Lisa Childs - Dark Nights

“What people?”

“You know the ones, the couple who hold hands while they walk around the mall, the ones who stare into each other’s eyes over a candlelit dinner.”

His eyes softened with regret, as if he wished they had been. “Paige…”

They both carried too much regret. None of it could change what had happened between them, what had gone wrong.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “We never had time to be those people. I was busy, too.” Not as busy as he’d been, but she’d submerged herself in her work, too.

At first, because she’d been determined to be exactly the opposite of her mother. But then she’d fallen for Ben. And she’d still worked too much, so that she wouldn’t notice how little he’d been there.

“We should have made time,” Ben said.

“It’s too late now,” she said again.

He shook his head, obviously unwilling to accept the finality. “It’s never too late.”

“We can’t change the past,” Paige insisted.

“No, we can’t,” he agreed. “But I can be here for you now. I can protect you, Paige.”

“You might be able to protect me from my stalker,” she said, “if I have one. But who will protect me from you?”

A muscle twitched in his cheek. But he didn’t profess his undying love or the fact that he’d never hurt her. They both knew he couldn’t promise her those things.

“We can’t change the past,” she said as she drew in a shaky breath. “And we can’t change the fact that we have no future.”

He’d already accepted that they had no future. If only he’d realized it sooner and let her go…then maybe she wouldn’t be in danger now.

“We don’t have a future together,” he agreed, but hated himself for the pain that darkened her usually bright eyes. “But we need to make sure you have a future. I need to move in here, so that I can protect you from physical harm.” As she’d already pointed out, he was the last one who could protect her from emotional harm. “And you need to stop going to the club. It’s not safe for you there.”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners as the sadness left them, and she laughed.

“I’m serious, Paige.”

“You’re deluded,” she retorted. “I may let you tell me what to do there—” she pointed to the rumpled bed “—but only there. You’re not my husband anymore. You can’t tell me how to live my life.”

Frustration had his temper snapping and he bitterly remarked, “We both know I’ve never been able to tell you what to do.”

As the hurt and guilt flashed in her eyes, he wished the words back. It wasn’t her fault. It was his. He was the medical expert—the friggin’ world-renowned and otherworld renowned cardiologist. He should have known.

Pride and anger replaced the hurt in her narrowed eyes. “No, you’d actually have to be around in order to tell me what to do,” she said, the smile leaving her face as bitterness sharpened her voice. “And you weren’t around for much of our marriage.”

He couldn’t argue with her, nor could he apologize—not without offering an explanation that would put her in more danger than she already was.

“Why are you around now, Ben?” she asked.

Guilt. Fear. Love. He could have named any of them and been speaking the truth. But then he’d have to explain something that defied explanation. The damn secret society.

“I’m worried about you,” he said. “You’re in danger.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know that….”

“The flowers, the car…”

“That all could have been a mistake,” she insisted stubbornly.

How had he forgotten how stubborn Paige could be? It was one of the things he loved about her. “You can’t take that chance. And neither can I,” he said. “Let me move in here. Let me take care of you.”

She laughed again, but this time tears sparkled in her eyes. “Oh, Ben, that would only set us both up for disappointment.”

“What do you mean?” If she was worried about him falling for her again, it was already too late. He had never fallen out of love with her, and he worried that he never would—no matter that they had no future.

“You keep leaving,” she reminded him. “You just take off, with no warning, with no explanation of where you’re going or where you’ve been.”

“I’m a doctor, Paige,” he said. “You knew that when you married me. You knew I’d work long hours and be on call twenty-four seven.”

She shook her head. “Maybe when you were an intern you needed to work those crazy hours. But not now.”

“I have patients. I have a responsibility to them.” No matter what they were.

“What about us?”

He flinched. “I know, Paige. I wasn’t there for you…like I should have been.”

“And you can’t promise that it’ll be different now,” she pointed out.

Despite all his secrets, she really knew him too well. “No,” he admitted with a heavy sigh.

“You can’t protect me if you’re not here.”

“I’ll be here,” he vowed. “I’ll stick close to you.”

She shook her head. “Don’t make a promise you’ve never been able to keep.”

He pushed a hand through his still-damp hair and sighed. Damn it to hell, but she was right, as usual. It was another of her traits that had charmed as much as it had annoyed him.

“You always leave me,” she reminded him, the tears overflowing her eyes to trail down her face like the rain on the window. “So do what you do best…leave.”

He sucked in a breath of pain over her resolute rejection. “Paige?”

“And this time, don’t come back,” she said. “I can’t keep doing this.”

“But playing these games was your idea,” he reminded her, with a flash of anger.

He had tried to do the right thing; he’d tried to stay away from her after the divorce. But after a few months of no contact, she’d starting coming to him. A blow job at his office. A quickie in the backseat of his SUV. She’d shown up sporadically, weeks or sometimes months passing before she came to him again. And so desperate to see her, to touch her, to taste her, he’d started coming to her.

“It was a mistake,” she said, “to think that we could keep it light and unemotional. We’ve never been about fun and games.” She released a shuddery breath. “We’re all about secrets and pain.”

“I’m sorry.” Not just about the pain he’d caused her…but the pain she would not let him protect her from.

Paige held back her tears until the door closed behind Ben. But then, instead of shedding them, she blinked them away. She’d cried enough over him.

Her body hummed with the pleasure he’d given her—again and again. And over the past four years, she’d kept seeking him out for more. She hadn’t imagined the pleasure only he could give her, but she had forgotten the subsequent pain.

She couldn’t move on with her life if she kept him in her life. Even if she was really in danger, he couldn’t protect her. He could only cause her more pain, just as she had caused him.

Her heart contracted as she remembered the look on his face—the raw pain of her rejection. He hadn’t looked that upset even when she’d divorced him. In fact, she’d often thought that he’d looked more relieved than hurt when she’d served him with papers.

He hadn’t been relieved tonight. She wouldn’t kid herself that it was because he loved her. He had agreed with everything she’d said and was acting more out of obligation than love.

But it was time she protected herself. And she couldn’t do that by hiding away. That little voice in her head might be convinced she didn’t belong at Club Underground, but Paige was not.

At the moment, she had nowhere else to go.