Apart of me wanted to pretend that Naomi and I’d had the conversation and we were done. But I was a thirty-three-year-old grown-ass man, so I knew that I had to actually have the fucking conversation with her before it was done.

I was also hoping against hope, despite what I knew about her, despite seeing the hurt in her eyes that night at Maison, that she’d agree to continue as we were, casual fuck buddies, because I hadn’t fucked udine that night—or anyone else—for two weeks now.

I’d seen Naomi here and there, and she’d smiled at me. Yeah, fucking smiled like I didn’t matter—that she didn’t care that we were done. Here, I was more ornery than I’d been when I quit smoking, and the woman behaved like I hadn’t mattered.

I could still hear her breathless words: I love you.

I ran a hand through my hair as I stood outside of Aire Noire, her lingerie store. Every time I’d been there, while we were together, I’d insisted on buying something for her and then made her wear it for me so I could slowly peel it off her body, enjoy unwrapping her.

Would she ever let me do that again?

Probably not.

Or maybe she got the point I was trying to make—nomitment, just sex andpanionship. But even I couldn’t look past what I knew about her. Naomi wasn’t frivolous. If she said she loved me, she fucking meant it.

The idea that she loved me filled me with fear and panic. Inundated me with ufortable fucking feelings that I didn’t entertain.

I opened the door and heard the pleasant chimes.

She was talking to a customer, handing the woman, who looked like a tourist, a bag.

She looked at me, and I saw it in her eyes: apprehension, anxiety, sadness, and fear. She knew why I was here, and she wasn’t looking forward to it any more than I was.

Now, I wished I hadn’t ghosted her after she’d said those damn words because then it wouldn’t have been on me to seek her out and sort this shit that she’d dumped on me.

What part of this isn’t a fucking rtionship did she not get?

I’d told her from the start, hadn’t I?

Now she’d gone and done the one thing I fucking hated—caught feelings. Said them out loud. And that left me two options: cut her loose, or ask her to stick around and pretend her heart wasn’t on the line.

Neither felt right.

Because as I looked at her in that white cotton dress—soft, simple, like some damn sacrificeid out on the altar—I didn’t just want to be near her. I wanted back in her. Back with her.

The customer left, and Naomi followed her to the door.

I waited by the register, which she’d set on an antique table that looked like it came straight out of a Parisian atelier.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed the craftsmanship—hand-carved cabriole legs, aged rosewood, the type of joinery you didn’t see outside the 1800s—but I did.

Hell, the thing might’ve been a genuine Louis XV piece. Naomi told me she bought it because it was beautiful, and she’d ced it because it felt like it belonged with her silks and feathers and the soft jazz ying in the background.

She put up the closed sign on the door and leaned against it, watching me.

“Hey,” she murmured.

“Naomi.”

“So?”

I gritted my teeth. “I know it’s been a minute.”

No shit, Sherlock!

“Yes, it has.” She straightened and then walked to me. She looked tired, and there was a resignation in her eyes that I hated.

Naomi was one of the most positive people I knew. She always managed a smile, no matter what the situation was. She raised the warmth in the room by walking into it. She took care of people and cheered them up.

“I…I’ve been busy.” I stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets, feeling uneasy.

I’d done this before. Ended things with a woman who wanted more, and I’d felt absolutely nothing but relief.

But not this time.

My gut was in knots, telling me that this was the wrong move—that I needed to find another way to handle the situation.

My dick told me that it wanted her, just like it had told me it didn’t want udine or the womanst night at Bar Tonique who’d been hitting on me like men were going to be extinct within twenty-four hours.

Naomi stood in front of me and put a hand on my chest. She gave me a small smile.

“I’m sorry, Gage.”

Say what?

“I know…I know I crossed a line.” She dropped her hand at the same time as I yanked mine out of my pockets, feeling like I needed support to not fall through the cracks in the floor.

Was she kidding me? The women in my past would yell and scream at me, tell me I’d taken advantage of them, and Naomi was fucking apologizing to me?

“It’s forgotten,” I lied to her.

She tilted her head. “Is it?”

I shrugged. Maybe this was a good thing. I’d tell her it was all in the past, and we could continue as we were. I’d take her upstairs to her apartment and sink into her tight, wet heat—hear her moans and her cries as she came, let myself float in her warmth.

She gave me a measured look. “I guess this is it then.”

I arched an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

She took a step away from me. I immediately missed the smell that was all her.

Orange blossoms.

Fresh.

Clean.

Sexy.

