“Okay, we can hike up a mountain this weekend. How’s Mount Kosciuszko?”
“I’m busy,” I say as I keep walking.
“Oh, that’s right; we are going to your parents this weekend.”
“You’re not coming, Jameson.”
“Your mother said I could when I spoke to her earlier.”
I spin on the spot toward him. “You called my mother?”
“No, but I will if you don’t have dinner with me.” He smiles hopefully.
I stare at him. “Jameson, if you think the Kung Fu Panda sending me a cake and calling me a cheesecake can reverse the damage you have done, you are seriously deluded.”
He takes my two hands in his. “I don’t, Em, but please . . . just let me say what I need to say.”
I stare at him.
“And then if you don’t want to see me again, I’ll stop following you.” His eyes hold mine. “We need to talk about this; you know we do.”
I roll my eyes.
“Please?” He bats his eyelashes to try and be cute; it’s annoying that he is.
“Fine. You have ten minutes.” I sigh.
“Where do you want to go?” He smiles.
“Wherever is easiest.”
“Okay.” He looks around. “How about that Italian restaurant across the street?”
“Fine.” He tries to take my hand, and I snatch it away. “You have got to be kidding,” I snap.
“Jesus, calm down,” he mutters.
I follow him across the street and into the restaurant, and we take a seat at the back of the restaurant. It’s small and darkened with candles on the tables. Red tablecloths decorate the tables. It’s nothing like the usual upmarket Italian that he takes me to, but it will have to do.
“Can I get you some drinks?” the waiter asks.
Jameson smirks and gestures to me. “I’ll have what she’s having.”
I stare at him for a moment and open my menu. “All right, we’ll have a bottle of the Henschke Hill of Grace, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The waiter disappears out the back to the bar.
Jameson’s eyes come to me, and he smiles softly and takes my hands over the table.
“Do you know how much I’ve missed you?” he whispers.
I stare at him in some kind of strange detached state.
“Did you miss me?”
Instantly I’m overwhelmed with emotion. I stay silent as I battle the lump in my throat. I hate that he makes me feel so weak and vulnerable. I pull my hands out of his grip. I need to create some distance between us.
“Em.” He frowns. “I . . .” It’s clear that he has no idea what to say. “When I saw that image of you kissing Jake—”
“Jameson,” I stammer.
He holds his hand up to signify silence, and I close my mouth. “Something snapped inside of me. I was so thrown that it upset me so deeply that I . . .” He frowns as he remembers it. “I was furious—firstly with you, but then with myself.”
Our eyes are locked.
“I was going through so much shit at work, and the very last person on earth that I thought would lie to me . . . was you.”
I drop my head in shame.
“And then when I calmed down after a few days and realized that you had been set up, the future mapped itself out to me.”
I frown.
“There is always going to be someone like Ferrara who is prepared to step on you to hurt me.”
My heart drops.
“And I don’t want that for you.”
“Jay,” I whisper sadly.
“I don’t want you to be married to a workaholic who has to travel all the time and is stressed out of his head. I don’t want you to have to remind your husband not to drink too much or stop being rude to people because he’s too busy to care. I don’t want you to have to remind your husband that he’s neglecting you.”
“Your bottle of wine.” The waiter appears out of nowhere. He opens it and pours us both a glass.
“Thank you,” I reply. My eyes go back to meet Jameson’s.
The waiter leaves us alone.
“I don’t want you to come second to Miles Media. I don’t want you to ever come second to anything.”
“But—”
“Let me finish, please,” he demands.
I sit back in my chair, annoyed that he wants to speak first.
“The thing is, if you’re with me—married to me—your life is going to be all those things.”
The lump in my throat gets big.
“I love you too much to let you live that life, Em.”
He’s ending it again. My eyes fill with tears.
He takes my hand over the table and lifts it to his mouth and gently kisses it. “Don’t cry. I hate that you’ve cried over me.”
I blink to try and get rid of these stupid tears.
“I made a decision to protect you from that life. To push you away. Because I knew that one day, you would eventually be unhappy . . . and I just can’t live with that.”
“It wasn’t your decision to make,” I whisper angrily.
He frowns. “My job is to look after you and make the hard calls, ones that you can’t make for yourself.”
“Jameson.” I stare at him through tears.
“But something happened while I was away from you.” He leans in and cups my face in his hand. “I realized that I didn’t want any of those things either.”
My eyes search his.
“I can’t live without you, Em. I’ve been so fucking miserable that it’s been unbearable.”
He leans in and kisses me softly; his eyes search mine as he dusts his thumb over my bottom lip. “If you don’t want me as I am now, I’ll resign from Miles Media immediately, and we can move to bumfuck nowhere and, I don’t know, live in a fucking tent somewhere.”
I smirk. “You idiot,” I whisper.
He smiles as he holds my face in his hand.
“I love you how you are. I don’t want you to change anything.”
“You do?”
“But I don’t . . .” I pause as I try to articulate my feelings. “How can I move on from how you’ve treated me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can’t just pretend that this hasn’t happened, Jameson. You’ve hurt me too deeply.”
