Beautiful Secret (Beautiful Bastard #4) (25 page)

Being back in the States didn’t mean my responsibilities back in England had lessened. In the time I wasn’t with Niall, I had to put in extra hours. My coursework was finished, but if I hoped to get into Professor Sheffield’s program in the fall, I had some catching up to do. Nothing could suffer at this stage, which was exactly why, at the end of the day, I decided to opt out of a group dinner that night, even if it would have meant time with Niall.

As the global lead on the team, Niall couldn’t back out. So, with a small, apologetic glance in my direction, he told everyone he would meet them in a half hour at the restaurant.

I moved to the elevator and shivered a little when he came in behind me. We’d been able to spend nearly every second together the past couple of weeks but would be apart tonight. I felt a little petulant in my unwillingness to share.

“All right?” he asked quietly as a few other people came in after us.

“I’m good.” I smiled at him over my shoulder.
“Just need to be an adult for a few hours and feeling bratty about it.”

He couldn’t exactly kiss me or do anything even mildly physically reassuring. It was just that everything still felt so precarious. Our relationship was starting to feel like a towering house of cards, and in a way I understood why he was inclined to take the physical side of things slowly: there was no established
us
yet. No moments where I felt like,
wow, this guy is totally my boyfriend
.

There was also a tiny part of me that suspected I’d complicated his thoughts further by telling him about Paul. I was being truthful when I said I still thought about what happened from time to time, but what I gathered most from those moments was a sense of pride that I had worked through it, and that I hadn’t let it dictate how I felt about myself or who I would be. I needed to make sure he knew that.

“You’ll be at the hotel working?” he asked.

I nodded and he followed me out of the building. “I’ll walk you there.”

Smiling up at him, I whispered, “Thanks.”

Cabs jerked past us, honking. The cold March wind seemed to lash us with sharp fingertips. Niall put an arm around me, awkwardly maneuvering us through the crowd, bending to speak close to my ear. “If I ever forget to tell you, it helps me immeasurably that you’re so honest. For the record, I don’t think you’re being bratty. I’m pouting on the inside.”

And like that, butterflies. Lots of them.

We chatted about the meeting, about what was coming up in the summit over the next few days. He held my hand and I realized with some pride that I’d grown accustomed to his long strides; we walked easily in tandem. But there was still the
thing
between us.

“You wanted honesty?” I whispered during the elevator ride in the hotel, using the excuse to lean into him.

“Yes.”

I tilted my head to look up at his face. “Was today too fast?”

He swallowed, immediately understanding. “Maybe a bit. But I’m not sure I wanted to stop you, or whether I could have.”

I closed my eyes, feeling faintly sick.

“Or whether I
should
have,” he added quietly, placing his finger under my chin to turn my face back up to his. “Ruby, it was amazing.”

I nodded, forcing a smile. “Will you come by my room later? When you’re back from dinner?”

He looked at me for a long moment, eyes meeting mine and holding there, and then he nodded in agreement, bending to kiss me once, sweetly.

“Let yourself in, if you want to,” I said, placing my extra keycard in his hand. “I have a ton to do so I may be up all night or . . . who knows, maybe I’ll fall asleep at the desk in a puddle of my own drool.”

He laughed and I adored him so much in that moment
it was like a punch to my stomach. With one more kiss to my lips, he slipped the key into his pocket. I got out of the elevator at our floor and waved, watching him disappear between the closing doors.

I woke to the electronic sound of a lock turning, to a slice of light that cut across the room and was swallowed behind the closing door. Just like I’d told him, I worked until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, dragging myself away from the desk just long enough to undress and throw on a T-shirt before climbing into bed.

The door closed and I watched Niall’s silhouette move in front of the window, quietly slipping out of its jacket and shirt before taking a seat near my feet. I felt the mattress dip with his weight, and waited for him to say something. The silence ticked on right along with his watch again before he spoke.

“You awake?” he whispered into the darkness. The stillness in the room knotted my stomach. What had happened after I’d left him in the elevator? Had he spent the night thinking and overthinking and second-guessing what was happening between us? I felt frozen in place, my words locked in my chest, and wondered briefly what would happen if I didn’t answer. Would he crawl into bed and wrap himself around me? Or would he stand, redressing before heading back to his room?
I was afraid to find out.

“Ruby?”

“What time is it?” I asked finally.

“Around one.”

I sat up, pulling my knees to my chest. “Are you just getting back?”

“No,” he said, and though I couldn’t see his face or the expression that accompanied it, I saw him run a hand through his hair. “I’ve been sitting downstairs for the last two hours.”

My heart pounded and I wasn’t sure if the darkness was a blessing or a curse. He’d been downstairs for two hours? “Why?”

He laughed a little dryly. “I’ve been thinking about what we did earlier.”

“Oh.”

“You’re not surprised?”

I pushed the hair from my face and wondered how honest I should be. “I think I’d be more surprised if you weren’t.”

“Am I that predictable?”

“I’d say
consistent
,” I told him. Silence stretched between us until I couldn’t take it anymore. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He stayed quiet for a moment before I sensed him nodding. “I think so. Yeah.”

I smiled into the darkness, realizing what a leap this was for him.

“I was thinking about how confusing this must be for
you. And how I’ve probably got you turned upside down with mixed messages about our physical relationship.” He paused and took my hand in his, brushing a fingertip over my palm to stop at my wrist.

“I told you I wanted to take things slowly, and then . . .” He turned, pulling his knee up onto the mattress to fully face me. “And then I reacted how I did, put the lipstick on you . . .”

