Beautiful Secret (Beautiful Bastard #4)(104)
Author: Christina Lauren

The Number of Times I Have Listened for Niall Stella’s Footfalls: infinite.

I turned my head down the street and saw the long shape of him. What happened inside me had to be described in a medical text somewhere under “lovesick”: my heart evaporated and then returned as some beastly enormous thing that seemed to beat far too fast and with too much force. It pulsed in my ears, rushed blood to warm into my hands and feet until they tingled. I was dizzy, narrowing my eyes to see him through blurred vision, and fairly sure I was going to be sick.

He was wearing his navy suit—I could see in the distance, under the regularly intervaled light from streetlamps—and looked . . . amazing. Strong and confident and walking with his trademark posture: shoulders back, arms at his sides, head straight.

Until he was about twenty feet away and saw me sitting on his steps.

And then he stopped, his chest jerking back slightly, one hand reaching up to touch the back of his neck.

On shaking legs, I stood, wiping my hands down my skirt. If my outfit was wrinkled earlier from work, I couldn’t imagine how it would look after sitting on a set of concrete steps for over four hours in the humid June air.

When he took a step forward, the movement was hesitant enough to make me move toward him, too. It nearly hurt to see him I loved him so much. I loved his carved features and miles-long legs. I loved the wide expanse of his chest, his deep brown eyes, and the kissable, smooth lips. I loved his hands that were bigger than my head and his arms that could wrap many times around me. I loved that he looked freshly pressed after ten at night, and that I could set a metronome by the pace of his stride.

I wanted to run into his arms and tell him I’d had enough time, and I wanted him.

Hi. I’m sure it’s really weird to find me here on your steps and I’m sorry for not calling, but I wanted to see you. I missed you. I love you.

He moved slowly, I moved slowly, and then we were only a couple of feet apart and my heart was beating so hard I didn’t know what could possibly be holding my ribs together.

“Ruby?”

“Hi.”

“Hi.” He swallowed, and only now, up close, could I see that he looked a bit thinner, a bit more drawn. There was more hollow in his jaw, more darkness beneath his eyes. Could he see it in my eyes, too? That I missed him so much I’d felt physically sick for the last two months?

I’m sure it’s really weird to find me here on your steps and I’m sorry for not calling, but I wanted to see you. I missed you. I love you.

But before I could say my preamble, he asked, “What are you doing here?” and I couldn’t read his tone.

It was controlled—he was controlled—and I swallowed nervously before answering.

“I . . . I’m sure it’s really weird to find me here on your steps.”

What was the rest of it?

He glanced behind me, asking, “How long have you been here?”

“I’m sorry for not calling,” I blurted, robotically.

Ignoring this, he took a step closer, asking again, this time more gently, “How long have you been here, Ruby?”

Shrugging, I answered, “A while.”

“Since you got off work at Anderson?”

He knows where I work. He knows what time I leave.

I blinked back up to his face, but it was a mistake. He was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, and I knew his face. His was the face I saw when I closed my eyes, when I needed to feel comfort or thrill, grounding or lust. Niall Stella’s face felt like home to me.

“Yes, since I got off work,” I admitted.

“That’s . . . hours,” he started, shaking his head. “I didn’t know . . . I mean, I don’t come home very early anymore. There’s no . . .”

Before he could ask me to leave, or tell me why it was a bad idea for me to be here, or any other one of the hundreds of rejections, I started to speak. “Look, I . . .” I glanced to the side, completely forgetting what it was I was going to say. Something about wanting to see him? “See, the thing is,” I started, looking back up at him before blurting, “I just really, really love you.”

One minute he was two feet from me and the next he was against me and I was against the side of his building, lifted from the ground with his arms around my waist. I gasped, staring up at him. Niall was looking down at me with a dark intensity that made my chest squeeze painfully.

“Say it again.”

“I love you,” I whispered, my throat growing nearly too tight to speak. “I missed you.”

His face fell as he searched my eyes one more time and then he bent, pressing his face to my neck. His mouth . . . oh, God, with the deepest groan my favorite mouth in the world was on my neck and my jaw and I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t stop the tight lump from rising higher in my throat.