“I know; I don’t want you to,” he stammers. “But can’t we just . . .” He shrugs. “Start dating again? Take it slow.”
I stare at him as confusion fills me.
“I know it’s going to take time to get back to where we were, but we have the rest of our lives. We can date and get to know each other properly this time.”
I sit back as I consider his proposal, and I sip my wine. “You know, I always imagined that I would find my dream guy and fall in love, and then it would come to this big cheesy climax.”
He scrunches up his nose. “Cheesy climax? That just sounds wrong.”
I giggle as I imagine what he must be thinking about. “No, I meant proposal.”
“You want a cheesy proposal?” He frowns. “Wouldn’t you want a romantic proposal?”
“Not really. My point is, this isn’t how I imagined things would go.”
“Me neither.” He takes my hands in his. “Far from it. I’m officially an idiot. Give me another chance, Em. I won’t fuck it up, I promise.”
I stare at him.
“I love you; you love me.” He shrugs. “We can work through this, and then hopefully in time, you can forget it ever happened, and you can live happily ever after with an outdoorsy Kung Fu Panda.” He smiles hopefully.
“You’re an idiot, Mr. Miles.”
“Who’s hopelessly in love with you.” He leans over and kisses me softly, and I feel my resistance fade. “I love you, cheesecake,” he whispers.
“Don’t call me fucking cheesecake.”
He chuckles against my lips. “Too far?”
“Way too far.”
Chapter 26
We walk down the street toward my apartment, hand in hand. Jameson is being overattentive and talking nonstop, and I am quiet. I’m annoyed that with just one dinner meeting, I find myself here with him.
I’m officially a pushover.
Weak as water.
His phone beeps with a text, and he shuffles around in his pocket to retrieve it and smiles. “Tristan.” He reads the text out loud “How did it go?”
I roll my eyes. “Text back, ‘Not out of the woods yet. Still may be found dead in a ditch tomorrow.’”
Jameson smirks. “No, I’m not writing that. If it actually happens, I don’t want you to go to prison.” He turns to face me and tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear. “You wouldn’t kill me.” He leans in and kisses me softly.
My eyes hold his. “Wouldn’t I?”
He smiles and then takes my hand as we walk toward the door. I stop on the spot. “Good night,” I announce.
“What?”
“You’re not coming in.”
“Why not?”
“Jameson, I am still eighty percent pissed off with you.”
“Yes. I know. Let me make it up to you.” He smiles darkly.
I pull out of his arms and step back from him. “There is nothing sexual that you could do that would make up for how you have treated me.”
His face falls.
“When I agreed to try again, it was just that . . . to try again. I’m not promising anything, and I don’t know how this is going to turn out. I honestly don’t know if we can get back what we had. The morning you left me after the second stopover, you broke something between us. I have never been so upset in all of my life. It was devastating for me. Having sex with you now is the very last thing that I want to do.”
“Em,” he whispers. “I couldn’t talk to you because it killed me to push you away. I was battling myself over it.”
“Good night, Jameson.”
He looks around in a fluster. “Well, when will I see you again?”
I shrug. “It’s Thursday, and I’m away for the weekend, so next week, I guess.”
“Next week?” he huffs. “That’s like four days away.”
“Is it?” I reply flatly as I begin to dig in my bag for my keys. I really do need to get a better system in this damn handbag; it’s like the fucking Bermuda Triangle in here.
“Well, that’s too long,” he stammers. “I haven’t seen you for a month. I need more time with you.”
“Take it or leave it,” I reply.
“Em?”
I turn and kiss him softly on the lips, and he snaps his arms around me. We stay still for a few minutes in each other’s arms, holding on tight and needing the closeness that the other provides. I’ve missed him desperately, and it would be so easy to take him upstairs right now.
No . . . I have serious trust issues that I need to deal with. He needs to deal with.
“I’ll sleep on the lounge,” he whispers. “I can’t be away from you for one more night. Don’t ask that of me.”
I pull away, knowing where this is going if I stay in his arms. “Good night, Jameson.”
His eyes search mine as he silently begs to come upstairs.
I force a smile and open my door as he stands on the pavement. I give him a wave and disappear into the elevator as he watches on. The elevator doors close, and I blow out a breath of relief.
Good girl . . . stay strong.
I put my lipstick on and smile at my reflection in the mirror. Jameson called me when he got home last night to say good night. It feels strangely good to have him back in my life . . . but for how long?
I have this annoying little voice in my psyche that keeps reminding me what he did and how badly he treated me. I’m trying to listen to his reasoning and trust what he’s saying, but it’s hard to pretend that nothing has happened between us.
It wasn’t nothing; it was Armageddon, and my entire world crashed at my feet. I don’t like the way I depend on Jameson Miles for my happiness.
It won’t happen again; I won’t allow it . . . even if that means holding him at arm’s length for the rest of my life . . . or however long we’re together.
See, there it is again.
Negative thoughts . . . ugh.
I make my way downstairs with my luggage for the weekend with me and out the front doors to see Jameson leaning up against the wall—navy suit, gorgeous face, and a swoony smile . . . just for me. “Good morning, my beautiful girl.”
“Hi.” I smile up at him.