21. Kimberly
Kimberly
The bravest words are not ‘I love you.’ They’re ‘I still do.’
"How long are you going to make that man grovel?"
Katelyn was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a mug of tea, watching me over the rim. She’d been storing that question for seventy-two hours, and she had finally run out of storage space.
"I’m not making him grovel. I’m done. There’s a difference."
"There is not a difference. There is a woman who is in love with a man who showed up at her apartment and delivered a speech that made me, a committed cynic with a library science degree, tear up behind a door.
" She pointed her mug at me. "You love him.
He loves you. You should be together. Why are you being so impossibly stubborn about this? "
"I’m not stubborn. I’m protecting myself."
"You are playing hard to get, Kimberly Ann Bishop."
"I am NOT playing hard to get!"
I grabbed my coffee and took a very long, very aggressive sip. Katelyn watched me with serene patience, like she knew she was winning and had decided to enjoy the view.
"Make up your mind fast," she said, examining her tea like it contained the secrets of the universe. "Before other women start noticing that the billionaire is single and emotionally available."
My stomach dropped. I covered it with another sip of coffee, but Katelyn’s eyes were already narrowing.
"He’s not my man," I said. "And if he can be taken by other women, then they can have him."
I set my cup down on the counter with a force that made the spoon rattle. Katelyn's grin spread like she'd won something.
"You don’t like that thought one bit, do you?"
"I’m going to take a shower."
"That’s not a denial, Kim!"
I closed the bathroom door. I did not slam it. Slamming would have been an admission. I closed it firmly, which is different, and I stood under the water for twenty minutes and tried very hard not to think about Jackson Whitlock sitting alone in that enormous house.
I was not playing hard to get.
The news came that afternoon. Dr. Reeves called me directly, and the steadiness in his voice was different from the careful tone he used for bad news. This time it had room to breathe.
"The latest imaging came back this morning," he said. "Kim, the tumor has decreased in volume by thirty-one percent since we suspended the gene therapy."
I sat on the edge of Katelyn’s bed. "What?"
"We think the protocol did work, just not the way we expected.
The autoimmune response that caused the setback also attacked the tumor cells.
Her body was fighting the treatment and the cancer simultaneously.
The result is a significantly reduced mass and a cleaner surgical margin than anything we projected six months ago. "
"What does that mean for the surgery?"
"It means the probability of full clearance just went from eighty-two percent to ninety-four. It means we’re looking at a smaller procedure, a shorter recovery, and a substantially better long-term prognosis." A pause. "It’s very good news, Kim."
I pressed my hand over my mouth. Katelyn was in the doorway, reading my face.
"Penny?" she whispered.
I nodded. "The tumor shrank. Ninety-four percent clearance rate. She’s going to be okay, Kate. She’s going to be okay."
Katelyn crossed the room in three strides, grabbed me, and we held each other on the edge of the bed and cried, and the tears tasted like relief and gratitude and a whole year of fear letting go of us at once.
I went to the office the next day because, despite everything, I still technically had a job.
The resignation letter had not been accepted.
Jackson had made that abundantly clear, and the will still required my presence, and I was not going to give him the satisfaction of being the one who broke a legal contract, so I put on a blazer and walked into the Whitlock Group lobby at eight-forty-five like a woman who was absolutely, completely fine.
Sophie spotted me from thirty feet away and lit up like a Christmas display.
"Kim! Oh thank God. I need to talk to someone normal. Do you know what my life has been like? He made me his secretary. Permanently. I went from answering phones in the lobby to managing the schedule of a man who color-codes his calendar by emotional urgency level."
"Good morning, Sophie."
"It’s been chaos. Absolute chaos. The Tokyo team has been calling every three hours, and the board keeps sending passive-aggressive emails about the annual report formatting, and on top of everything, the boss is leaving the country."
I stopped walking. "What?"
"Yeah. Didn’t you hear? He’s going to Tokyo. The new East Asia branch is launching ahead of schedule and he’s overseeing the setup himself. A month, maybe two." Sophie leaned forward, her voice dropping. "He’s leaving all of a sudden, do you happen to know why?"
"When is he leaving?"
"Today. Like, today today. His flight is this afternoon. He’s probably packing right now." She checked her phone.
I stared at her. Today. He was leaving today. For a month. Maybe two. Without telling me. Without giving me the chance to…
To what? To forgive him? To admit that I’d been lying awake in my old room reaching for a body that wasn’t there? To tell him that I wasn’t angry, I was terrified of how he made me feel?
"Kim?" Sophie was looking at me. "You okay? You look like someone told you the building was on fire."
"Where’s Logan?"
"Conference room B, I think."
I found Logan in the hallway outside the conference room, laptop under his arm, coffee in his hand. He looked up when he saw me and something passed across his face, quick and unreadable.
"Kim. Good to see you back."
"Is Jack leaving the country?"
"He’s heading to Tokyo this evening. The East Asia branch needs hands-on oversight and he volunteered to go himself." Logan paused. "He didn’t tell you?"
"No, Logan. He did not tell me." My pulse was hammering. "Is he at the estate right now?"
"I believe so. He went home to pack."
I left the building, took a cab, and gave the driver the Medina address.
I sat in the back seat with my hands in my lap and my heart in my throat.
A furious, irrational certainty was building that if Jackson Whitlock got on a plane to Tokyo without looking me in the eye first, I was going to track him across the Pacific and give him a piece of my mind in front of the entire Japanese business delegation.
