Wasted Time (The Steel City #1)

58. Declan

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

declan

“Stop looking at me like that.”

My lips tug upward. I can’t help it. I can’t stop looking at her. I was staring, actually. She has a little foam moustache from her latte above her lip and it is the cutest thing I’ve ever fucking seen. She’s working away on her laptop, her knee pulled to her chest, that honey-blonde hair in a bun on top of her head.

She’s the most beautiful girl on the planet and I’ll stare all day if I want to.

“Like what?” I feign ignorance, readjusting my hat on top of my wet hair.

Her stormy eyes snap up to me, narrowing. “You know what.”

“Not sure what you mean, P,” I say, leaning against the fridge. I just got back from practice, and I can’t lie, seeing her working at my kitchen island, in my house, comfortable and like she belongs here… it’s turning me on.

“Like you’re undressing me with your eyes,” she snaps, and dammit, she takes another sip and licks off her cute mustache. Unfair. I wanted to lick it off.

“So, what if I am?”

She rolls her eyes. “I hardly look cute right now. I haven’t even run a brush through my hair yet.”

“Oh, now that’s where you’re wrong.” I push myself from my fridge and walk to the island, leaning onto it with my forearms. She meets my eyes, and I can envision the eye roll before it happens. “You always look beautiful. Not cute. Not pretty. Beautiful.”

I wait for the roll of the eyes.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, she surprises me. Her eyes soften, her mouth snapping shut into a tight line.

I angle my head. I’m fairly certain I didn’t just put my foot in my mouth. So, what gives?

“What?”

She pulls her mug into her lap, her eyes studying my face. “Nothing. You just… you’ve said that to me before.”

In the hotel room. Yeah, I remember.

“Well, I’ve thought it even before then,” I admit, and damn, do I love the way she has to swallow to force herself from reacting.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” she asks. It’s barely a whisper, but it explodes through the conversation like a fucking freight train.

Her eyes drift from her mug to my face again.

Well, shit. That question has been weighing on her. It’s loaded. By the way she’s bracing for impact, it’s clear that she’s been thinking about this. I’ll answer it. I’ll answer anything she asks of me. As long as she doesn’t run.

I let out a long breath through my nose, not daring to lean backward and put any distance between us.

“I don’t know if I realized what it meant all that time ago.”

That’s the truth. She was Penelope Sweeten, Avery’s best friend. She then became Penny, one of my closest friends. Then she became Lucky, a girl who I’d protect with everything I had, her existence so ingrained with my own that thinking about it in any other way besides face value was a terrifying thing.

But she’s always been beautiful. That’s never been a question. Not to me.

“What are you thinking about?” I say after a few beats of silence.

“Just wondering how life would have turned out if you had known then,” she admits quickly, and I’m damn proud of her for owning that instead of suppressing it. “If you’d known before Gavin first kissed me.”

My stomach lurches without my permission because now I’m picturing Gavin kissing her, which makes me picture other things, things that I would rather slice my fingers off with a skate than envision.

I don’t know the answer to that question. I’d like to think the universe stepped in for a reason. Maybe, as the Tiffany situation can confirm, I wouldn’t have been ready to for Penny all those years ago. I was immature and arrogant, and a girlfriend seemed like a nightmare rather than a blessing.

Like I’ve said four hundred times, Penny isn’t a girl you let slip through your fingers once you have her in your grasp. If I had her at twenty, or twenty-one, hell—even at twenty-five, I would have lost her.

I wouldn’t have been a good partner ten years ago. I think I would have ruined my relationship with the love of my life and regretted it for the rest of my damn life if I had known how I felt at that time.

We just weren’t ready for each other. I think that’s okay.

I know I’m ready now .

“You would have never given me a chance back then,” I remind her.

Her brow cocks upward.

“I was a little shithead, and you know it. In fact, you told me that numerous times. You saw right through me, Pen. You sniffed out all my bullshit. You know I wasn’t good enough for you when we were younger.”

Penny’s brow furrows in the middle. She leans forward, pushing her laptop out of the way and lowers her mug to the island. Without another word, she reaches for me.

Fuck, I love seeing those hands reaching for me.

I stretch out my fingers to hers and curl my hand around her much smaller one. She squeezes once, twice, and a third time. Like she always does when she means something with her whole heart.

“I wasn’t good either. We were young.”

False. She was always good. Hotheaded and a bit touchy, but magnificent.

“I don’t think it would have worked back then, baby,” I admit softly, brushing my thumb against her hand.

Her eyes are glued to our fingers, her chin resting on the heel of her hand. “I know. I just don’t like thinking about how much time I’ve wasted.”

With him.

That still hurts her.

“You gave that relationship your all,” I remind her, though it kills me. “You do things with your whole heart. Can you really say you wasted any time when it led you to me?”

Her eyes flicker up to mine. I watch realization sweep over her features.

“No. I would have put in ten more years if I knew I would end up right here.”

Can a man physically turn into a puddle ?

I swallow, brushing my thumb against her hand again. “We got here at the right time. Our time. Don’t worry about the rest of it.”

“I’m trying,” she whispers.

“I know you are.”

“Be patient with me,” she says, and our gazes connect. I’m getting really tired of seeing tears in those eyes. “Please.”

I’d wait the rest of my life for her. Any part of her. She needs to start realizing that.

