fine.”
“You took off the ring.” He massages the back of his neck. “It’s over?”
“It needs to be. I don’t know how I’m supposed to move forward when what we have behind us hurts so much.”
He studies me, his eyes full of thoughts I can’t read and know he won’t share. “You can stay here as long as you want. Take some time. Think things through. Jamaal will be here. He’ll get you anything you need.”
I tuck my feet under me and sit next to him. He’s already dressed in dark jeans and a white button-up dress shirt. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I leave for Afghanistan this morning.”
A memory flickers. “You’re performing for the troops?”
“Yeah.”
“How long until you leave?”
He cuts his eyes to me and pushes off the bed. “My driver’s waiting out front.”
“Is this it? Is this…goodbye? For good?”
He closes his eyes. “It has to be. ”
I slide off the bed and touch my hand to his face. “How am I supposed to let you go?” I run my fingers along his jaw. “It’s the right thing to do, but—” My voice breaks.
He cups my jaw, his fingers sliding into my hair. “I know your memory isn’t the greatest right now,” he says. “So I’m going to tell you the things I need you to remember for me.”
“Okay.”
“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met.” He swallows and braves a tentative smile. “You’re like the sun—completely blind to your own beauty because you are so busy making everyone around you shine. No matter how far we hide in the shadows, you share your light. That’s how you stole my heart when no one else could find it.”
It hurts to breathe. “Nate.”
Steps sound outside the heavy bedroom doors. “The plane’s waiting, Crane.” Jamaal’s voice. “Time to head out.”
Nate ignores him and keeps his dark eyes locked on mine.
“You have to go.”
He holds me tight. “One more thing.”
“What?” I don’t know if I can handle anything else.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you for giving something I never thought I deserved. And for giving it without expectation or condition. You made me believe I was worth it.”
I shake my head, unsure of this metaphor. “My light?”
“Your love.” He drops his hands and steps back.
I gulp in air and watch him back toward the door. Turn the knob. Walk away.
When he shuts the door behind him, I race to the bathroom, turning on the shower full blast because I can’t stand the idea of letting him hear me cry.
I bite my fist to block the sobs, but they come anyway—thick and angry, ugly sobs of grief and self-pity. Because I don’t have to know anything else about Nate Crane to know I love him. And he just said goodbye.
When the mirror is obscured by steam, I peel off my sleep clothes and step under the spray, letting it pound against me. I close my eyes and imagine the water can wash away all my heartache, all my fears and confusion. I lean my head against the glass enclosure and let the tears come.
My body rocks with my sobs. They tear out of me like my body rejecting poison. I let them come, and I let the water wash them away until my breathing evens and my tears are gone.
I don’t know I’m not alone until hot, rough hands are on my bare shoulders, and Nate is turning me around.
“Nate,” I breathe.
He’s fully clothed, the water streaming down his face as he looks at me. “Why’d you have to forget?” Then his mouth is on mine, lips and tongue and teeth, taking and demanding and punishing.
I want this kiss too much to do anything but return it in kind. I suck at his lower lip and explore his mouth with my tongue. His taste is new and familiar all at once.
My hands go into his hair and I hold him close. I’m afraid he might disappear—that this might prove to be a hallucination—but he’s solid under my hands. Water pours over us as we devour each other’s mouths, and my hands find their way from his hair to his shoulders, his chest, and finally down to the hem of his shirt.
His mouth leaves mine just long enough for him to pull his shirt over his head and throw it to the shower floor. Then he’s stepping into me again. One leg between my thighs, he presses me against the wall as his mouth returns to mine.
His kiss is softer this time. Slower, sweeter, and less desperate. If he was feasting on me before, now he’s savoring me, and I let him. I savor him in return. The last sips of a precious bottle of wine, the last moments of a fleeting dream.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what this means for tomorrow or next week. Right now, I don’t care. I just need his hands on me, his taste on my tongue. I blindly grope for the button on his jeans. Releasing it, I shove them down his hips, and he kicks them away.
