5. Jarvis #3
The room goes quiet. Even the traffic outside seems to stop.
She looks at me like she's waiting for me to agree, like she's handed me the truth and expects me to use it against her.
Her chin trembles and her hands are clasped so tight her knuckles are white.
I want to grab her and shake her, to pin her against the wall and show her exactly how tired of her I am not, but that's not what she needs.
She needs words and the kind of patience I've spent my whole life avoiding because patience means attachment and attachment means pain. I step closer, and she steps back until her shoulders hit the wall.
"I am not your mother," I say. My voice is low. Controlled. "I am not a woman who chose a building over her child. I am not someone who is going to wake up one day and decide you are too much work. Do you understand me?"
She shakes her head. Tears spill over. "You don't know that. You can't know that. You just met me."
"I know that you're the first thing I think about when I wake up.
I know that I've given you authority over a business your mother spent thirty years building and I've spent the last few years trying to protect, because your mind is worth more than my pride.
I know that Jett hasn't looked at another woman since you walked in, and that's saying something.
I know that when you cry, I want to destroy the world until nothing is left that can hurt you.
" I lean down until my forehead touches hers.
"And I know that in twenty days, when that calendar runs out, I'm not going to let you walk away.
So carry that fear if you need to, but don't pretend it's fact. "
She is crying now. Silent tears streaming down her face. I wipe them away with my thumbs.
"I don't know how to believe you," she whispers.
"Then I'll keep saying it until you do."
I kiss her soft and slow, a promise more than a claim, and she melts into me with her hands fisting in my shirt, holding on like I'm the only solid thing in a room full of ghosts.
Dinner is tense, not because of us, but because of her.
She sits at the kitchen table, pushing food around her plate. Jett tells a story about a supplier who tried to shortchange us on halibut, and she smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. She's somewhere else, somewhere twenty days from now.
I watch her, the way she glances at the calendar on the refrigerator, the way her fork pauses before reaching her mouth, the way she draws her shoulders in and makes herself smaller, like she's already practicing for the space she'll leave behind.
Jett notices too, his eyes cutting to me, but I give him a slight shake of my head—not yet. Then she speaks, looking at the calendar with day ten's red circle staring back at us like a wound.
"Twenty more days," she says. Her voice is light. Casual. Like she is commenting on the weather. "Twenty more days and I can get back to my real life."
My fork hits the plate, the sound cracking through the kitchen like a gunshot, china rattling as Jolie flinches and Jett goes completely still.
The temperature in the room drops to freezing.
I look at her without blinking or breathing, letting her see exactly what's underneath the control and patience, underneath the man who's been gentle with her for ten days.
"Your real life," I say, my voice terrifyingly calm and precise, "is here."
She stares at me. Her mouth opens. No sound comes out.
I set my napkin on the table and stand up, walking around until I'm beside her chair, looking down at her as she has to tilt her head back to meet my eyes.
"We are done pretending you're leaving," I say.
"We are done with the countdown. We are done letting you hold this over our heads like we're some vacation you're taking before you go back to the real world.
" I crouch down to eye level and take her chin in my hand, gentle but firm.
"This is your real life. These hands on your body, this restaurant you're saving, this home we're building around you—that is real.
The apartment in the city, the job you think you're going back to, the life you built to run away from here—that is the ghost. Not us. "
Her lips tremble. "Jarvis..."
"Say it," I command. "Say you understand."
She swallows, her eyes searching mine for the lie or the trap, but she won't find one because I've never been more serious about anything in my life.
"I understand," she whispers.
"Good." I stand and look at Jett, who watches us with the same possessive and relentless expression I feel.
Done waiting. I look back down at her. "Tomorrow, that calendar comes down, and we start counting up instead of down.
Every day you stay and every day you choose us—that's the only number that matters now. "
I sit back down, pick up my fork, and resume eating like I didn't just detonate a bomb in the middle of our dinner. Jolie doesn't move for a long moment, then slowly picks up her fork too, her hand shaking as she eats. And for the first time in ten days, she doesn't look at the calendar.