Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
JAMESON
I swing the back door open a little too fast, and it ricochets off the door stop and flies back at my face. Luckily, I catch it in time, because I already have one fading black eye and a newly split chin—I don’t need to look even more beat-up when I see Lauren.
“Where is she?” I ask Jules, who’s standing at the kitchen sink looking at me like I’ve just broken into her house. I’ll admit I came in a bit too quickly in my haste.
“I assume you mean Lauren?”
“Yeah, her car’s outside.” It’s parked right where Jules’s truck normally sits.
“She dropped her car off here, then walked over to Newbury Street to meet Sophia. I gave her my spot and parked my truck on the street.”
My chest deflates with disappointment, even though it’s probably best that I have a minute to collect myself—my emotions are all over the place, and my thoughts are running wild as I worry about how this meeting will go, and whether Josh’s infidelity will make Lauren afraid to trust me in the future.
Once I’m upstairs, I glance around, imagining how she’ll see my place for the first time.
It’s monochromatic and sparse—exactly how you’d expect a bachelor pad to look.
It’s nothing like the warm and inviting space she’s created in her house.
After spending so much time there lately, my place feels kind of .
. . cold. Lonely. Most of that is probably because she’s not here.
She has a way of bringing warmth with her wherever she goes.
I’ve just changed out of my suit and thrown on jeans and a fitted Henley when I hear a knock on my door. And when I open it, Lauren’s standing there staring at me like she’s never seen me before. Then she smiles.
“I’m so used to seeing you in a suit,” she says, “that sometimes I forget how good you look when you’re casual like this too.”
I reach above me and grip the top of the doorframe with one hand, put my other hand on her hip, and lean toward her. “I’m also happy to take my clothes off, in case you need help remembering how good I look naked.”
A laugh bursts out of her. “As tempting as that offer is, I need to talk to you.”
I pull her close and kiss her forehead. “Why don’t you come in, then.”
I lead her straight through the living room of my sterile apartment, without giving her the full tour. She doesn’t need to see my place, because I don’t plan on living here much longer.
I grab a blanket off the back of the couch before I slide open the door to the small roof-deck.
It’s one of those rare early spring days where it feels like it’s warm because we’re so used to the cold and snow.
I gesture for her to sit on the outdoor couch while I start the fire pit.
She wraps the blanket around her, and when I sit next to her, she cuddles up to my side.
“You’re a blanket hog, you know.”
“I didn’t know you’d want to share,” she says.
“Like that would stop you. Even in bed, you steal all the blankets at night.”
“Good thing you run hot,” she says, looking up at me and tracing the line of my cheekbone, from my black eye down to the corner of my lip, with her finger.
“Good thing. How was your talk with Sophia?” There’s no reason to beat around the bush.
“Surprisingly good.” She snuggles in closer but doesn’t give me any other details.
“Is that really all I get?”
“She told me her side of the story, which you’ve already heard.
And she reminded me that what Josh did wasn’t about me, it was about him being a narcissist who thought he could and should have whatever he wanted, no matter who he had to lie to or hurt in order to get it.
Even though I knew that, hearing it from her was validating.
And then, we decided that Josh had great taste in women, obviously.
” She looks up again and gives me an adorable eye roll.
“You’re handling this so differently than I expected.”
“I have wasted too much time already being upset about Josh. He gave me two beautiful girls and in spite of everything else he did—or maybe because of it—I now have a life I truly love. I finally feel ready to leave him where he belongs . . . in my past.”
“I’m glad. And I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about Josh and Sophia right away. I know you felt like I lied to you, too—”
“You discovered the lie that trumped all of Josh’s other lies—” She lets out a slightly bitter sounding laugh.
“—and when you were keeping that from me, I . . . I didn’t handle it well.
I’m sorry about how I reacted, and I’m sorry that I left with my friends and didn’t give you a chance to explain.
I wasn’t my best self last night. I was actually kind of my worst self, honestly. ”
I tighten my arm around her shoulders and kiss the top of her head. “If I can’t love you at your worst, I don’t deserve you at your best.”
