Read Caught Up In You 5: No More Denial (Edgeplay) for Free Online Page A

when you so clearly haven’t? Enjoy it for what it was, Connor, because we can’t go back.”
    His hands clench and unclench at his side. “Stop saying was. We’ll get past this.”
    I shake my head, wanting him to be right but knowing better. “I don’t think we can. The bubble popped and all we have left is a mess.”
    He grips my arms, almost as though he wants to shake me. “No. You love me, damn it, I know you do. You have to give me another chance.” His body is fraught with tension.
    “I do love you, that won’t ever change. But what’s love without trust?” I whisper the question I’ve been asking myself all day. “You aren’t free to love me back, Connor.”
    His lips part and he blinks. “Of course I am.”
    My heart sinks. He didn’t say he loves me. The other Connor got there, but this one, the one who lived through the consequences of my grandfather’s crime, is incapable of love.
    Conviction stiffens my spine. “Go home, Connor. All we do is cause each other pain.”
“I can fix this,” he insists, dragging me to his chest. His heartbeat thunders beneath my hand. “Give me a chance to make it right. Tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it. Be angry, be furious, and take all the time you need. Just don’t shut me out. I need to know you’re safe, that you’ll come back to me.”
    He’s so proud, like a knight searching for a quest to help unite him with his lady love. But that’s my idiotic heart spinning fantasy again. Reality is a broken little boy who has all the money in the world but can never give me more.
    I push away from him for the first time. Our gazes lock and I see the wild panic before I step around him to hold open the door. “It’s not only about what you need, Connor.”
    He’s still for a minute, absorbing the hit. I refuse to let myself drink him in, to yearn for what can never be.
    The creak of leather surrounds him and a hand rises to my cheek, hovering less than an inch from my flesh. I flinch and he draws away.
    “I won’t give up,” he insists. “You’re mine and I will find a way back into your heart.”
    He strides out to the stairs and I shut and lock the door behind him, sliding down it, dissolving into tears. He’s wrong; he doesn’t need to get back into my heart, because he owns the useless thing.
    “Baily?” Rochelle peeks around the corner.
    “He’s gone,” I sob.
    She hurries to my side and wraps an arm around me. “It’s okay. It’s fine. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
    If only that were true, Snarkarella says.
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
    T he onslaught begins at dawn. Rochelle and I are both exhausted from our virtually sleepless night and reluctant to do more than lounge on the couch when the first buzz, from the flower delivery guy, sounds in the apartment. Followed by a Fed-Ex delivery containing my cell phone and tablet. Then fresh bagels and lox from the bakery on the corner.
    “That man really knows how to grovel.” Rochelle grins over her coffee cup. “Good thing, because we forgot to put the leftovers in the fridge and my cupboards are bare. I’m the old woman in the shoebox apartment.”
    Another buzz from the street below.
    “Now what?” I ask.
    “Only one way to find out.” Rochelle depresses the button next to the door. “Is it a pony?”
“No, Ma’am. Just an envelope.”
    “Rats. I was really looking forward to a pony.” She buzzes him up anyway.
    I sign for the envelope but hesitate before I tear open the seal. “Maybe I should stop accepting the gifts. Since I have no intention of taking him back, it seems wrong.”
    She gives me an are you out of your ever-loving mind look. “Okay, well, think about it logically. Are you really going to just toss the flowers? I don’t have a garbage disposal to grind them up in, so you’d have to go all the way downstairs. The phone and tablet are yours anyway, so he was just returning them to you. And breakfast is the most important meal of the