Chapter Twenty-Four—Blake
As we drive, I steal a glance at her out of the corner of my eye. I can tell she’s curious, though she’s doing her level best to pretend that she isn’t.
And when she sees what I’ve got to show her—I'm hoping it’s going to change everything.
These last couple of weeks, I’ve been putting things in motion, crunching numbers, calling Realtors, trying to figure out exactly what it’s going to take for her to see that I’m willing to give her the freedom she craves so deeply.
I’ve had to accept that I can’t force her to be with me. I can’t twist the pieces into place so that she has no other choice but to give me what I want. No matter how tempting it is, no matter how easy I know it would be, I have to let her make her own decisions. I could lock her up in my family mansion, make sure nobody else ever laid eyes on her, but she would never truly trust me, never truly want me as long as I treated her that way.
And this is my way of showing her I understand that—a place of her own. A house. No buts, no ifs, no nothing. I have the keys in my pocket, and I’m going to give them to her as soon as we arrive.
And, as we round the corner and see the place at the end of the street, I grin. It’s perfect for her, a little town house under the bough of a large willow tree that has started to shed its leaves for the fall. Deep amber and gold pepper the ground next to the wrought iron gate that runs around the perimeter, and the large windows glow in the early morning light.
I pull the car to a halt outside the house, and she stares up at it, nonplussed.
"What’s this?"
I grin, letting myself enjoy the moment before I answer her.
"It’s your house."
She turns to me, eyes wide.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"It’s your house, Sophia," I repeat, as though it should have been obvious. I reach into my pocket and pull out the key fob. It’s leather, printed with the thistle that makes up the Silencio insignia. It seemed appropriate.
I reach over and press it into her hand, and she just looks down at it for a moment. She isn’t comprehending what I’m trying to tell her.
"I don’t get it..."
"This place, I bought it for you," I explain, and finally, something clicks in her head.
"You did what?"
"I bought it for you."
"Why?" she demands, and she reaches over and presses the key fob into my hand. "No. No. I don’t want it. I don’t need anything from you, Blake."
I close my hand around hers, making sure she doesn’t let go of the keys.
"I’m not asking you for anything in return," I murmur, and I nod toward the house. "At least take a look around inside, okay?”
She chews her lip, but it’s too tempting for her to pass up. Eventually, she steps out of the car and makes her way to the wrought iron fence. Slipping her key into the heavy lock holding the gate shut, she pushes it open and walks up the pathway to the door.
She pauses before she heads inside, and I join her, wanting nothing more than to take her hand and squeeze it tight. But I don’t want to force myself into this moment. This is for her. It’s her chance to enjoy it, to wrap her head around what I’m offering her.
It's not a huge place, not compared to my mansion, but it’s bigger than her dorm room, at least. A narrow staircase before the living room leads to a bedroom and bathroom upstairs that overlook a large garden below. She stands there for a moment, on the polished dark wood floor, her eyes flitting around.
"I’ve never..." She trails off. She swallows hard, then she manages to keep going. "I’ve never had a place like this in my life before."
I grin. "That’s the idea." I brush my fingertips against hers. "This is yours. All yours. You don’t have to share it with anyone. And you don’t have to worry about getting a job to pay rent. It’s already paid for, everything."
She lets out a long, shaky breath, then turns to face me.
"I can’t accept this, Blake." Her voice is firm. "I-I appreciate the offer, I really do. But I don’t want to owe you anything. Not after..."
"I’m not asking you to owe me anything."
She narrows her eyes at me. "That’s not how your world works, and you know it," she shoots back. "You said it yourself. Everything happens for a reason. Everything comes with something attached to it—"
"And this is my way of showing you that I don’t need to live like that anymore," I cut her off. "I’m done with that. I don’t need to control everything anymore."
She closes her eyes.
"Blake, I don’t know... I don’t know if I can do this," she admits, her voice shaky. "I don’t take charity from people. I never have. And I don’t want to start, not with you, not after everything that’s happened."
"This isn’t charity."
"Of course it is—"
"No, it’s not, Sophia," I insist. "It’s an investment, an investment in your future at the university. You understand that?"
"No..."
I turn to her, clasp her hands in mine, and lift them to my chest.
"Sophia, listen to me. I want you to let that soak in. You don’t deserve to be held back by the fact that you don’t have the same money as other people there. This place, this will lift the weight of that from you, and you can focus on your studies, focus on doing what really needs to be done."
She hesitates. I can tell she’s not sure about this. She weighs the keys in her hand.
"You have to promise me something," she murmurs, and I nod.
"Anything."
"That you’re not— you're not going to use this as a way to control me."
She’s right to ask. After everything I’ve done, God knows she’s right to ask. Honestly, there’s a part of me that wants to use this place as a way to get back into her good books. I could have duplicated the keys, used them to come in and out whenever I wanted, rigged up CCTV, put guards at the door, anything it took to make sure she didn’t slip through my fingers.
But I didn’t. I didn’t do any of it. Because I want her to have her freedom. And, in that freedom, if she chooses me, then that meant she truly wanted me.
And that’s what I crave above all else, to be truly, completely, honestly desired by her.
"I’m not," I reply. "If you want to take this place and walk away from me, then you can do it. I understand that now, that you can’t handle me getting all up in your face. You don’t want someone to call all the shots for you. I might not like it, but..." I trail off. "I can handle it."
Her eyes scan mine, searching for some kind of doubt, searching for something that will give away the fact that I’m lying. But she’s not going to find it. She won’t. I want her to be happy, and if that includes me, then I’ll take it.
"God, Blake." She sighs as she lifts a hand to my face. "I... I’ve missed you."
I lean my head into her palm. "I’ve missed you, too, Sophia. So much. So fucking much."
I turn my head and plant a kiss against her palm. I can feel it, that warmth that’s spreading between us now.
"Thank you for this," she murmurs, gesturing around. "It’s beautiful, it really is. I never thought I would be able to call a place like this home, but I..."
"But what?" I prompt her as she trails off.
She bites her lip. "It’s more than just this place. It’s... it’s you, Blake. You’re what I consider my home now. When I look at you, I see someone I want to be with. No matter how dangerous it is. The way you protected me when... back at the restaurant. Nobody has ever done anything like that for me before."
"I would never let anything happen to you," I fire back hotly, the anger rising up in me again. But, when she caresses her fingers along my face, she douses it, that fire, the way only she can.
"I know you wouldn’t," she replies. "That’s never something that I thought, not even for a second. I just... I needed to know that you could let me be my own person, live my own life without getting yourself involved in every detail of it."
"Some part of me thought that you wouldn’t want me, if you had the choice," I admit, the words spilling from my lips before I can stop them, catching even me off guard.
Her face softens into a broad smile. "Of course I want you," she replies. And, before I can say another word, she leans up and plants a kiss against my lips.
She sinks into me, holding me close, and I kiss her back, a long, slow kiss. Her fingertips graze across my cheek and down to my neck. She rests her fingers over the pulse of my heart for a moment, like she’s checking how hard it’s beating for her.
But it’s more than just my heart that’s beating for her. I scoop her from the ground and carry her toward the stairs, planting her down on one a few higher up than mine. And, as I sink down to my knees before her, a grin spreads over her face.
"You want me to show you how much I’ve missed you?" I breathe, and she nods. And, with that, I reach for her jeans and slowly begin to tug down the zip.