On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [114]
The something in Devon’s eyes flared in satisfaction when she started to read him the riot act, as if he wanted her insults and anger, but by the end, as Lilah’s voice hitched and caught, Devon’s reaction changed, too. He leaned forward on the chaise, his fingers white-knuckled against his knees, and for a second, Lilah thought she might have gotten through to him.
“Christ, Lilah,” he said in a strangled voice. “I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry.”
That made her madder than almost anything else.
“You know what?” Lilah panted for a moment. “Screw your sorry. Tucker probably is better away from a self-absorbed egomaniac like you.”
The moment she said it, Lilah wanted to take it back. The look that crossed Devon’s face—she hoped she never saw that particular combination of acceptance and self-hatred again.
“You’d be better off, too,” he said after a second of staring at one another. “You want to pack your things? I can have Daniel do it and send them to you. I assume you’ll go to Grant’s.”
“I . . . hadn’t really thought about it,” Lilah said, her knees suddenly feeling wobbly. She practically collapsed onto the sofa. “I guess I will. Go to Grant’s.”
“Okay.” Devon looked calm, that smooth, unfeeling mask back in place, but Lilah thought she could see the brittleness of it now. He was just waiting for her to leave, trying to push her out the door before it shattered like a glass thrown at a wall.
“Devon,” she said. “What the heck is going on here?”
“I’m not in the mood for trick questions. Get your stuff and get out.”
“Not until I say good-bye to Tucker,” she retorted.
“Whatever.”
Lilah sat there in the pristine coolness of Devon’s bachelor pad and watched him grab a magazine at random and start flipping through it. His pose was a study in casual chic, but the rigid line of his shoulders gave him away.
“One day,” Lilah said into the stilted silence. “One day, maybe not too very far off, you’re going to wake up and realize you’re tired of being alone. And it’s going to be too late, Devon. You will have pushed away everyone who ever tried to love you. And you’ll be alone forever.”
“Cheery,” he said, eyes flickering. “Anything else?”
Lilah forced herself to stand, not sure her legs would take her weight when it felt like her entire body was made of straw. “I just want you to understand what’s happening here.”
His throat worked. “What’s that?”
She met his defiant blue gaze. “You’re throwing away your best chance at happiness. Like it’s garbage. And Devon? Take it from someone who’s been lucky enough to get one—second chances are few and far between.”
Devon didn’t move from the couch when she went to say her good-byes to Tucker, and he didn’t move when she came back, suspiciously red-eyed and blotchy, and let herself out the front door without a backward glance.
He felt the quiet click of the door closing behind her as viscerally as if she’d slammed it hard enough to shake the walls.
Devon sat in his quiet living room thinking about the fact that Adam and Miranda were flying home tomorrow. Back when he first agreed to helm the Market kitchen, Devon had offered to work that last Sunday-night service to give his travel-wrecked, jetlagged friends a chance to recover.
So he’d work one more dinner at Market, get a new nanny for Tucker, and in a couple of weeks, he’d be able to get back to his regularly scheduled life.
Huh. That should’ve felt more like a relief than a prison sentence.
Trying to ignore the knowledge that once Tucker left, too, his apartment would always be exactly this quiet and depressing, Devon took a stroll past his son’s closed bedroom door.
When a soft knock produced no answer, he cracked the door open and peered in, squinting to see in the darkened room.
There was no movement other than the steady rise and fall of the lump curled up beneath Tucker’s colorful dinosaur-print bedspread.
Devon stood there watching his son breathe and trying to remember how it felt to be able to just fall asleep at night, no tossing and turning, no second-guessing or regretting.
Lying in