Читать книгу The Billionaire's Fantasy - Part 3 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 7

JAIVEN RODRIGUEZ’S EXPRESSION looked remarkably like remorse. Guilt, even, which Louise Jensen hadn’t been expecting. Although in all honesty she hadn’t known what to expect from Jaiven. He’d surprised her in so many ways, good and definitely bad. Now his face was serious, without even the hint of a smile, and all she could do was stare.

He spoke first. “I’d like to talk to you.”

She swallowed drily. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Jaiven.”

“I’d like to explain—”

“Explain?” she repeated disbelievingly, and regret flashed across Jaiven’s face.

“Apologize,” he amended quietly, and Louise felt the first crack in her armor. No, she would not cave. She wouldn’t accept his so-called apology.

“No.” She shook her head, slung her bag over her shoulder. “I don’t want to hear anything from you, Jaiven. Not even an apology.”

“Please, Louise.”

He’d said please before, and she’d crumbled, let him back into her home and her body, all under the guise of thinking she was actually being strong. As if. But she’d be strong now. She’d try. “How did you even get in here?” she demanded. “The academic buildings are all locked.”

He shrugged. “Someone held the door.”

“Just like you got into my building.” She shook her head, fumbling with the buckles on her bag. “This is why campuses aren’t safe for women,” she snapped. “Men like you can rely on your questionable charm to get in and force a confrontation.”

He flinched, but then composed himself, his expression ironing out. “The other night I actually wasn’t trying to force a confrontation.”

“Oh, really?” She gave him as scathing a look as she could muster. “Well, it sure as hell felt that way to me.”

And yet she’d been the one to return his kiss. To let him into her apartment. Into her bed. She’d allowed her own humiliation, and while she blamed him for instigating it, she also blamed herself. Classic victim behavior, and yet she didn’t even know if she could call herself a victim this time. She’d been trying to prove something, after all. She’d been using him, just as he’d been using her.

She’d just been the one to get hurt.

“Will you talk to me? Listen to me, at least?” he asked in a low voice.

She met his gaze directly. “If I do, will you leave me alone?”

“Yes.”

She believed him. She also felt a twist of disappointment because she still missed him, despite what he’d done. She missed what he’d made her feel, before it had all gone so wrong. The knowledge made her feel even worse.

“Fine,” she said. “What do you want to say?”

“Can we go somewhere? Grab a coffee?”

She shrugged her assent. She just felt tired now, tired and dispirited. Wordlessly she left the hall, and Jaiven followed her. She took him to a coffee shop near Columbia’s campus, an old-fashioned place with scarred tables and vinyl chairs, the coffee served thick and steaming in plain ceramic mugs.

“So.” She dumped a spoonful of sugar in hers even though she’d cut out sugar in coffee years ago. She needed the hit now. “What do you want to say to me?”

“I’m sorry.”

She looked up, her anger and hurt like a lump of lead inside her, heavy and toxic. “For what exactly, Jaiven?”

Color slashed his cheekbones, surprising her. Jaiven Rodriguez could actually blush. “For—for the other night,” he clarified in a low voice. She didn’t answer, and he stared down at his coffee for a moment, his expression shadowed. Then he looked up, resolute. “I treated you badly, Louise, really badly, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have been so angry. Shouldn’t have made you admit—” He let out a low breath. “All of it.” The color on his cheeks deepened and Louise knew she should feel something. Gratified or vindicated, at least justified. Instead she just felt empty, and still so very tired.

“You might have pushed but I let you. I wanted you. You knew that without me even having to say it.” Bitterness spiked her words and she looked away.

“I know, and I used it to my advantage.” Jaiven turned his coffee mug around and around between his big hands. “I’ve never treated a woman that way before.”

Somehow this stung. She turned back to him with a humorless smile. “So you reserved that special honor for me?”

“I’ve never been so angry about a woman before.” His mouth quirked in a bleak smile that held no humor at all.

“So why were you so angry, Jaiven?” And suddenly her emptiness was filled; her tiredness swept aside as tears stung her eyes. She blinked rapidly. “Why did you want to…humiliate me?” Her throat thickened and she blinked again.

“I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking clearly. That’s not an excuse, it’s not meant to be an excuse, but I didn’t come to your place intending…” He closed his eyes. “I know you won’t believe this, but I came over to tell you something else.”

“Something else?”

“That I…” He shook his head, his expression turning grimly resolute. “It doesn’t matter now. But when you called it off with no warning…as you know, I was angry. I wasn’t ready to—”

“Oh, so your ego was a little bruised, was it?” Louise cut him off, her voice hardening. Anger was so much better, so much stronger, than hurt or shame. “Couldn’t take a woman being the one to walk away? For once you were the who got loved and left.” She shook her head in disgust. “You’re such an ass.” She rose, filled with fury, and Jaiven reached over to grab her wrist. She glared at him, her body ramrod straight, and when she spoke her voice was icy.