His hands grip my h*ps and he slides my body up the glass until my feet are off the ground and I’m resting on his thigh. The pressure is so perfect and so sweet. He rips his mouth from mine and moves to my neck as a hand cups my breast. I’m a mess of sensation and I don’t want it to end—the press of his thigh between my legs, the tease of his thumb against my nipple, the scrape of his mouth against my neck.
“I’ve missed this,” he murmurs.
Leaning my head back, I give up and let my eyes float shut. “What have you missed?”
“No, Hanna,” he growls. “Look at me. I want you to remember who’s touching you.”
I force my eyes open and am treated to the sight of his head dipping to my breast. “Oh God.” I should stop him. I shouldn’t let it go this far. We both know what this is. A stolen moment. An extended goodbye. But his teeth scrape my nipple, and instead of protesting, I’m arching into his mouth, urging him on.
He squeezes my breast and groans as he lifts his head and returns his eyes to mine. He flicks my earlobe with his tongue. “I’ve missed your taste.” He pinches my nipple between his fingers. “The way you cry out when I touch you.” He repositions me between himself and the wall until my thighs cradle the bulge of his erection. “I missed the heat of your pu**y when you’re turned on.”
We sit at the glass table in the sunroom, the slow morning rain tapping on the glass. I wish for clear skies and sunshine to warm my skin through the glass. I close my eyes for a minute, imagining it, the hope it normally makes me feel.
“I’m sorry, Hanna,” Nate says, and when I open my eyes, he’s watching me. “I know you love Max. I just…” His jaw works as he shifts his gaze to something beyond the glass. The bird bathing itself in the garden? Maybe something that can’t be seen.
“What do you want me to do?” My voice breaks on the question. I really want him to answer because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m putting us all through this painful holding pattern until I can get my mind straight. I’m just waiting, assuming the answer will come to me. Or am I really waiting for Nate to offer me more than he has?
His fork clatters against his plate and he shakes his head. “Nothing. I’m not asking anything from you. I’m not him.”
I close my eyes. It’s not fair to want a declaration of love from this man. He was upfront with me from the beginning. He’s not about the relationship, not about the forever.
Pushing back from the table, I stand up and head out to the patio. I stand under the awning and watch the rain dance on the water in the pool.
“It’s not you.” The sound of Nate’s voice sends a tremor of sadness through me. Because he’s never asked anything from me, but part of me wants him to. “You know that, right?” He stands next to me, head tilted back, eyes on the sky. “I can’t offer you more than this. Even when you deserve more. It’s not because I don’t want it. It’s because I made a promise to myself. To my son.”
Turning, I run my fingers across the date tattooed above his left pec. He told me the significance of that date the first night we met. It’s his son’s birthday. The day he says his world changed. “I never asked you for more, Nate.”
He grabs my fingers and squeezes them in his. “But you deserve it.”
“I’m a big girl. Let me decide what I deserve.”
“You deserve everything. Anything you could want.” His grip is nearly painful on my fingers, but I don’t pull away. I’m too worried he’ll stop talking. “But I’m not the man to give that to you. I can’t.”
You won’t, I think.
His eyes scan the dark and angry sky. “My dad left my mom when Janelle and I were eight. It always sucks for kids when their parents split, but he moved out of our house and into Jayda’s. She was already pregnant with his baby, and I remember when my stepsister was born. You should have seen my dad’s eyes when he looked at her. Like she was the most precious thing he’d ever been given. Then Jayda had a second child, and a third. He was so damn happy with them. For a while, he did his visitation with Janelle and me. We’d go over there on the weekends and every other holiday. But it was so painfully obvious that we were the other kids, the other family. We were an inconvenience. We were the mistake he had to deal with now that he’d finally found his real life.”
I understand how it feels when your parent lets you down, and my heart aches for him. “I’m so sorry.”
“By the time Collin was born, my relationship with his mother was already over. We were young, and we’d never been serious, but the first time I held him in my arms, his eyes locked on mine and I knew I couldn’t do to him what my father had done to me and Elle. I promised myself he would be my family. Even if his mom and I weren’t together. It didn’t matter. I promised I would never make him feel like he was second best.”