“I didn’t mind that,” I admitted. “I know we can’t always script these things. Sometimes you might do something in the heat of the moment and then find yourself questioning it later. As long as we’re honest with each other, I don’t think there’s any right or wrong way for this to go.”

He considered me for a moment before offering a simple, “Thank you.”

“And you’re not the only one who has a tendency to overthink things,” I told him. “I might just be better at blurting things out or running ahead.”

“That actually makes me feel better.”

There was a beat of silence. “As long as we’re being honest, can I ask you a question?”

He squeezed my hand. “Of course, darling.”

“Does part of you wanting to go slow have to do with what I told you last night?”

He was silent for another moment and I felt him shift on the mattress.

“After what he did to you,”
he said, “I feel like I
should
be—”

“I need you to stop right there,” I said. I was right. It wasn’t just about his hesitation to dive in; he didn’t want to rush
me
, either. “I told you what happened with Paul because I trust you, and because you
asked
. I want you to have an idea of the pieces that make me who I am, just like I want to know about you. What happened to me will never go away, because it’s a part of my past, but I don’t want you to handle me differently because of it. I’m not delicate and I don’t need you to be careful with me. Not like that. You need to trust me to tell you where my limits are, just like I need you to tell me yours.”

He leaned forward, rubbing his hands over his face. “That’s just it, though. I feel so out of my depth,” he said. “That we can so readily communicate these things is still a bit of a revelation. My marriage was a lonely place, for both of us, I’m sure,” he added quickly. “And I’m terrified that that wasn’t just a Niall and Portia thing, that it’s
me
. I know I don’t say enough and what if y—
someone
, tires of having to pull every little thing from me?”

“Niall—”

“And what if after the rush of conquest wears off, you’ll realize that I’m not what you’ve built me up to be? I . . . I’m not quite sure how I’d deal with that.”

“I know how different we can be in that way,” I told him. “You feel like you don’t share enough and I’m the opposite.” He laughed, reaching out to brush the backs of his fingers along my cheek. “And if we’re being honest here, it
is
frustrating when I have to try and decipher
what you’re thinking. Like this morning? I’m not saying I’d need to be privy to every thought in a man’s head . . . but I do need someone who can talk to me. Who can step outside their comfort level and meet me halfway. I want that for myself.”

The room filled with a silence so heavy it was like a third person, towering above us.

Those moments where I’m trying to decipher his thoughts? This was one of them. Then it hit me and I wondered if I needed to take his insecurity into account, and clarify that when I said
someone
, what I meant was
him
.

But Niall seemed to be ready to take a leap. Leaning forward, he pulled me by the back of my neck so that our foreheads pressed together.

“I’ll try,” he said. “For you, I’ll try.”

I’d truly never known a woman like Ruby. Instead of needing giant leaps to prove my commitment, over the next week she seemed to revel more in the small things: the pressure of my palm on her lower back while we waited on the subway platform, a lingering glance while queuing for lunch at a street vendor, doing nothing more than kissing for hours at sunrise. But while our physical relationship seemed to have taken a few calming steps backward, she never pressed, and she never asked me to explain myself beyond what I’d told her that night in her hotel room.

I
did
want to try. Knowing that, she seemed content to simply be near me.

Ruby surprised me in other ways, as well. She was smart, far smarter than I’d initially given her credit for, and absorbed details like it was some sort of superpower. I was a note taker myself, and could usually gather any piece of information needed quickly enough when called upon, but over the following week I was blown away on more than one
occasion when a question was posed during a meeting and Ruby would pull the answer seemingly out of thin air. It was truly remarkable.

We fell into a rather easy routine of work and meals, and at night an unspoken ritual of pillow talk in between kisses until we were nothing but mumbles and nonsense and her soft sweet skin curled around me as we fell asleep. It was a flash of a fantasy life—I suspected we both knew it—where we lived in a gorgeous hotel, ate wherever we wanted, and could spend the entire workday as a couple, out in the open, managing quite functionally together.

So it was odd to find myself deep in a Tuesday without having seen Ruby once since she’d left my room early that morning. I’d been in an endless loop of discussions and conference calls to wrap up the first phase of the summit. From here until we left for London, my days would be far more relaxed than they had been, since I would essentially just be on call. I both feared and welcomed it. On the one hand, I wanted more freedom in my daytime hours to ponder everything that was happening between us. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure that I needed more time in my own head thinking about this new relationship, its stark difference to my life before, and how I would manage this abrupt change in my life when we returned to London.

Finally Ruby found me in the hall, talking to one of the city’s head engineers. In my peripheral vision I could see her waiting to talk, and it seemed to me she was practically
vibrating where she stood. When I said goodbye to Kendrick and he’d stepped away, she lifted her hand from where she’d hid it behind her back.

Clutched in her fist were two tickets.

“What is this?” I asked, pulling one loose from her grasp.

Bitter Dusk, Bowery Ballroom, 8:30pm March 29
.

A concert, scheduled for tonight?

“What is this?” I asked again, looking up at her enormous grin. Surely she didn’t expect me . . .

She turned to start walking toward the lift, pushing the down button. “It’s the concert I was telling you about. By
huge
coincidence, it is also what we’re doing tonight.”

I winced a little, already imagining a roomful of sweaty bodies, rocking and swaying next to me, pressing into us as loud, screeching guitars assaulted our ears. “Ruby, I really don’t think this is my thing.”