Insecure (42 page)

She came to him. “Mace, what are you doing here?”

She held herself stiffly, made of reserve and control, all the softness he'd seen walled off, too precious to show to him. She gave him a cautious smile. He'd never needed words that made sense, that could move her, more.

“Is everything okay?” She put her hand to his arm and it triggered the recoil reaction again.

“You're with Alfie.” An accusation. Her expression collapsed.
Fuck
. He could rip his own tongue out, grind it to paste under his heel and sprinkle it over his own idiot head.

She dropped her hand, leaned away and wracked her spine to stand taller. “He's a friend.”

“You're still at the loft, you didn't move?” She frowned, adjusted the bag on her shoulder. If he'd cut out his voice box, he'd have done himself less harm. If she walked away it would be to the harsh heavy metal tune of his words. “You—”

“Stop.” Her voice was sharp. “You answer my question. Why are you here?”

His jaw clenched and refused to open, so he spoke from his heart instead. “I forgot something.”

She sucked in a stunned breath. “What did you forget?”

He'd finally found a place to start. The last time she'd asked him that he'd walked out on her. The question needed a different truth now. “I forgot how beautiful you are. I forgot everything Buster taught me about loving someone, choosing them above all else. I forgot how I need to hold you to sleep properly at night. I forgot what matters. I forgot to fight.”

“Oh Mace.” She turned her head away, but not before her eyes glassed over.

He thought of Buster and Don and what they'd lost, what he could still fight for. “I never forgot you. I never stopped loving you.”

Her eyes stayed down. He wanted to see them to know how much new harm he'd inflicted. “I saw your painting. I want to buy it.”

She looked up blinking in surprise. “It's not for sale.”

If she hated him, surely she'd want the painting gone from her sight. “It's incredible. It's a part of you and me I can take back.”

She collected herself, her features realigning around her self-control. “When do you go?”

He shook his head. “I don't. I quit.” He took a breath in and shoved it back out. “I came for you.”

“Oh my God, Mace, you can't quit.” Her starch cracked. She put her bag down. “I know from Jay how well you're doing, how huge this is. You can't quit. I gave you up so you could have this.” Her hand came up to her mouth. No chance to stop the words. And he adored their betrayal.

“I've given it up for you.”

The painting, the loft, they way she was dressed, her full name. She'd built a different life. Maybe it was one he'd fit. He'd accept whatever conditions she set. The wisp of that idea gave him confidence.

“You can't do that.”

“It's done. Your move, Princess.”

She gasped and followed it with a strained sigh that softened her posture.

He couldn't afford to let her regroup. “Yeah, that's what I called you. But you're not severe anymore. You didn't take a new job. You made a new life.”

She nodded. “I started my own consultancy. Wentworth is my first big client. I could've had my old career back, but in the end it was going to cost me more than I was prepared to give. My art, my friends...”

She looked away and he pressed his hands onto the smooth, cool glass behind him because the earth was spinning too fast and he felt like he might fly off into the forever blackness before he had the chance to grab hold of anything solid.

Her eyes came back to his and they saw his wild orbit for what it was, desperation, but also love, so much love. Her voice came soft. “Maybe it doesn't have to cost me so much anymore.”

A handhold in the maelstrom and a raging recall of their first time together. He put his fingertips to it. “Maybe an asteroid will wipe out the earth tomorrow.”

She closed her eyes and her chin dropped. “The world is so uncertain.”

She was the one true thing he needed to anchor him, but if he took hold of her too soon, she might spin away as well and then they'd both be lost. “You have to hug the people you love because you never know when you might lose them.”

“We'd have one night.”

“But it wouldn't be enough. Not nearly.” One night had been the end of everything before it. “I want to love you for a long, long time, Cinta. First, second, always, any way you'll let me.”

She stood in front of him, so close he could see the fine movement of the breeze through her hair. So close he could see the tremble in her eyelashes. But too far away to claim without permission.

“Is there room for a man who still loves you, above all else, in this new life of yours?”

She opened her eyes and the memory of the two of them on fire for each other shone there. “It's a monumentally stupid idea. You have a business to run.”

He remembered Don and his unending love for Buster. “The most wretched thing a man can do is be without the woman he loves. I can live without Ipseity, but I can't live without you.”

She shook her head, but her eyes glistened. “You have no sense of self-preservation.”

He dipped his head so it was closer to hers. “Apparently not.” In the space between them he could feel her tension, smell her indecision until it broke like the weather.

“Oh God, Mace, I was afraid of needing you, of taking you away from your dream. Of compromising on my own life. I never stopped wanting you.”

“You have me.” He let his hand stray towards her and she lifted hers so their flat palms met.

“You can't quit. It's the only way I'll let you love me.”

He shook his head, watched their hands. If she tried to pull away now he would grip her tight and hold her captive. “You'd be agreeing to come second and you deserve better. Because you were right about me having a mistress so I had to give her up.”

She separated her fingers to let him fold his over her hand. “There would need to be rules.” She lifted her other hand palm flat. “I'll wait for you and you won't make me wait too long.” He raised his hand to hers and they clasped. “I can work anywhere in the world and you'll run the damn air-conditioning too high in summer and you'll come to bed no matter how late every single night and hold me.”

“That's not—”

She shook their joined hands. “Do you really think Dillon will let you walk away? Do you really think I will?”

