Chapter 14
Jake
Ican’t stop hearing it.
Mom.
Poppy said it in the car like she’d been saying it for years.
After Emilia leaves, I go back inside, check on Poppy twice, and end up at the kitchen window with a drink I don’t finish, staring at Honolulu going dark below me.
I don’t sleep.
I lie on top of the covers and stare at the ceiling and think about the way Emilia’s face changed in that car. Not horrified, not disgusted. If I had to guess, I’d say she was scared.
Around two in the morning, I give up on staring at the ceiling and go back to the kitchen. Make coffee I don’t need. Watch the city and try to figure out when exactly this stopped being a sixty-day arrangement and became the thing I’d burn everything down to keep.
I can’t find the exact moment.
That’s the problem. It didn’t happen at once. It happened in parking lots and preschool pickups and Sunday dinners and hospital hallways. It happens every time Poppy reaches for her and Emilia reaches back without thinking about it.
It happened so slowly I didn’t notice until it became everything.
I text her at two in the morning.
You okay?
She doesn’t answer until 6 a.m.
Fine. Coming by this morning, if that’s okay.
I stare at my phone for a full minute.
Door’s open.
She shows up at nine with coffee she picked up on the way, which means she thought about it before she headed over. Emilia Hart doesn’t do anything without thinking about it first.
Poppy launches off the couch the second she hears the elevator.
“Emilia! Dad burned the eggs again!”
“I didn’t burn them. They were just a little crispy.”
Emilia looks at the pan still sitting on the stove, then at me. “Those are burned.”
“Crispy.”
Poppy dissolves into giggles and Emilia sets the coffee down, and the morning moves forward and neither of us says anything about last night.
Not yet.
The day gets in the way the way days do.
Poppy wants the beach, then lunch, then a nap she insists she doesn’t need even though she falls asleep in four minutes.
Work emails. A donor call I take from the balcony while Emilia helps Poppy build a cardboard sea turtle habitat at the kitchen island. It’s normal. Almost.
That night, after Poppy is down, I tip my head toward the balcony.
Emilia follows me outside.
The infinity pool runs along the edge of the balcony, still and glowing faintly blue against the dark. Honolulu spreads out in every direction. Up here it’s quiet enough that I can hear her breathing slow beside me.
She sets her coffee on the ledge.
I give her a minute. Then I say, “She called you Mom and you looked terrified.”
“I wasn’t terrified.”
“You went pale.”
“I was surprised.”
“Emilia.”
She turns slightly, her chin lifting. That’s her bracing posture. I know it by heart now. “It complicates things.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It does.”
She looks back at the water. “We have rules.”
“We had rules.” I turn toward her. “Past tense.”
“Jake—”
“You stopped feeling fake a long time ago.”
I watch her work through three different responses and put all of them away.
“This was supposed to be over in sixty days,” she says finally.
“This was always going to last longer than sixty days.” I hold her gaze. “You know that.”
She doesn’t argue.
That’s the thing about Emilia. She doesn’t lie when she’s cornered. She goes quiet. And that quiet right now, with her shoulder two inches from mine and the city glowing below us…that’s the most honest she’s been since she walked in this morning.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she says. Low. Almost to herself.
“Like hell you don’t.”
She turns and looks at me. Really looks. And for once, she doesn’t hide what’s behind her eyes.
I close the space between us.
My hand finds the curve of her jaw, tentative and careful, giving her every chance to pull back. Her skin is warm against my palm. She doesn’t retreat. She doesn’t brace. She simply watches me with those green eyes, wide and unguarded in a way I’ve never seen before.
The kiss isn’t explosive. It’s restrained in a way we never are anywhere else, both of us still waiting for the other to flinch.
My mouth brushes hers once, twice, and I feel her breath catch.
Then something shifts.
Her hands grip my shirt and the restraint between us finally cracks. I deepen the kiss and she meets me immediately, no hesitation left anywhere in it.
I pull back just enough to look at her. Her lips are parted and swollen, her breathing unsteady. The composed executive director is gone. In her place is just Emilia, scared, certain, wanting.