“You came to tell me it was over, and I’m….” She paused and took a deep breath. “And I’m just pre-empting that.” She chuckled. “So, I can pretend to hold on to my pride.”

Her candor, as always, undid me. She was honest about how she felt and who she was.

It was enchanting.

“Maybe I’m not here to say it’s over,” I taunted.

I didn’t want us to be over. I wanted to spend time with her, be with her, just keep doing what we were.

Why the fuck did she have to say those sted three words and ruin the best fucking casual affair I’d ever had?

Her eyes widened. “You’re not?”

“Let’s forget what you said and move past that, yeah?”

She gave me a perplexed look.

“We can just keep doing what we were.”

She looked confused now, and I didn’t like it one bit.

“Gage,” she whispered. “I’m in love with you, baby.”

The words struck me like a hammer. Stole my breath away.

“You don’t love me,” I remarked flippantly. “You’re just infatuated with my dick and started to make up?—”

“Gage, I know who I am,” she cut me off, her voice gentle. “I know how I feel. I know you know that too, which is why you”—her breath hitched—“brought a date to Maison after ignoring me for two days.”

She bit her bottom lip, eyes clouded.

My eyes lingered on her as my mind searched for the right response. “Baby, I never said we were exclusive.”

Her eyes gentled as she looked at me. “I know.” Her head moved in a slow, solemn nod. “Ah…were you before? Did you that night?” She swallowed, and I saw it—the agony in her eyes as she waited for me to respond.

“What is it that you want me to say?” I demanded, letting irritation ride me.

Why was sheplicating this shit?

Fuck this! No woman was worth all this drama.

She lifted her shoulders in a helpless gesture. “The truth. Were you sleeping with other people while we were…you know…together?”

“Baby, you and I had a thing; we were not together…and as I said before, it wasn’t exclusive.”

Her eyes filled with emotion. I wanted to scream at her for being so na?ve, for having feelings for an asshole like me—for letting me see how I affected her.

Didn’t she have any sense of self-preservation?

“So…that woman at Maison…she wasn’t the first,” she said as if she were talking to herself.

I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. “Didn’t fuck anyone else while I was with you, baby. But that was just something that happened; it doesn’t mean shit.”

I didn’t want her to get ideas, but I also didn’t want her to think that I was screwing around on her.

When the hell would I have done that? I was with her nearly every night, and we had sex at night and in the morning—how much stamina did the woman think I had?

“But you did the other night.” She was making a statement, not asking a question.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know how to tell her that I couldn’t have sex with udine, not after seeing the devastation in her eyes. That I didn’t want to fuck another woman when Naomi was all I could see.

She cleared her throat and then looked me in the eye. “I can’t help how I feel, Gage. So…there’s just one thing to do.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

My heart hammered in my chest.

“And what would that one thing be?” I asked, feigning disinterest.

“I…have to get over you,” she said softly.

That’s what I wanted, so why did her statement make me feel like shit?

“I know we’re done,” she continued. “Which is a good thing…means that I can start to…you know…get past….”

Get past me?

I gave a tense shrug, jaw clenched. “Right…ah…maybe we can be friends.”

Now, she looked genuinely broken. “I don’t think so, Gage.” She gave a self-deprecatoryugh. “I’m in love with you. I can’t be friends with you. It’ll hurt too much.”

My feet felt rooted to the floor at her words. I couldn’t move. This woman yed me with her openness, the ease with which she just spilled her guts.

“Right,” I managed to choke the word out.

It was taking everything in me to look nonchnt—like I didn’t give a shit one way or the other, that I was here as an obligation to close down an affair that had gotten out of control because of her.

She took a step toward me and went on tiptoe. She brushed her lips against mine gently, a whisper—and still somehow more erotic than any other woman’s mouth on my cock.

“We had fun, though, didn’t we?”

Her eyes were wet. She was saying goodbye.

I gave her a tight smile. “Yeah, baby, we did.”

She turned and walked to the door of her shop and opened it.

She wasn’t making a scene.

She wasn’t demanding I give her more than I was capable of.

She wasn’t trying to make me feel bad or guilty.

And yet, I was feeling both bad and guilty.

In fact, I felt like a fucking asshole for hurting her.

It isn’t my fault that she couldn’t keep her emotions in check!

I paused at the door and ran a finger down her cheek. “You take care of yourself, now, Naomi Lenc.”

She beamed at me, her face lit up like a thousand-watt bulb.

My heart stuttered.

I wanted to take it all back for a moment, but then she murmured, “You take care of yourself, too, Gage Walker.” And I did what I’d always done best: I walked away.