He gripped her hands and pulled and she stepped towards his body, taking the spin from his head, finally easing the roar. He wasn't going to risk her again, it was already done. “I chose you over Ipseity, over Dillon.”

“And I choose you, the same as I chose a life I was once too conditioned against, too scared to risk security on. But I want my business and my art and I want you to have Ipseity.” She took another step, broke their hands apart. “So you'd better get it back.”

He stared at her, while the gears in his head ground too slowly. She wanted him back, but with the circumstances she'd once rejected. “I don't understand.”

Her hand on the side of his face was a gesture that might have pushed him over. She brushed her finger over his eyebrow and he held still for fear any movement might shake her off.

“I want to capture you like this, Mace. Paint how beautiful you are, straining with your own greatness, honourable, awkward and shy, but so intense and unsure. I want to show you what that looks like to me, to the world.”

“I don't—”

She pressed her hand over his mouth. “But I do. You're so much more capable than you think. And so am I. It took losing everything I thought was important to teach me that. I have a life I like now, not one I thought I should have to prove a point. I have the chance to be an artist and if I fail, I'll have risked and learned and grown because of that. But though I tried, oh Mace, I tried so hard, I can't fill the space that is you and I can't have you without what makes you great, what makes you, you.”

She stepped away suddenly. He chased her with an outstretched arm. She took another step back. “Call him.”

“Now?” His head was thick with the sense of her, the depth of what she'd said.

“If there's an asteroid coming, and we only have one night, and you want to get lucky...” She flashed a sudden grin that fried his resistance. “Your decision.”

He was all out of understanding this, but he was good for following a prompt. He turned his phone on and dialled Dillon, waiting for him to answer with a bad taste in his mouth. He'd fucked Dillon over and he deserved whatever came next.

Dillon answered with a yawn. “You'd better have straightened your head out.” There was no fury in his tone, only the gravel of weariness.

He said, “Working on it,” while he marvelled at Dillon's equanimity, and watched Cinta, holding herself out of reach, holding out the promise of more happiness then he thought possible.

“There's a hole in the wall in the conference room.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm docking your pay to get it fixed.”

Dillon could have restraining orders and all manner of legal hell ready to rain down on him by now. “That assumes I'm still on the payroll.”

Another yawn. “If I could work out how to run this place without you, you'd be dead meat. Next time you flame out I'm not pulling the punch.”

Mace worked his tongue over his teeth, the taste of forgiveness sudden and clean, filling him with gratitude. “Don't think I'm going to need a next time.”

Dillon laughed. “There's always the possibility of a next time with you, dude. That's why you need me.”

He said, “Remind me why that is,” while he reached for Cinta.

Another yawn then, “Because I don't take your crap. Because Buster would turn angel, swoop down from heaven and fuck me up if I did.” Cinta came into his arms and he bent to kiss her forehead, in time to hear Dillon say, “Tell Jacinta I miss her. There's a seat next to yours on a private jet leaving tomorrow morning if she wants it. If you'd checked your messages you'd know that, you dickhead.”

No way to tell the guy what he was feeling. “Dillon. I—”

“I know, dude. Work it out with her and come back.” Dillon yawned again and disconnected.

Cinta had a fistful of his shirt. “Looks like you got your job back.”

“Looks like I got lucky.” But he'd done with lucky. He'd got lucky when he'd found Dillon, another oddball loner like him, lucky to have Buster as long as he did, lucky when Cinta hit on him and a one night stand became a life. But you couldn't bank on lucky, make plans on it and hold them to be true. So he was over lucky. It was every which way deliberate from here on in. He'd swap out luck for certainty, insecure for protected, that's what he had in her.

He kissed her then, firmly, deeply; holding her so no part of her was outside his reach. Telling her what he needed, what he'd give her in return, with his lips and his hands, and the shelter of his body. Showing her what she meant to him, and how he'd never make her choose, never let them drift, never love her without fighting for her too.

When he knew he'd pushed it too far, made it too graphic for a public street, he raised his head. He didn't want to leave, but he wasn't sure if this was too soon for her, they had rules to discuss, plans to settle, a full-on acquisition and merger to stage.

He watched her face looking for instructions. He found realised dreams and hot fantasies dancing in her eyes.

“I. Want. You. Mace.”

He was such a sure bet. From day one.

She caught his hand. “Now,” and pulled to drag him in the direction of the loft.

“Wait.” He reeled her back. “I want a package deal.”

She laughed. “Negotiating on a one night stand.” She ran both hands up his chest to clasp around his neck. “Impressive. Name your terms.”

Too easy, they tripped off his tongue. “You in my life every day, in my arms every night, till I no longer have the strength to hold you.”

Her breath caught.

“Know it won't be easy.” He ran his finger over the helix of her ear, cupped her head in his hand. “Fuck easy.”

Her eyes filled with tears. He'd stunned her speechless, that was a first. So he'd make it simple for her, for all the times she'd done that for him, let his actions stand in for words he found hard to say. “Jacinta, yes or no?”

He got his answer from her fractured sniffle, from her fingers pressed to his face and the shudder that ran through her.

And the touch of her lips to his was the loudest shouted yes, the boldest screamed promise, and the only commitment he'd ever needed to hear.

Thanks for reading
Insecure
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Floored, Detained
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Hooked on a Feeling.
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