Chapter 2
Nathan
The mere idea of Jasmine leaving—eventually, someday—brings me to an utter standstill. Hits me hard.
She’s my stepdaughter’s best friend.
She’s twenty-three—bright, beautiful, talented—with her whole life ahead of her.
She’s an unexpected gift that came into our lives and stayed. Stitched herself in.
Sophie and I needed her—first because Sophie decided to stay in the PNW and live with me when her mother, my ex-wife, got married again, and she couldn’t function without Jazz at all.
Her asthma, her anxiety, with a hefty dose of neglect on my ex’s part, meant Sophie became emotionally attached to her best friend.
Later, after a few years of Sophie settling into my penthouse and my life, my extensive travel slowly winding down, and Jasmine losing her mother… it was natural to invite her to live with us.
To make her role as Sophie’s all-around caretaker official. To pay the poor girl for all the unpaid, un-thanked tasks she did around my house.
I look around the house, noticing the little changes she’s made—houseplants on windowsills, colorful mugs that don’t match my all-white dinnerware, a basket by the door where she insists shoes belong.
Nothing flashy, just pieces of her that have quietly claimed the space.
I can’t remember a version of this house without her stamp—her shy smiles and quiet steadiness, her colorful stacks of notecards, her voice drifting through the hall when she reads to Sophie in distinct voices.
I can’t imagine it without her.
Betrayal, a sense of abandonment, utter misery sit on my chest.
She’s not leaving.
She can’t.
I catch myself scowling in her direction and push away from the island, moving around like a caged animal.
What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m a forty-three-year-old man, not a teenager at the mercy of his hormones.
I need space from the intensity of how… attached I feel to this wisp of a girl—from her big, beautiful eyes to the bold, unspoken questions glinting in them today.
But I don’t want space from her. That’s the damn problem.
The soft pressure of her gaze on my face compels me, as if it were a tractor beam tugging at me. I turn fully to have my fill of her, instead of sneaking glances as I’ve been doing since I walked in.
She’s wearing the usual thin black tank top and shorts that cling to her hips like they’re stitched on. Her skin’s got that post-yoga sheen, a faint, flushed glow that makes her golden-brown complexion look warmer—like sunlight trapped under smooth skin.
Her long, silky hair is in a low braid, swinging over one shoulder as she moves efficiently around the kitchen.
Everything about Jasmine is neat. Practical. No frills, no drama. And yet, she distracts the hell out of me.
Maybe because I’ve spent a lifetime looking after and managing a damned caravan of highly strung people like my mother, my half-brother Zayn, and my ex. Even Sophie, to some extent.
It’s only Jasmine that’s never asked me for anything. Only Jasmine who pays attention to my simplest needs instead of the other way around.
Is that the magic of having this girl in my life?
Uncurbed, unbidden, my thoughts follow my baser instincts.
My eyes go lower—automatically, damn near helplessly—to sweep over the rest of her.
The fragile jut of her collarbone.
The firm swell of her breasts under the tank.
The lush flare of her hips, long coltish legs, the tight, round curves of her…
I shut down the thought, but it’s too late.
When did I register all these things about her? The precise rise and fall of her curves? Of how sinuously she moves and how her voice lowers to a husky pitch in the mornings and late at night?
Fuck, I should feel like a pervert. But I don’t.
All this… knowledge of Jasmine is in my veins. My bones. Not just my eyes.
She ducks her head slightly when she notices my gaze land on the large birthmark on her cheek.
Sophie confided in me once that while Jasmine didn’t care about the birthmark, people made her conscious about it. Either they shied away from looking at her fully or advised her to get it fixed or faded.
Even the idea of some asshole suggesting she change herself makes anger burn in my chest. Like everything else about her, the birthmark only makes her different. Distinct.
If anything, it brings into keener contrast her quiet, striking beauty, her calm nature that doesn’t require attention or approval. Maybe that’s why I never registered the two decades of age gap between us.
“Go wake up Sophie,” I say, opening a kitchen drawer. My voice comes out flat, dismissive.
Jasmine’s slender shoulders stiffen.
“It’s Tuesday, right?” I add, pitching my voice softer. “Won’t our princess grace us with her presence at breakfast usually?”
She gives me a hesitant smile and pushes off from the island with that sloping grace I know like the back of my hand.
My breath rattles out of me as the space empties of her scent, her sinuous curves, and her shining spirit.
And I realize I’m completely fucked.
I busy myself with setting the table, even though the last thing I feel like is eating. My movements are too sharp, too quick, and I nearly catch my finger in a damned drawer.
I close my eyes as I reach the dining table, trying to shake the restless energy building under my skin. The morning sun is warm and bright on my face, and I force myself to take a few breaths.
This disquiet over the idea of Jasmine leaving forces me to face other stuff I’ve been pushing away.
Everything’s felt slightly off lately. Not wrong. Just... muffled. As if I’m moving through water.
My routines are intact. Business is thriving. Deals are closing. Sophie’s health is stable. But I wake up most mornings wondering if I’ve missed something I can’t name. As if something I want is right out of my grasp and yet I can’t reach for it.
My brilliant half-brother Zayn would say it’s burnout. Or boredom. Or some other new-age bullshit I don’t understand.
Except he’s not the recluse he used to be.
He’s married to the love of his life now and they’re expecting their first child soon.
And the way he looks at his wife Sasha—like she hung the fucking moon—did something to me. Twisted me up.
Made everything else in my life feel… empty. Sterile. Purposeless.
And yet when Jasmine’s hand brushed mine earlier, when her fingers tapped the back of my hand as if it was the most natural thing for her to do, it sparked something sharp and low in my gut.
A flicker of heat.
A whisper of joy.
A sense of completeness.
Her allure isn’t that she’s young, beautiful, and sexy. Or that after years of easy celibacy my libido’s making demands. But that looking after her, being around her, fills me with a sense of ease, of purpose, of my world being just right.
That thought terrifies me even more than the cliché of a middle-aged man lusting after the young woman he can’t have.