I slide my hand from hers, pushing myself from the island. Hurriedly, she uses her oversized sleeve to wipe away her tears. I round the island and do the exact same thing that I did the night before. I pull her out of her chair by her underarms. This time, I shove her laptop out of the way and rest her on the island, pushing myself between her legs.

She winds her arms around my neck, her feet locking around my body at her ankles.

I stare up at her, and she meets my gaze, eyes full of tears. She doesn’t try to hide her vulnerability, and that’s not easy for her.

She’s really trying.

I slide my hands against her thighs, dragging them over my own sweatpants that look much better on her than they do on me.

“Get out of your own head,” I tell her. “Everything’s okay. That part of your life is over. It’s you and me now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” I murmur. “I know you’re used to waiting for the other shoe to drop. You lived in a relationship with someone who didn’t act like he wanted to be there. That’s not the case here. I’m all in. I’m here . You don’t have to worry about me waking up and abandoning you. ”

Her face contorts with pain. It’s this exact moment, with her limbs wrapped around me and as a sob wrecks through her chest, that I realize the reality of the damage that was done to her. Suddenly, all those decisions and all her actions make more sense than they had.

He changed her.

He changed who she is as a person, and she can’t find the woman she used to be. Maybe she doesn’t exist anymore. That’s okay. That doesn’t scare me or make me doubt a single thing, but that would be a terrifying thing for her to face.

She can’t trust anyone anymore, not even her own mind or her heart. She doesn’t trust her own judgment. She’s afraid of people leaving, or people getting tired of her, or never being good enough. She would rather suffer for the rest of her fucking life than give her heart to somebody again because when she does, she no longer believes that she’s giving it to them forever.

In her mind, there’s an expiry date on love now, but she’s the only one who doesn’t know that date.

He made her fear love.

He should really start fearing me.

“I love you,” I remind her gently. “I will always communicate with you. Fights don’t mean whatever this is, is over. Being busy doesn’t mean that I’m avoiding you. Every single day of this, I promise you’ll know exactly how I feel. I won’t punish you with silence.”

The sob that leaves her ricochets right into my chest. It explodes, sending shards of that loaded bullet into every vital piece of me. I ache for her. I ache with her. How do you convince somebody that their love has always been enough when their love has never been appreciated?

She buries her face in her hands, shaking her head .

It hurts. I’ve never felt something like this before. Fuck, is this what love is? Her pain wounds me. Her tears pierce through my armor. Her agony is my agony. I want to fix all the damage he made, but it’s not that easy. It doesn’t happen that fast.

And fuck, I will kill him if I ever see him again.

She pulls herself into my arms.

“I don’t know why I can’t stop crying,” she whispers into the crook of my neck.

“It’s okay.” I run my hand down her back.

I’m scared that what he did to her will have the power to ruin this. This will be good for her. I’ll be good for her. I will never hurt the woman in my arms, but I need a real chance to prove it.

A familiar jingle interrupts the moment.

I pause, my hand stilling on her back, but Penny whirls in my arms. She launches herself at her laptop, slamming her hands on the keys, but whatever she hit was the wrong button because seconds later Avery’s voice is slipping through my kitchen.

“Daily coffee br—oh, there are hands on your ass.”

I groan, falling forward into Penny’s chest. They aren’t on her ass, I’ll let you know. They’re on her lower back, an appropriate place for them to be.

“Shit.” Penny sniffles, twisting in my arms.

I sigh, stepping back and regretfully removing my hands from her body. We aren’t done here. I have a feeling these little moments are going to be more frequent than sparse over the next little while.

“Hi, my darling Declan,” Avery taunts through the FaceTime call. I can hear her smirk, and it takes everything in me not to flip her off.

Penny hops back into her chair, tugging her laptop toward her. She hurriedly wipes at her face.

“Hi, Ave,” I grumble.

“Wait.” Her tone changes then. I glance over my shoulder and see those dark eyes glued to the screen, a whiteboard behind her. Her brow is furrowed as she studies every inch of Penny’s red, splotchy face. “You’re crying. Why are you crying?”

“I’m fine.” Penny sighs, grabbing her mug.

“You said it went well,” Avery counters and her eyes snap to a spot behind Penny. To me. I almost drop to the floor in an attempt to survive. “Did it not go well?”

“Avery,” Penny whispers, and she sounds so tired that it forces Ave’s attention back to her.

I walk up to the spot behind her, sliding my hand between her shoulder blades and up to her neck. I give her a gentle squeeze, the same way they do for each other: one, two, three times.

Penny leans into me, and Avery deflates a bit.

I run my thumb down the nape of her neck and lean down, pressing a kiss to her head. Just like that, she breaks again. Her shoulders shake, silent waves of worry pouring out of her. She winds her arms around my middle and buries her face into the side of my shirt.

I watch Avery’s face and I know she is feeling the same pain that I am. Like me, Penny’s pain is also her own.

“I’m going to let you two talk.” Running my hand up and down her arm, I glance back to the screen, where Avery’s brow is furrowed, her gaze full of concern. “You got this, Ave?”

Avery has magical powers, powers different from my own. Girls are girls. They need each other. They get each other in a mystical way that men will never comprehend. She’ll understand Penny’s pain in a different way than I can. More importantly, Penny will be honest with her. She won’t have to worry about sparing my feelings. Penny needs to heal. She can’t do that while she holds back.

Avery nods, her eyes flickering up to mine. There’s no smile on her face, but there’s a look of understanding. Of gratitude.

“I’ve got her.”

I know she does. She always has. She always will.