Page 55 of Playing Hard to Get

That she was mine.

13

Vivian

How far was the drop when you’d never fallen before? Did it hurt at all to mutter those three little words? Was it too soon to say it, to tell him how I felt? And would death be preferable if he didn't feel the same way?

Those are the questions that plagued me as I laid in Mitch’s arms. As I fought the sleep that tried to claim me. As I snuck back to my hotel room and surrendered my consciousness to a deep slumber, only to have them niggle at me the entirety of the next day.

He asked me to stay.

What he didn't understand was that I couldn't have left if I wanted to. He was right. I needed him. Not just his body, his sex. But everything he was, all that he'd become.

I wanted to feel him, and I wanted him to feel me. I wanted him to know of the feelings he incited within me.

I couldn't bring myself to tell him.

Couldn't utter those words that were cement on the tip of my tongue. I tried, but each time I surrendered to my fear.

What if he didn't feel the same? What if he ran away when I said it? I'd never been in love before. Never thought it would ever happen. Never thought I was capable.

I wasn’t sure I was capable of being loved.

Though it annoyed me to no end when she first told me, the fact that Frankie wanted to spend a few hours with Corey that next morning was a godsend. I slept in, something I’d rarely done before. When I finally woke up just after ten, I had a text from Mitch waiting for me on my phone.

Mitch: Miss your face.

I tried not to overanalyze it. Tried not to wonder if it was my mouth and lips he missed, a place to stick his cock. Or if it was me. If he missed me the way I missed him.

With my phone on the bed beside me, I stared at the screen for ten minutes before I responded. Not that I was playing games. I was done running from him. Instead, I tried to think of the best response. Something that would let him know how I felt without scaring him away. I settled on something simple.

Me: I miss all of you.

Mind. Heart. Body. Soul.

Throwing on my emerald green dress, I ran a brush through my hair, then rushed down to the coffee shop to meet Frankie. She was sitting at a small, round table with an espresso in one hand and the Wall Street Journal in the other. She had this glow about her, one she’d had since last year when she met her fiancé. One that made her light up whenever she smiled like she hadn't since she was a kid.

“Hey, how are you?” Frankie rose and kissed each of my cheeks before we both took a seat at her table. The coffee shop was packed, and I was grateful my cousin thought ahead and bought me a latte.

“Good,” I told her. She narrowed her eyes at me, and I brushed a hand through my hair. “A little tired.”

“You stay up late?”

A shrug. A lie. “Got carried away sketching.”

“You need to slow down, Viv.” She looked at me with that concern in her eyes. For once it didn’t bother me. “All this work is taking its toll on you.”

Nodding, I took a drink of my latte, my eyes on the people sitting at the tables near us, at the growing line wrapping through the front of the shop and right out the door into the beautiful day.

“You want to get out of here?”

“Sure.” Frankie threw back the rest of her drink without a hint of a grimace, then shouldered her bag and led the way through the crowd.

New York in the springtime was magical. The colors of the trees, the flowers, the people. I loved the city. I'd considered moving here multiple times, but there was always something holding me back. That sense of duty. Duty to my father, my small little family. The expectation that my life was with them no matter how much I was there or what I'd rather be doing.

And Vinny. I couldn't leave my brother. Couldn't abandon him like our mother did so many years ago.

Frankie and I took a cab to one of my favorite clothing stores. We shopped for an hour or so before we stopped at a cafe I came across a few years back. We got a table on the patio and breathed in the city while we waited for our lunch.