Clinger!

    The word echoed in my head like a church bell.

    Level five.

    Like I was a hazard. A punchline. A cautionary tale.

    I ran home.

    Literally.

    I’d barely made it back to my apartment before I copsed onto my couch, fingers gripping the armrest like it could hold me steady while the ground shifted and cracked.

    He said it like I was pathetic.

    Like I was a mistake he regretted making.

    Like loving him—just loving him—was a misery he was trying to live down.

    And I hated how badly it hurt.

    When my parents died, I was thirteen and already old enough to know that grief made people ufortable. My aunt and uncle—stern, God-fearing, emotionally stunted—tolerated me, but only just.

    I remember waking up after a nightmare the first week I moved in and knocking on their bedroom door, shaking with sobs.

    “You need to learn to handle your feelings by yourself, Naomi,” my aunt had snapped. “Stop being clingy.”

    I never cried in front of them again.

    I learned to be quiet,posed…independent.

    I promised myself that no one would ever use me of being needy. And now, after all the work I’d put in to stand on my own two feet, the only man I’d ever loved had called me a clinger.

    I rose on weary legs and went into the kitchen. I poured myself a bourbon and then sat on my porch, looking out into the street through ironce.

    I saw him walk to the door and knock, and then step back, as if he sensed my presence, to look up at me.

    “Naomi, let me in, baby.”

    I didn’t like making a scene. There were people walking around, some local, mostly tourists. But this time I didn’t give a shit.

    I ignored him.

    “Baby, let me in, or I will use my key.”

    For the sake of everything holy! He still had a key to my ce. Well, high time he returned it.

    I went inside and stood by my door. As soon as he unlocked and opened it, I barred his entrance and held my palm out. “Give me my keys.”

    “Naomi—”

    “Don’t make me spend the time and energy to change the locks, Gage.”

    “I will give you the keys if you let me in and let me talk to you.”

    I narrowed my eyes. “You have some balls.”

    “Please.”

    I met his gaze, mulling over his sincerity, and then stepped aside. He dropped the key in the ceramic bowl where I left mine.

    I wish he weren’t here, I thought unhappily. I wish he’d given me more time, so the devastation I felt might fade.

    “Say what you want to say and get out.” I stood, hands on hips.

    He sat down on the couch and patted the ce next to him. “Sit, baby,” he rasped. “I need to exin.”

    “I don’t need your exnation, Gage. I heard you loud and clear.”

    He ran a hand through his hair, frustration etched into every tense line of his body. “I didn’t mean it. udine was pushing, and I was trying to?—”

    “Humiliate me?” I snapped. “Tell the world that I was some desperate woman who couldn’t take a hint?”

    “I was trying to push her away,” he retorted, jaw clenched. “But yeah—I said something cruel. And I’m sorry.”

    I stared at him, my arms crossed, holding myself because it was the only way I’d stay standing.

    “You hurt me,” I murmured. “Not just with the words. But because I believed in you. I believed in what we were. Even when you said you couldn’t love me, I still thought—you saw me. Saw who I was.”

    His eyes shone, jaw twitching. “I did, baby. I do.”

    “I. Am. Not. A. Clinger.”

    “I know, baby.” He kept his tone gentle. “I know. And I did see you. I still see you. I always see you. I was just too scared to admit it.”

    I gave a brokenugh. “Of me?”

    “Of…can you please sit down,” he said in exasperation. “I have some things to say to you.”

    I did as he asked because his eyes were wild and there was a desperation in them I’d never seen.

    However, I sat across from him in an armchair.

    He took a deep breath and let it out shakily. “First things first, I was being an asshole to udine. It had nothing to do with you.”

    I gave him a dry look, not hiding my irritation.

    He cleared his throat. “When I was neen…I had a girlfriend.”

    I nodded.

    “We’d been together for a while…you know, kids in love.”

    My gaze softened because he looked like he was in pain.

    “I knew I’d marry her.”

    He’d never told me any of this before. We’d been together nearly a year, and I didn’t know he’d been so deep in a rtionship once that he’d given it his all.

    “We were in a car ident. I was in the passenger seat. She was driving. It was raining. We hit the guardrail, and she was gone before the ambnce even got there.”

    My breath was stolen clean out of me.

    “I should’ve told you from the start.” He grimaced when he saw there were tears in my eyes. But how could I remain untouched when I could feel his pain, his grief of losing someone…of being there when life left them.

    “I’m not fucked up because I don’t care, Naomi. I’m fucked up because I do. Because I lost someone once, and I couldn’t stop it. It ripped something out of me that I never got back.”

    Tears slid down my cheeks before I even realized they’d started.

    “What was her name?” I whispered, wiping my tears.

    “Lia.”

    “I’m so sorry, Gage.”

    He nodded. “I…that’s why I can’t….”

    I studied him for a long moment, weighing what I was going to say. “So, because you once lost someone, you feel you need to treat a woman who loves you like a liability?”

    He looked like I’d physically struck him.

    “You’re not a liability, baby, you never?—”

    “Yes, I am, and not because of what happened to you in your past, but because you don’t want me the way I need to be wanted. No matter what excuse you wrap around your feelings…the fact is, Gage, you don’t love me.”

    “I care for you…more than I have for any other person who isn’t family.” His eyes bore into mine. “Baby, I’m in so deep with you that I can’t see anyone else.”

    “No.” I kept my voice level as I rose, even though I wanted to scream at him for saying these things designed to—cruelly—give me hope.

    “It’s true.” He leaned, his elbows resting on his knees.

    “The truth is that you treated me poorly after I told you I was in love with you and wanted more out of our rtionship. And then when I started to see another man, you behaved like a jealous moron. And now, when you didn’t know I was listening, you revealed you think I’m a?—”

    “I told you?—”

    I spoke over him. “Those are the facts, Gage. You didn’t treat me with respect. There aren’t enough dead girlfriends in anyone’s past to make that alright.”

    I thought he’d lose it with the dead girlfriend remark; instead, the hard edges in his expression softened.

    “You’re right. I know it’s not enough but I want you to know how sorry I am.”

    I looked at him—this man I adored, this man I had waited for, longed for, loved. And I knew he was telling the truth, but it didn’t change anything, not for us.

    “I understand,” I told him gently. “I understand why you ran, why you couldn’t give me more.”

    Relief flickered across his face.

    But I wasn’t done.

    “And what the hell was that with your friend? Hot Creole goddess?” I snapped, the sting of that so-calledpliment still burning.

    “Ezra was trying to provoke me,” he said, then paused as I arched a brow. “He meant well—though he can be a bit of an asshole. He was pushing me to admit I’m in love with you.”

    “Well, good for Ezra. Mission aplished—he managed to do it by making me feel like a piece of ass.”

    He sucked in a quiet breath, like I’d knocked the wind out of him. But before he could say a word, I cut him off.

    “Now get out.”

    His face fell. “Naomi?—”

    “I love you.” My voice broke as the words came from deep within me. “I might always love you. But I need someone who chooses me, who fights for me. Not someone who punishes me for loving him.”

    “Baby, I never meant to hurt you.” Tears swelled in his eyes.

    I almost cracked, but I held steady. “I want you out of my life.”

    He regarded me thoughtfully, then, as if making a decision, he nodded, jaw tight, got up slowly, walked to my front door, and left.

    When the door clicked shut behind him. I copsed back onto the armchair I’d just vacated, feeling like the world was closing in on me.

    Choosing myself had never hurt this much before.