“You’re a great dad, Nate. You’d never make him feel like that.”
“It’s hard enough to be a kid to celebrity parents. I won’t pile that on too.” His hair falls into his face as he drops his head. “Collin is the most important thing in my life. I can’t give you more without taking something from him. I won’t do that.”
“I wish you’d quit making it seem like I’m asking for that.” My voice breaks because we both know I want more than this. Need more. A home. A life. Babies.
“What happens if we don’t end this, Hanna? You can’t be my mistress for the rest of my life. You can’t keep flying out here when I snap my fingers.” His face twists in disgust, and he steps away from me and into the rain. “Every time I say goodbye, I tell myself that’s it. That I’ll end it. Because you deserve that. But I’m weak and selfish as shit and keep calling you back because I can’t get enough of you.”
“What are you trying to say?”
He tilts his head to the sky and closes his eyes, letting the rain shower down on his face. I study the ridges of his strong back expanding as he breathes in and out.
I step into the rain and press my lips to the damp skin of his bare shoulder.
When he speaks, his question is so quietly murmured I can barely make it out over the rain in my ears. “Are you still in love with him?”
It’s my turn to tense. “I am.” I latch on to the best of my bravery and whisper, “But I’m in love with you too.”
“Don’t say that.”
I back away. Slowly at first and then fast. Then I’m turning and running. Back into the house, up the stairs.
I crawl under the covers still in my rain-dampened robe and curl into a ball on my side.
When I hear him pad into the room, I don’t roll over to look at him. When I feel the bed shift under his weight, I don’t open my eyes. And when his arms wrap around me from behind and he pulls me to his chest, I don’t say a word.
“I was in such an ugly, dark place the night we met. I looked into your eyes, and you were right there with me—my angel in the darkness. You saved me.” He buries his nose in my hair and inhales audibly. “You saved me and I love you.”
I draw in a gulp of air, but it enters my lungs with a sharp, painful edge.
“I think I’ve been in love with you since the night we met. And I know that sounds crazy and implausible—like one of those things the guy says when he’s trying to win the girl—but for me, it’s just true. I love you and I’m terrified that you’re going to ruin your life because of it.” His arms tighten around me and he presses a kiss to my shoulder. “I’m not telling you to take his ring. I honestly believe that if he were worthy of you, you wouldn’t be here with me. But don’t let me be the reason you don’t take the life you want.”
“What if you’re the life I want?”
His arms tighten around me and he presses his lips to my shoulder. “You’re asking me for something I can’t give.”
Present Day
Nate’s sitting on the edge of the big bed, elbows on his knees, studying the floor.
Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I push myself up and lean against the headboard. Next to me on the nightstand, my engagement ring stares back at me. I took it off last night. I should have left it at home. Ignoring it, I grab my phone to check the time. There’s another message.
Nix: Please call me soon!
“I’m sorry. I’ll get dressed and get out of here.” I scramble to the edge of the bed.
He stops me with a hand on my wrist. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod, trying for chipper, but I don’t feel it. “I’ll be fine.”
“You took off the ring.” He massages the back of his neck. “It’s over?”
“It needs to be. I don’t know how I’m supposed to move forward when what we have behind us hurts so much.”
He studies me, his eyes full of thoughts I can’t read and know he won’t share. “You can stay here as long as you want. Take some time. Think things through. Jamaal will be here. He’ll get you anything you need.”
I tuck my feet under me and sit next to him. He’s already dressed in dark jeans and a white button-up dress shirt. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I leave for Afghanistan this morning.”
A memory flickers. “You’re performing for the troops?”
“Yeah.”
“How long until you leave?”
He cuts his eyes to me and pushes off the bed. “My driver’s waiting out front.”
“Is this it? Is this…goodbye? For good?”
He closes his eyes. “It has to be. ”
I slide off the bed and touch my hand to his face. “How am I supposed to let you go?” I run my fingers along his jaw. “It’s the right thing to do, but—” My voice breaks.
He cups my jaw, his fingers sliding into my hair. “I know your memory isn’t the greatest right now,” he says. “So I’m going to tell you the things I need you to remember for me.”