“Inside,” I say. My voice comes out lower than I intended. Rougher.
She nods.
I take her hand and lead her from the balcony into the penthouse.
The glass doors slide shut behind us, muffling the distant sound of waves.
My bedroom opens before us, soft lighting, cream-colored linens, the enormous window framing the city’s scattered lights like they’re earthbound stars.
The atmosphere shifts here. It’s quieter and softer, far more emotionally vulnerable than the charged air outside.
She stops at the foot of the bed and turns to face me. Her fingers go to the buttons of her shirt, but I reach out and still her hands.
“Let me.”
She searches my face for something, mockery or maybe an angle. Finding none, she drops her hands to her sides.
I unbutton her shirt slowly. Each button reveals another inch of skin, and I touch every newly exposed curve, her collarbone, the swell of her breast above her bra, the dip of her waist. Lingering touches.
No rush. I’m reading every micro-expression, every sharp inhale, every time her eyelids flutter.
The shirt slides off her shoulders and pools on the floor.
I unclasp her bra next, and her breasts spill free, full and soft, nipples already tightening in the cool air conditioning.
I cup one in my palm, weigh it gently, and run my thumb across the peak.
She sucks in a breath and her hands find my shoulders, steadying herself.
“Jake...”
Just my name. Nothing else. But the way she says it, like a question and an answer and a surrender all at once, makes my chest ache.
I lay her back on the bed. The sheets are cool against our heated skin, and she arches slightly as I settle over her.
I kiss her again, slower this time, deliberately, my tongue tracing the seam of her lips before slipping inside.
While our mouths move together, my hands explore her body with the same measured attention, the curve of her hip, the soft skin of her inner thigh, the way her stomach tenses when my fingers drift lower.
I pull back and look at her. “I want to taste you.”
Her green eyes darken. She wets her lips, and I can see the pulse hammering in her throat. She doesn’t speak, but she spreads her legs for me, an invitation, trust, a gift.
I settle between her thighs and strip away the last of her clothes in efficient movements. Then she’s bare beneath me, vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen before.
I press a kiss to the inside of her knee, then higher, and her breath catches when my mouth finally finds her. Her skin is impossibly soft here, and I can smell her arousal, musky and warm and unmistakably Emilia.
She’s already wet. I groan against her as I taste her, slow and deliberate, learning exactly what pulls those helpless sounds from her throat.
“Relax,” I murmur against her thigh. “Let me take care of you.”
Her hips buck the second I find her clit. I hold her steady with one hand on her stomach while the other grips her thigh, keeping her open for me while I work her slowly higher. Every reaction teaches me something. Every broken sound makes me want more.
When I slip two fingers inside her, her whole body tightens. Her hands fist in the sheets and her back arches off the mattress.
“Jake, fuck.”
I curl my fingers and feel her start to fall apart around me.
But I’m not ready for it to end yet.
I ease her back from the edge once, twice, just enough to hear the frustration in every sound she makes.
Then she whispers, “Please.”
The word cracks something open in my chest. Emilia Hart, who never asks for anything, is begging for me.
So I give her what she needs.
I keep my mouth on her while my fingers drive her through the orgasm this time, hard enough to leave her shaking beneath me, her cry breaking against the quiet of the room.
I work her through it gently, pressing soft kisses to her trembling thighs while she comes apart in my hands.
When I finally look up at her, she’s staring at me with an expression I’ve never seen before. Raw. Open. Something that looks terrifyingly close to what I’m feeling.
She sits up and reaches for me. Her hands find the buttons of my shirt, and I let her undress me, let her take her time to explore me. When she pushes the fabric aside and runs her palms over my chest, I have to close my eyes against the intensity of it.
She pushes me back against the pillows. I go willingly, more than willingly, watching as she positions herself between my legs, dark hair falling forward as she presses a kiss to my stomach before moving lower.
The second her hand wraps around my cock, I lose my ability to think.
“Emilia.” My voice comes out rough. “Slow.”
She takes me into her mouth and I grip the sheets hard enough to wrinkle them. It’s hot and wet and deliberate, every slow pull of her mouth sending another crack through my control.
