One Wild Wedding Night_ Three-Way - Leslie Kelly [17]
“You okay?”
She nodded. “You?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
Oh, God. She sat up, shifted her legs to the side of the bed and prepared to stand, needing the floor beneath her and clothes on her body for the conversation she suspected was to come.
“Mia—” he ran a hand through his already bed-and-sex tousled hair “—wait.”
She hesitated.
“I know I won’t be okay if you get up and leave. Last night…”
“Was a fantasy come true,” she whispered. When he opened his mouth to interrupt, she added, “I know why you came here, I know why you set this whole thing up. And believe me, it worked. I won’t ever forget it and I know no man will ever make me feel what you made me feel last night.”
As if he heard the sadness in her voice, he slowly sat up. “That’s a bad thing?”
“Revenge is never a good thing.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, unable to deny what she already knew was true.
“But neither is cowardice,” she added. “And me leaving Pittsburgh the way I did was pure cowardice.”
His beautiful lips twisted into a frown. “Because I was too tame for you. Too nice, I think your voice mail said.”
Hearing the bitterness in his tone, Mia immediately reached for him, putting one hand on his arm. He allowed the contact. “I am so sorry. I know you think that’s why I left and what I meant. But it wasn’t.”
He remained motionless. “Then why?”
How to explain? How to tell him that she’d been trying to do what was best for him? That she’d misjudged him so completely as to think he’d end up with a broken heart—or worse, hating her—if they stayed together?
It was the ultimate irony. Because at that moment, knowing it was one of their last, Mia’s was the heart that felt utterly pulverized.
“You were better off without me because I’m a heartless bitch,” she finally admitted in a shaky whisper.
“Like hell…”
She held a hand up to stop him. “It’s true. I’m ambitious and cold and I often trample over other people’s feelings.”
A twinkle appeared in those green eyes. “I would agree with two of those. But cold? No. Definitely not. I’m still on fire for you.”
“I don’t mean sexually.”
“Neither do I,” he insisted.
“Brandon, the last man who loved me ended up hating me when all was said and done because he couldn’t keep up with me and I always had to be in control.”
“Then he was no man.”
She blinked.
“Relationships aren’t about control. And anyone who demands control doesn’t understand the beauty of occasionally surrendering it.” He bent and kissed her fingertips. “Like you did, last night.”
Oh, she’d most definitely surrendered control last night, let herself be pleasured in as many ways as she could.
“Loving someone is about trusting them enough to not be in a constant state of struggle. Who gives a damn about who decides which restaurant to go to or who pays for the popcorn or what color the new curtains should be? That’s not control, that’s pettiness.”
Good lord, it was as if he’d looked into a crystal ball and seen her past. The arguments he’d mentioned exactly described the final months she’d lived with her former lover.
“Couples who let the small shit tear them apart weren’t meant to be together, anyway. And they play the I Want/ You Want game to escape a relationship they know isn’t going to work.”
The man had a future as a therapist. Or a seer.
“People who are meant to be together rise above pettiness every single time, Mia.” He pulled her back down onto him, running his fingers through her hair, then cupping her face. “It’s yin and yang, give and take. Offering control and accepting pleasure. Compromise.”
She could say nothing, so she answered by brushing her lips across his. For the first time since last night, she began to sense that perhaps it wasn’t too late for her to fix the mistake she’d made in pushing him away for his own good.
But he didn’t respond by kissing her back. Instead, he frowned lightly and added, “I