Read Preserving Love: A Contemporary Romance Series (Nick & Lexi Book 2) for Free Online Page B

twinge of remorse for my anger. “I care about you.”
    “I am facing all kinds of hell because of you,” I snapped, “and you can’t even talk to me. It hurts Evan.”
    “Hell? What kinds of hell?”
    “It’s nothing major,” I lied.  
    “Hell sounds pretty major Lex,” he wasn’t going to let me bypass this.  
    “Grant is pushing the situation between us,” I confessed. “I think he wants me off the committee.”
    “Really?”
    “Or at least out of my position. He’s really using our relationship to discredit me,” I looked down. “Today won’t help me.”
    “I’m so sorry,” he squeezed my hand and I knew he meant it. “I didn’t want this to happen this way.”
    “I wish I could go back and change it,” I mumbled, regretting it the moment I’d said it.  
    “Go back?”
    “Nevermind,” I tried to blow it off, smiling at him and squeezing his hand in return.  
    “No,” he pulled away. “Please finish.”
    “I just wish we could go back to that night and you’d have never agreed,” I told him, wishing I had kept my mouth shut.  
    “So your solution to this would be for me to give up my dream? To do what Lexi? Be your puppy? Follow you to meetings and fight for the same things even if I don’t agree? You’d prefer I not have the option of doing what matters the most to me?”
    “That’s not what I meant. I just mean there are other opportunities. They don’t have to be this. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
    “This...” he waved his arm at an invisible problem, “shouldn’t come between us. What happened at the HRC shouldn’t come between us. Not if we know our true feelings. I shouldn’t have to give up my dreams for you to know I want to be with you.”
    “But your dreams are my nightmares,” I was getting angry again. “They are things that shouldn’t happen. And then you use them to hurt me further. How is that right?”
    “Shouldn’t happen because you say so? That land is just land. Why not put it to use?”
    “Why not leave it be Evan? What’s wrong with history? Do you not cherish your home in the city or do you just demolish anything that might prevent a fucking dollar?”
    “So close your shop and let them use that for a museum or some other fucking bullshit.”
    “This isn’t about my shop.”
    “Of course not Lexi. It’s never about you. Only those that go against you. It’d hurt your candy shop for a retail store to be there, so you fight it. It hurts a neighborhood full of old shit to have a new place there so you fight it. Grow the hell up and realize the world changes.”
    “Because people make it change. People from other places come in here and want to fix our home. But our home doesn’t need to be fixed. We love it as it is. There’s nothing wrong with that Evan. Maybe there’s something wrong with you for always thinking it has to be better than it was. Maybe what it was is the best its going to be.”
    “People from other places? Is that all I am to you?”
    “What am I to you? If you can stand there and accuse me of unfairly causing bias. If you can act like the only reason you didn’t get what you wanted is because I messed it up? What does that make me to you?”
    “I didn’t create those words!”
    “No,” I looked at him, tears in my eyes as I stood up and prepared to leave before we’d even ordered. “you spoke them.”
    I walked away, not waiting for a reply. He had gone beyond making me angry. He’d hurt me. For what? A building that could have been built anywhere.  
    Evan had sworn that none of this would come between us. He’d assured me that we would make it past this battle and on to the future. But the longer this went on, the harder it was becoming.  
    Everyone I knew was coming at me with news about him that I hadn’t heard yet. Most of it seemed to be accurate so far. He was avoiding me. Hell we barely saw each other anymore.  
    I couldn’t wait to get home, which was where I was going. I’d