I slide my fingers into her hair, not pushing, just holding on while I watch her. The look she gives me nearly finishes me on its own. Desire, yes. But something softer is underneath it now. Something dangerous.
“That’s it,” I murmur, already fighting for breath. “Just like that.”
She takes me deeper, and a groan tears out of me before I can stop it.
I pull her up before I lose myself completely. Her lips are swollen, her eyes hazy.
I roll her beneath me and sink into her in one long, slow thrust. Her pussy tightens around my cock like she’s trying to hold me there forever, and we both go still. Just breathing. Just feeling.
“Look at me,” I say.
She opens her eyes. And there it is, everything she’s been hiding, everything she’s been afraid of, laid bare in that emerald gaze.
I move slowly. Deliberately. Each thrust deep and measured, our bodies finding a rhythm that feels less like fucking and more like conversation. My forehead rests against hers. Our breath mingles. When I thrust particularly deep, she gasps my name like a prayer.
This isn’t just sex. This is something else entirely. Something that terrifies me even as I chase it.
I’m in love with her.
I know it with absolute certainty. I don’t say it, not yet, but I feel it in every slow thrust, every lingering touch, every time I catch her eye and see my own vulnerability reflected back at me.
Later. I’ll tell her later.
For now, I just make love to her slowly, thoroughly, pouring everything I can’t say into every movement of my body against hers.
Neither of us moves for a long time afterward. Her breathing slows against my chest. My hand finds her back and stays there. I should say something. I don’t. Eventually I sleep.
I wake sometime past three.
Same room. City lights through the glass. Ocean sound coming in off the balcony, low and steady. Emilia against my side, one hand curled near my chest, hair spread across my pillow.
I stare at the ceiling.
My life before this was clean and simple. I knew what every day looked like. I knew who the hell I was.
I have no damn idea who I am right now.
I look at her.
Her shoulder. Her collarbone. The way she breathes differently asleep, all that fight just gone. She’s still here past three in the morning, her hand on my chest. I don’t know what the hell I did to deserve that, but I’m not questioning it.
I think about Poppy down the hall.
Her ocean blue eyes. Her sea turtle drawing framed on my kitchen wall like it’s a Hale Foundation acquisition. Her tiny shoes at the front door every single night.
What losing any of this would feel like.
I pull Emilia closer before I finish that thought. She makes a small sound and settles without waking.
I stare at the ceiling for another hour.
Sunlight hits the kitchen in the morning.
Poppy is at the island with her crayons, drawing with extreme concentration, narrating to herself in a low stream I’ve learned not to interrupt. She’s wearing her sleep shirt and one sock. The other sock is gone. It’s always gone. I’ve stopped asking where she left it.
Emilia is laughing.
She’s at the counter with coffee, still in my T-shirt, barefoot, hair loose. Poppy said something I missed and Emilia is laughing, real and unguarded, tipping forward with it.
I stop in the doorway.
The sight hits me like a physical thing.
Not the view. Not the penthouse. Not anything I built or earned or worked fourteen-hour days for.
This.
Poppy holds up her drawing. “Look, Dad! I made the whole ocean!”
Emilia turns. Her expression shifts when she sees me standing there, something moving fast through her eyes before she pulls it back. Not fast enough.
I cross the kitchen, press a kiss to the top of Poppy’s head, and pick up the drawing.
“That’s the best ocean I’ve ever seen.”
Poppy beams.
I set it down and reach past Emilia for the coffee, close enough that my arm brushes hers. She doesn’t move away.
I fill my cup and look at her sideways. “Sleep okay?”
Her mouth curves. “You know I did.”
“Just checking.”
She turns back to her coffee and Poppy launches into an elaborate story about the fish in her drawing.
But I don’t move.
Because I know exactly what I’m feeling. I’ve known since the pool last night. Maybe longer. Maybe since the hospital hallway with Poppy asleep across both our laps and Emilia’s hand steady on her back like she’s been doing it her whole life.
I’m completely in love with her.
And I have no idea what she’ll do when she figures that out.
And that scares the shit out of me.