Chapter 27 I’m Glad You’re Mine
I’m Glad You’re Mine
Jamie
“Stop it, you’re eating too much.”
“I am not eating too much,” Jamie said, laughing as he took in another scoop of pie. “You’ve had most of it.”
“I’ve only had, like, three bites,” Eve said. “Three little bites, at that.”
“That’s a lie, but I can go get some more if you want.”
“No, I don’t want you to move,” she said, running her free hand along his bare back.
He’d never be able to recount how they got this way, but they were down to their underwear, lotus positioned in the middle of Jamie’s kingly bed, sharing sweet potato pie and ice cream.
And he wanted to stay exactly like this for as long as possible.
“Well, then you gotta learn to share.” Jamie cut another spoonful of pie for her, taking care to add a dollop of the homemade vanilla ice cream along with it, and he fed it to her, watching as her lips pulled the dessert from the spoon. “Maybe the problem is we didn’t get a big enough piece.”
Eve didn’t respond but kept her eyes on him as he took another scoop. The gentle clang of the silverware against the ceramic bowl reminded him of when they first met. “Hey,” she eventually said.
“Hey,” he replied, his mouth full.
She offered a quiet smile before saying, “Thank you for letting me into your real life.”
Jamie nodded but got lost in his musings for a moment.
He wanted to say that he looked forward to her returning the favor, but thought better of pushing.
Still, the way she grappled with Jack’s questions about marriage and children hadn’t left his mind.
Was it unease about Leo? Was he not as good to her as she claimed?
The way she avoided whoever this man was, Jamie worried that he was abusive in some way.
Was he why she’d been so timid about sex?
But her initial objection to meeting Jack made him think it was something else.
A miscarriage, perhaps a lost custody battle.
Maybe all of it combined. She obviously wasn’t ready to speak on it yet, so he wouldn’t ask her to.
He didn’t want to beg to be let inside. Not when she’d already given so much.
Instead of speaking what was on his mind, Jamie replied with a kiss. A quick one, but potent enough that he could taste the ice cream on Eve’s tongue, noting the way the flavor of it managed to change inside her mouth.
“Let’s go to Paris,” he said as they parted, surprising himself when the words came out. He’d been toying with the idea of taking Jack for Christmas, and errant thoughts of inviting Eve had crossed his mind, but he’d never intended to actually ask her. Not after last time.
Eve responded with a brittle chuckle. “What?”
“For Christmas,” he clarified. “You, me, and Jack.”
Eve’s brown eyes widened, and he imagined that the idea of going on vacation with him and Jack sent pure panic through her veins, but she recovered quickly, replacing her trepidation with a new spoonful of ice cream, taking the bowl from him altogether. “I don’t know what to say,” she admitted.
“If you don’t want to, it’s fine. Really,” he said, trying to ease the pressure. “I didn’t realize what I was saying. I know it’s asking a lot.”
“What’s scary is that I kinda do want to,” Eve said. She stopped avoiding his gaze with the ice cream and looked him in the eye again.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“Being here with you…” She spoke slowly and deliberately. “It’s made me think about my own life. How I need to get back to it.”
He looked up at her, his disappointment palpable. “What?”
“I need to see my family,” she said. “My friends. I texted with my parents earlier today, and they said they’d like to have me home for Christmas.”
“And then you’ll be back?”
Eve grinned at him. “Of course,” she said. She reached out to brush his curls from his face and rubbed her thumb against the top of his cheek.
Jamie hated how scared he was that she would hurt him.
How insecure he felt about her, about them, about love in general.
He liked to think he was free from Lucy, and in most ways he was, but she’d done indelible damage to his ability to trust. He did his best to expel his cynicism and took Eve’s open hand, kissing her palm.
“I think that’s a good idea,” he said. But then, unable to help himself, he asked, “Are you gonna see him?” There was a nervousness to his question that he prayed she would quell.
She replied with a sympathetic smile. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I can avoid it. We still have an apartment together.”
Jamie nodded.
Just when the silence between them had gotten loud, Eve spoke again.
“It’s not that I don’t like kids.” When Jamie quirked an eyebrow, she went on, “Leo and I…we’d been trying for the past couple of years.
Unsuccessfully, obviously.” She bowed her head, seeming to avoid his eyes again.
“It took a year to get pregnant the first time, and I miscarried a week before my first trimester ended. Another six months the second time.” She exhaled sharply.
“When it happened again in June, I felt like I was broken. There had to be something wrong. With us. With me. And I just…didn’t want my life anymore. So I left.”
“I’m so sorry, E—”
“Please don’t feel bad for me,” she interrupted. “I’m telling you this because I want you to trust me. I need you to believe me when I say that I’m going home because I need to. Because I left the wrong way. And if we’re ever going to be anything, it can’t be because I ran away.”
The ghost of a grin sat on Jamie’s lips as both relief and pride echoed in his blue eyes. “If you didn’t want me to fall in love with you, you’re doing a bad job,” he said.
“Stop. I’m a mess.”
“And still, here you are,” he said. “Stop selling yourself short, Evie.”
“I’m not trying to,” she said. “I think…” She paused. “It’s just really hard to believe you deserve love when you hate yourself.”
Jamie pulled her in close, closing his eyes as he drew in her aroma of amber and rose, lime and vanilla.
He wondered if she felt their hearts beating together the way he did.
“You deserve everything you want, Eve. And I hate that the world hasn’t given it to you yet.
” He caressed her back as he spoke, her bare skin feeling like silk to his fingertips.
“But…you know, in the meantime, Jack can make for pretty good practice. He’ll be back on Sunday.
” He smiled when he felt the gentle bobble of her laughter.
“We’ll be yours. If that’s what you want. ”
“I do,” Eve said.
It was the food coma talking, probably, but her choice of words, I do , felt significant. Heady and deliberate.
“Is that what you want?” she asked.
Jamie couldn’t remember the last time he really cried.
Maybe when Jack graduated from kindergarten.
He was reasonably secure in his emotions and certainly had nothing against it, but there wasn’t a whole lot that moved him all the way to full-fledged, face-streaking tears.
But this did. Because it was a little overwhelming to realize that just being open to Eve, despite how low and lifeless he’d been feeling when he met her, had actually paid off.
No one got through life without at least a little damage, but being vulnerable anyway? That was where the magic happened.
He’d fallen in like with Eve somewhere in the woods, but this, right here, was starting to feel like love.
Jamie squeezed Eve tighter as he replied, “Of course that’s what I want.”
“I thought you were about to leave me hanging,” she said as they finally separated. Her smile was infectious, irradiating an already perfect face.
“I wanted to make sure you weren’t gonna change your mind and take it back.”
“Now, wait a minute. Let the record show that I have capitulated on every single thing you’ve asked of me,” Eve said.
Jamie considered that for a moment, and he couldn’t deny that despite her thorny surface, she was mostly soft underneath, and she’d generally met him at least halfway. After some prodding. For the most part. “Except for Paris,” he teased.
Eve closed her eyes as she laughed at him. “You’re an asshole,” she said, still beaming. “How about this: I’ll spend Christmas in New York and New Year’s in Paris.”
Jamie didn’t stop to wonder whether she was serious before already rearranging his trip in his mind. He and Jack could be at Disneyland Paris on Christmas, spend their week sightseeing, and start the year with Eve, maybe on the Seine.
“Before I let my mind wander too far, is this a tentative plan, or…a promise?”
Eve took his hand into hers, the glint in her eyes meaning much more to him than the foreign words that came with it: “ Je te le promets .”