“Get your hands off me.”

“Please, Louise. Just hear me out. This wasn’t just about who walked away first. Not for me.”

She just glared at him, her body nearly vibrating with tension, and after a second Jaiven released her wrist and sat back in his chair, palms up, reminding Louise of the way you’d back away from a wild animal.

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. And sat down again. “Fine. What was it about then, Jaiven?” She folded her arms and stared at him.

Jaiven stared back, his expression resolute. “It was about starting to care. About you.” Louise’s mind reeled. He cared about her? Or was he just feeding her a line, trying to justify his pathetic actions?

You’ve been here before, Louise. You’ve been here before and it’s not pretty.

Wearily she shook her head. “You don’t even know me, Jaiven. Not really. And if that’s the way you treat people you care about…” She gave a hollow laugh, letting the sentence remain unfinished.

“I know more than you think. More than I even realized. The sex was just supposed to be sex but somehow it got to me. And I started knowing you through it, if that makes any sense.”

And amazingly, it did, because she’d started feeling the same way. Even if she hadn’t wanted to. “So why didn’t you tell me that the other night?”

“I tried—”

“Not very hard.”

“You ended it before I could say anything—”

“You were pissed off before I said anything,” Louise snapped. “You were angry about something before I even got back home, Jaiven. I could feel it.”

He stared at her for a moment, and then he let out a long, weary sigh of acknowledgment. “You’re right. Because I didn’t want to care about someone again, and I knew that I did.”

Louise’s heart seemed to still. “Again?”

Jaiven shrugged dismissively. “Who hasn’t had their heart broken?” Louise didn’t answer and he raked a hand through his hair. “I’m not claiming I’ve cornered the market on broken hearts. Just about anyone could give the same kind of sob story. It’s no big deal, and it doesn’t excuse what I did. Nothing does.”

“Okay,” Louise said after a moment. She was still trying to absorb everything Jaiven had just told her. She’d never, ever expected this kind of emotion from him. This intimate, soul-baring honesty.

“What I’m trying to explain,” he continued, his teeth gritted because this soul-baring honesty clearly wasn’t easy, “is that I fell into feeling something I hadn’t expected, and it took me by surprise. I was working up the courage to say something to you when you called it off, and…” He shrugged. “I didn’t take that so well. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Louise repeated. She stared at him, searching his face, wondering just what he wasn’t saying, because she knew instinctively there was something. This wasn’t just about some broken relationship. She knew Jaiven enough—well, maybe—to feel that something more was going on behind his bleak expression. She just had no idea what it was.

He drained his coffee cup before pushing it away. “I acted like a complete asshole and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” He gave her a bleak smile. “I won’t bother you again.”

Louise’s throat tightened and she stared down at her coffee. And while part of her wanted to accept his apology and walk away, another part knew she couldn’t leave it there. It wasn’t fair to either of them, and it wouldn’t be the whole truth. “You’re not the only one saddled with some sad history, Jaiven,” she said quietly. “That night brought up some ghosts from my past, too.” She took a deep breath. “Which is why I was so upset.”

He didn’t speak for a moment and she couldn’t look at him. “You want to tell me about it?” he asked eventually.

She shook her head. “Not particularly. You spared me your details and so I’ll spare you mine. It was a bad relationship, through and through, and I’m not proud of the way I acted. The way I let him treat me.” And that was all she’d ever say about that. She had no intention of telling Jaiven about Jack, or how she’d been with Jack. She never wanted to admit to so much humiliation.

“Then I’m sorrier than ever,” Jaiven said after a moment, “if I brought back bad memories by what I did.”

Louise just nodded jerkily; she didn’t trust herself to speak just then. She was afraid if she so much as blinked she’d start to cry. She’d tell Jaiven all sorts of things she couldn’t bear for him to know.

Jaiven leaned forward, his expression turning fierce. “Tell me,” he asked in a low, ragged voice, “how I can make it better. Make it right. I still care about you, Louise. I know I messed up but if you gave me a second chance, I’d take it. I wouldn’t blow it this time, I swear.”

He touched her hand, the weight of his own solid and comforting. She wanted to lean into that hand, into that body, and have him envelop her in his strength. And she wanted more than that; she wanted to learn more about this man and find out what could happen between them. She wanted it terribly and yet she knew too much had already happened. Too much sordid history. Too much pain.

She couldn’t go back to what they’d had, and there was no way forward.

So instead she blinked. A tear fell and tracked its way down her cheek as she slowly shook her head. “You can’t, Jaiven. I’m sorry, but you can’t.”