“Okay.”
“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met.” He swallows and braves a tentative smile. “You’re like the sun—completely blind to your own beauty because you are so busy making everyone around you shine. No matter how far we hide in the shadows, you share your light. That’s how you stole my heart when no one else could find it.”
It hurts to breathe. “Nate.”
Steps sound outside the heavy bedroom doors. “The plane’s waiting, Crane.” Jamaal’s voice. “Time to head out.”
Nate ignores him and keeps his dark eyes locked on mine.
“You have to go.”
He holds me tight. “One more thing.”
“What?” I don’t know if I can handle anything else.
“Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you for giving something I never thought I deserved. And for giving it without expectation or condition. You made me believe I was worth it.”
I shake my head, unsure of this metaphor. “My light?”
“Your love.” He drops his hands and steps back.
I gulp in air and watch him back toward the door. Turn the knob. Walk away.
When he shuts the door behind him, I race to the bathroom, turning on the shower full blast because I can’t stand the idea of letting him hear me cry.
I bite my fist to block the sobs, but they come anyway—thick and angry, ugly sobs of grief and self-pity. Because I don’t have to know anything else about Nate Crane to know I love him. And he just said goodbye.
When the mirror is obscured by steam, I peel off my sleep clothes and step under the spray, letting it pound against me. I close my eyes and imagine the water can wash away all my heartache, all my fears and confusion. I lean my head against the glass enclosure and let the tears come.
My body rocks with my sobs. They tear out of me like my body rejecting poison. I let them come, and I let the water wash them away until my breathing evens and my tears are gone.
I don’t know I’m not alone until hot, rough hands are on my bare shoulders, and Nate is turning me around.
“Nate,” I breathe.
He’s fully clothed, the water streaming down his face as he looks at me. “Why’d you have to forget?” Then his mouth is on mine, lips and tongue and teeth, taking and demanding and punishing.
I want this kiss too much to do anything but return it in kind. I suck at his lower lip and explore his mouth with my tongue. His taste is new and familiar all at once.
My hands go into his hair and I hold him close. I’m afraid he might disappear—that this might prove to be a hallucination—but he’s solid under my hands. Water pours over us as we devour each other’s mouths, and my hands find their way from his hair to his shoulders, his chest, and finally down to the hem of his shirt.
His mouth leaves mine just long enough for him to pull his shirt over his head and throw it to the shower floor. Then he’s stepping into me again. One leg between my thighs, he presses me against the wall as his mouth returns to mine.
His kiss is softer this time. Slower, sweeter, and less desperate. If he was feasting on me before, now he’s savoring me, and I let him. I savor him in return. The last sips of a precious bottle of wine, the last moments of a fleeting dream.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what this means for tomorrow or next week. Right now, I don’t care. I just need his hands on me, his taste on my tongue. I blindly grope for the button on his jeans. Releasing it, I shove them down his hips, and he kicks them away.
His hands grip my h*ps and he slides my body up the glass until my feet are off the ground and I’m resting on his thigh. The pressure is so perfect and so sweet. He rips his mouth from mine and moves to my neck as a hand cups my breast. I’m a mess of sensation and I don’t want it to end—the press of his thigh between my legs, the tease of his thumb against my nipple, the scrape of his mouth against my neck.
“I’ve missed this,” he murmurs.
Leaning my head back, I give up and let my eyes float shut. “What have you missed?”
“No, Hanna,” he growls. “Look at me. I want you to remember who’s touching you.”
I force my eyes open and am treated to the sight of his head dipping to my breast. “Oh God.” I should stop him. I shouldn’t let it go this far. We both know what this is. A stolen moment. An extended goodbye. But his teeth scrape my nipple, and instead of protesting, I’m arching into his mouth, urging him on.
He squeezes my breast and groans as he lifts his head and returns his eyes to mine. He flicks my earlobe with his tongue. “I’ve missed your taste.” He pinches my nipple between his fingers. “The way you cry out when I touch you.” He repositions me between himself and the wall until my thighs cradle the bulge of his erection. “I missed the heat of your pu**y when you’re turned on.”