She tilts her head back against my arm and stares up at me. “Jameson Flynn, did you just say you love me?”
“I’ve been obsessed with you since your twenty-two-year-old self walked into my office, all sass and sweetness.
But you were too young for me, and I knew it.
And three years later, once I’d seen your determination, your openness, and the way you put your heart into everything you do, and once I finally opened up to you and you liked what you saw, I knew we could be good for each other.
I’ll forever be sorry that I didn’t fight for us then, and that we had to wait five years to get to this point.
“But now . . . now I love the woman you’ve become—the kindness and empathy you show, the way you love your girls, the way you accept help when you need it, the way you’ve built a whole new life for yourself here in Boston, the way you’ve opened yourself up to another relationship even though you were burned badly before.
I don’t think there’s anything I don’t love about you, honestly. And there probably never has been.”
In her eyes, I see those feelings reflected back at me, even if she’s not ready to say she loves me yet.
“I love that you’re always here for me,” she says, “no matter what—that you are patient with me and great with my kids, that you are amazing with your sisters and nephew, that you have this soft side that you don’t show the world, but that you’ve shown me.
I love your protective streak, and that you only open up to the people you really care about.
You make me feel like forever is a possibility. ”
“It is. You just have to be ready to take that risk with me.”
“I’m ready.” Her words are barely more than a whisper. “I think I’ve been ready all along, but I’ve let fear keep me from admitting it to myself or to you.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Loving again . . . getting hurt again . . . losing you again. . .”
I reach over and cup her jaw in my hand, promising myself that I’ll always remember how lucky I am that she’s choosing me, that we’ve made our way back to each other.
“I’m committed to this. To us. I can’t promise that neither of us will ever hurt the other, but I can promise you that we’ll always work through it—that we won’t give up on each other. ”
She grips my forearm with her hand and gives me a little squeeze that conveys so much. “That’s exactly what I want in a relationship.”
My lips meet hers tentatively, like the gentle first kiss we never had.
We originally came together in an explosion .
. . a firework with a long fuse that had been burning so slowly it felt like it might never light off.
But now, I kiss her like I intend to cherish her for the rest of my life—because I do.
But too soon, she’s pulling away, telling me she promised Morgan she’d be home fifteen minutes from now. I bite my lower lip in frustration, because I spent the last twenty-four hours without her, and I don’t want to be apart another second.
“You want to come home with me?” she asks.
If I do, I might never leave. “Yeah.”
“All right,” she says, and she goes to stand but then turns toward me. “Will you stay?”
“At your house?”
“Yeah. Will you stay overnight?”
“You’re not afraid it’ll confuse the girls?”
She shakes her head. “They adore you. And I think they need to get used to having you around.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” I need to hear her say it.
“Because I plan on keeping you.”
“I seriously thought they’d never go to sleep.
” Lauren groans after she tiptoes back to the bedroom.
I’m sitting against her headboard, responding to emails and wrapping up a few last things for work so I can pay attention to nothing but her tonight.
I set my phone on the nightstand as she approaches.
“You can’t get them all riled up like that before bedtime. ”
“What did I do?” I know damn well what I did.
“From now on, you’re only allowed to do your Flynn Rider impersonation before dinner. You can’t expect them to laugh that hard, for that long, and then go to sleep.”
Pretending to be Flynn Rider was not a talent I knew I had, but all I have to do is turn my head toward them and give them a big smile, and Iris and Ivy dissolve into giggles.
Their reaction was too cute, so of course I did it every time they asked.
I hold up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I promise.”
“You don’t mean a word of that, do you?” She laughs as she comes to a stop right next to what I’m already thinking of as my side of the bed.
“I intend to mean it, but if they look at me with those big eyes and say ‘pwease’ like they were tonight, I may not be able to hold out.”
“Cuteness is their superpower. You can’t crumble in the face of that. I’m going to need you to back me up on stuff, you don’t get to always be the fun one.”
I reach over and pull her to the edge of the bed. “I’ll always back you up.” I hear what she’s saying, and all the things she’s not saying. I’ll be there for her like no one ever has been. But I’ll also have fun with her kids, because they deserve that too.