Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
THEO
Did I come in my pants? You bet your ass I did, and I loved every fucking second of it. I don’t even care that my boxers are sticky and gross as I move away from Blake.
She’s relaxed, but I know her mind’s probably racing now, spiraling into worst-case scenarios.
I get it. She’s afraid of risking everything she’s worked for, and I don’t want to be the reason she loses it.
I’m not worth that kind of cost. But I’m burning up inside.
I need to ask her. I need to stop pretending she’s not my whole world and find out if she’ll choose this. Choose me.
Realization dawns on me that Caleb was right when he said love and hate are a fine line.
I think my hurt was masking the real issue, and I never truly hated her—I still love her.
She stole my heart the day I met her, and I never got it back.
I don’t ever want it back if it means I get to have her every day.
Shit. I need to speak to James and move my timelines up.
“You okay?” I ask, reaching for the glove box and grabbing a packet of tissues.
I take out a couple and lean over, ready to clean her up, but the grip on my wrist stops me. “Don’t,” she whispers, her face turned down.
“Don’t shut down on me, firefly, that’s usually my job.” I chuckle. “Let me do this… I want to take care of you. Please.”
I don’t want her to close herself off. I need her here with me, because if she’s not, I know I’ll spiral. Blake can protest as much as she likes, but I know she wants me. I can feel it in the way she touches me, in the way she watches me when she thinks I don’t know she’s looking.
Blowing out a breath, she nods. I quickly clean her up and put the used tissue in my pocket. If it’s the only way I’m going to be able to smell her, then fuck it, I’ll be the weird guy with the tissue in his pocket covered in his girl's cum.
“I need to get back to Oscar,” she murmurs, eyes still cast down.
I grip her chin and pull her gaze to mine. “Stop, Blake. I don’t regret this, and I know you don’t either. I won’t risk your job.” Her eyes go wide, and I know I’ve figured out what’s really bothering her. “Just trust me. This is all going to work out the way it should.”
“How can you say that? If Frank finds out, it won’t be your job on the line, it’ll be mine,” she says, sadness creeping in.
“I can say that because I know it to be true. I want this, you, us. I have a plan, but I need you to trust me. In the meantime, we’ll just sneak around.” I smirk. “No one needs to know until we need them to. We’ll be careful. I won’t let anything happen to you or to your job,” I reiterate firmly.
I can see the internal struggle going on behind her eyes as they dart between mine. She’ll be weighing the pros and cons, working out whether she wants to trust me enough to see if we can actually make this work.
“So much has happened already, Theo. Can we really come back from that?” she asks, nibbling on her bottom lip.
“Yes, we can,” I reply, running my thumb across her cheek in a soothing pattern. “We’re both older than we were. Both of us wiser to the others' actions. No one is saying we have to be together forever, but I want to see whether we can make this work, not only for us but for Oscar as well.”
Like fuck we won’t be together forever. I’ll tie her down if I have to, but I won’t tell her that just yet.
She glances up at me with her big doe eyes. “We keep it quiet? No one knows, not even Oscar?”
I internally grin. “We keep it quiet. We don’t tell Oscar,” I agree with a nod. “We act as if nothing’s going on while fucking like rabbits in our spare time.”
“Theo!” she exclaims, slapping my chest.
“Tell me I’m wrong and that doesn’t turn you on?” I ask, my eyebrow raised.
She rolls her eyes. “I plead the fifth.”
Cupping her cheek, I draw her in for a kiss, mumbling against her lips, “Trust me, firefly. I won’t let you down again.”
She leans into me, breathing deeply. “Okay. Let’s do this. But the second anyone gets a hint of what’s going on between us, it's over. Got it?”
“Got it.”
I smile, knowing I’d rather die than lose her again.