Miles pushes open his apartment door. “I haven’t been home yet,” he says. He turns around and grabs his things from the hallway, then holds the door open for me.
“You came to my apartment first?”
He nods, then tosses his duffel bag onto the couch and pushes his suitcase against the wall. “Yep,” he says. He grabs my hand and pulls me to him. “I told you, Tate. Haven’t thought about anything else.” He smiles and lowers his head to kiss me.
I laugh. “Aw, you missed me,” I say teasingly.
He pulls back. You would think I’d just told him I loved him with the way his body tenses up.
“Relax,” I say. “You’re allowed to miss me, Miles. It doesn’t break your rules.”
He backs up a few steps. “You thirsty?” he asks, changing the subject like he always does. He turns and heads toward the kitchen, but everything about him just changed. His demeanor, his smile, his excitement over finally seeing me after ten days.
I stand in the living room and watch it all crumble.
I’m hit by a reality check, but it feels more like a meteor.
This man can’t even admit that he misses me.
I’ve been holding out hope that if I take it slowly enough with him, he’ll eventually break through whatever it is that’s holding him back. The entire past few months, I’ve been under the assumption that maybe he just can’t handle the way things have developed between us and he needs time, but it’s clear now. It’s not him.
It’s me.
I’m the one who can’t handle this thing between us.
“You okay?” Miles says from the kitchen. He walks out from behind the obstructed view of the cabinets so he can see me. He waits for me to answer him, but I can’t.
“Did you miss me, Miles?”
And up comes the armor again, shielding him. He looks away and walks back into the kitchen. “We don’t say things like that, Tate,” he says. The hardness is back in his voice.
Is he serious?
“We don’t?” I take a few steps toward the kitchen. “Miles. It’s a common phrase. It doesn’t mean commitment. It doesn’t even mean love. Friends say it to friends.”
He leans against the bar in the kitchen and calmly looks up at me. “But we were never friends. And I don’t want to break your one and only rule by giving you false hope, so I’m not saying it.”
I can’t explain what happens to me, because I don’t know. But it’s as if every single thing he’s ever said and done that’s hurt me impales me all at once. I want to scream at him. I want to hate him. I want to know what the hell happened that made him capable of saying things that can hurt me more than any other words have ever come close to doing.
I’m tired of treading water.
I’m tired of pretending it’s not killing me to want to know everything about him.
I’m tired of pretending he’s not everywhere. Everything. My only thing.
“What did she do to you?” I whisper.
“Don’t,” he says. The word is a warning. A threat.
I’m so tired of seeing the pain in his eyes and not knowing the reason for it. I’m tired of not knowing what words are off-limits with him.
“Tell me.”
He looks away from me. “Go home, Tate.” He turns around and grips the edge of the counter, dropping his head between his shoulders.
“Fuck you.” I turn and exit the kitchen. When I reach the living room, I hear him coming after me, so I speed up. I make it to the front door and open it, but his palm meets the door above my head, and he slams it shut.
I squeeze my eyes tightly, bracing for whatever words are about to completely slay me, because I know they will.
His face is right next to my ear, and his chest is pressed against my back. “That’s what we’ve been doing, Tate. Fucking. I’ve made that clear from day one.”
I laugh, because I don’t know what else to do. I turn around and look up at him. He doesn’t back away, and he’s so much more intimidating in this moment than I’ve ever seen him be before.
“You think you’ve made that clear?” I ask him. “You are so full of shit, Miles.”
He still doesn’t move, but his jaw tenses. “How have I not been clear? Two rules. Can’t get any simpler than that.”
I laugh incredulously, then get everything off my chest at once. “There’s a huge difference between fucking someone and making love to them. You haven’t fucked me in more than a month. Every time you’re inside me, you’re making love to me. I can see it in the way you look at me. You miss me when we aren’t together. You think about me all the time. You can’t even wait ten seconds to walk in your own front door before coming to see me. So don’t you dare try to tell me you’ve been clear from day one, because you are the murkiest goddamn man I’ve ever met.”
I breathe.
I breathe for the first time in what feels like a month.
He can do what he wants with all that. I’m done trying.
He blows out a steady, controlled breath while he backs several steps away from me. He winces and turns around as if he doesn’t want me to read the emotions that are obviously present somewhere deep within him. His hands grip the back of his neck tightly, and he remains in this position for a solid minute without moving. He begins to blow out steady breath after steady breath, as if he’s doing everything in his power to pull himself together and not cry. My heart begins to ache when I realize what’s happening.
He’s breaking.
“Oh, God,” he whispers. His voice is completely pain-ridden. “What am I doing to you, Tate?”
He walks to the wall and falls against it, then slides to the floor. His knees come up, and he rests his elbows on them, covering his face with his hands to stop his emotions. His shoulders begin to shake, but he’s not making a sound.
He’s crying.
Miles Archer is crying.
It’s the same heart-wrenching cry that came from him the night I met him.
This grown man, this wall of intimidation, this solid veil of armor, he’s completely crumbling right in front of my eyes.
“Miles?” I whisper. My voice is weak compared with his massive silence. I walk to him and lower myself to my knees in front of him. I wrap my arm around his shoulders and lower my head to his.
I don’t ask him what’s wrong again, because now I’m terrified to know.
chapter thirty-two
MILES
Six years earlier
Lisa loves Clayton.
My dad loves Clayton.
Clayton fixes families.
He’s already my hero, and he’s only two days old.
Shortly after my dad and Lisa leave, Ian arrives. He says he doesn’t want to hold Clayton, but Rachel makes him. He’s uncomfortable, because he’s never held a baby before, but he holds him.
“Thank God he looks like Rachel,” Ian says.
I agree with him.
Ian asks Rachel if I ever told her what I said to him after I met her.
I don’t know what he’s talking about.
Ian laughs.
“After he walked you to class that first day, he took a picture of you from his seat,” Ian tells her. “He texted it to me and said, ‘She’s gonna have all my babies.’ ”