The cab pulled into the estate drive. I threw money at the driver. I ran up the front steps in flats that I was grateful I’d chosen over heels. I pushed the front door open.
And stopped.
The foyer was filled with flowers. Not a vase on the table.
Flowers everywhere, covering every surface, lining the staircase, clustering on the floor in tall glass arrangements, white and soft pink and deep green, filling the air with a scent so rich it hit me before my eyes could process what they were seeing.
Among the flowers, hand-lettered cards on cream paper, propped on every surface.
I’M SORRY.
I’M SORRY I WAS AFRAID.
I’M SORRY I SAID IT WRONG.
I’M SORRY I DIDN’T SAY IT SOONER.
I picked up the nearest card. The handwriting was Jackson’s, precise and angular.
I’M SORRY I MADE YOU CRY IN A GARDEN.
I’M SORRY I LET YOU GO HOME ALONE.
I’M SORRY FOR EVERYTHING.
My vision blurred. I pressed the card against my chest and walked deeper into the house, past the flowers and the cards, through the hallway and into the living room.
Jackson was standing by the window. He was in jeans and a sweater, and Maple was sitting at his feet like a furry, judgmental witness.
He looked at me like he wasn't sure I was going to stay.
"You’re not going to Tokyo?" I said.
"I’m not going to Tokyo."
"Sophie said…"
"Sophie said what I asked her to say. Logan confirmed it. They’re both terrible actors, but they were extremely motivated."
I looked from him to the flowers and back.
"You set me up."
"Sophie came up with the plan. Logan agreed to corroborate. I provided the flowers and the groveling."
"You absolute cheater." My voice broke on the word but not from anger. "You manipulative, scheming, impossible liar."
"All accurate descriptors. I’ll add them to my file."
"I thought you were leaving." The tears came, fast and hot.
"I thought you were getting on a plane and leaving the country without even saying goodbye, and I ran out of that building like an idiot because the thought of you being gone for two months made me want to throw up, and you were HERE the whole time, decorating your own house with apology cards! "
He crossed the room and his hands found my face, both palms, the way he always held me, and he wiped the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs and looked at me with those gray eyes that I’d been dreaming about since I left.
"Does that mean you still care about me? Even a little?"
"You are the worst person I have ever met."
"That’s not a no."
"I hate you."
"Also not a no."
"Jackson." I grabbed the front of his sweater with both fists, pulled him close, and told him the truth. "I was never really angry. I was heartbroken. Because I’d already given you every piece of me I’d never given anyone else, and when I heard you say those words, it felt like all of it had been a lie, and I couldn’t breathe. "
"It wasn’t a lie." His voice was low and stripped bare. "None of it. Not a single moment. The necklace you threw at me opens a safe in my mother’s study, and I didn’t know it existed until weeks after I’d already fallen for you.
I hid behind it because it was easier than telling you the truth.
You’re the reason I stopped being the man I was.
You’re the reason this house is warm again. "
"Then why didn’t you just tell me?"
"Because I’ve never said the words to anyone. Because I didn’t know how. Because I was terrified that if I said them out loud, you’d see how much power you had over me, and I have spent my entire life making sure no one has that."
I looked at him and the wall I’d been holding up for a week, the one built from pride and pain and the absolute requirement of being the strong one, it gave way. Not with a crash. Quietly. The way ice melts. The way morning comes.
"Do you love me?" he asked directly, no hedging, just the question, offered like an open hand.
My heart was pounding so loud I was certain Maple could hear it, and the cat was watching from the floor with an expression that said she’d been waiting for this specific moment and was prepared to judge the outcome.
"Because I love you," he said, before I could answer. "I love you, Kim. I love you in a way I didn’t know I was capable of, and I’ve been sitting in this house talking to a cat about it because you’re the only person I want to say it to and you wouldn’t answer your phone."
Maple meowed from behind his ankles. Loud. Emphatic.
"Even the cat knows," Jackson said.
I laughed. A full, wet laugh that came out tangled with tears and relief.
"I love you," I said. "I love you, you impossible, infuriating, beautiful man. I have loved you since you held my sister’s hand in a hospital room and told her you were wrong about me, and I was too proud and too scared to say it, and I’m saying it now, and if you ever keep a secret from me again I will take that cat and all four kittens and move to Canada. "
He kissed me.
His hands were still on my face and he kissed me in the doorway of his mother’s living room surrounded by flowers and apology cards.
It was clumsy and overdue and tasted like tears, and it was the most honest kiss of my life.
I kissed him back with everything I had, my fists in his sweater, my heart hammering against his chest, and when we finally pulled apart we were both wrecked and neither of us cared.
"Never again," he said against my mouth. "I will never hurt you again."
"You’d better not."
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I breathed. The flowers were everywhere, filling the room with a warmth that I could feel in my chest, and Jackson’s arms were around me, and Maple was purring at our feet, and the house felt like Greta’s house again.
Then I noticed the kitchen. Brown paper bags on the counter. Fresh groceries, organic vegetables and imported pasta and ingredients for a meal that was clearly intended to impress someone.
"Is someone coming over?" I asked. "What’s all that?"
Jackson kissed the tip of my nose, a gesture so casual and tender it made my knees go unsteady. "I’m meeting my niece for the first time tonight. Logan is bringing Lily for dinner." He looked at me, and underneath the composure there was a nervousness I’d never seen on him before.
"I should make a good first impression, shouldn’t I?"