Wonderstruck

Chapter 28

Whitney

My nerves are shot for the rest of the morning.

As I drive from my dentist appointment to the office, my stomach churns, and my mind swirls with vertigo.

Every molecule of my body feels like it’s stuck in fight or flight mode.

I want to run. I want to hide, but I know the best thing is to face this issue head-on.

Theo said we’d talk about it later, so while I sit at a traffic light, I rehearse what I’m going to say to him over and over, perfecting my words and working through the best way to say how I’m feeling.

Even as I sit in the elevator, waiting to get to our floor, I mouth my speech to myself over and over so I don’t forget it.

But it’s a useless endeavor.

Outside Theo’s office, there is a flurry of activity. People in matching ‘Mike's Moving Co.’ shirts are stacking boxes onto a dolly and wheeling them down the hallway to the elevator.

“What’s going on?” I ask as soon as I’m standing in front of our office space.

I glance down at my desk to see everything completely untouched.

But there’s still a stack of boxes outside Theo’s office.

A few of the movers each have a box in their arms as they walk down the hallway to the elevator to go down.

I step closer and frown. “This is Theo Hurst’s office, you know that, right? He’s the CEO of this company?” I ask them, wondering if they’ve gotten lost from where they were supposed to be moving things out of.

“Not anymore,” a familiar, sinfully sexy, deep voice says from his doorway.

I turn to see Theo leaning against the frame with his hands in his pockets. He’s not wearing his suit jacket and has the cuffs of his baby blue dress shirt rolled up, making the veins in his forearms stand out.

“Theo…” I trail off, hoping my tone states that I’m not interested in playing games.

“Whitney,” he says back, almost like he’s bored of this conversation already.

“What’s happening? Why are you moving out of your office?” I ask him, trying to sound polite, though secretly wanting to scream at him and shove this girl away from my chair.

“It’s not my office anymore,” Theo says, his tone flat. “I’ve resigned.”

“Theo,” I protest, and I’m embarrassed when my voice breaks. It seems to work out in my favor, though, because his cold eyes soften ever so slightly.

“Come in, let’s talk.” He nods his head back toward his office.

I follow after him, my posture stiff as I brace for the worst. As soon as I’ve stepped into his office, he closes the door behind me and then sticks his hands in his pockets, watching me apprehensively.

Something about his expression has my already frayed nerves imploding into panic.

“Are we going to break up?” I ask him, my voice timid.

Theo stares at me blankly. His silence is making everything worse, and helplessness sets in. Finally, he says, “Why would we do that?”

I knot my fingers together in front of me, feeling an overwhelming sense of shame. “Because you’re mad.”

He still gives me that blank stare, but he takes a step toward him while I simultaneously step back from him.

He catches my hand before I can get too far and pulls me back into his chest, wrapping me tightly in his arms. His familiar scent overwhelms me, and I circle my arms around his waist, gripping him for dear life.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to hold onto everything that we’ve become together. I don’t know what my life will look like if he decides to end things right here and now. Though it’s been such a short time, Theo has ingrained himself into the very essence of my being.

“No, Whitney,” he finally says after we’ve been holding onto each other for a few minutes. “We’re not breaking up.”

He releases me but holds me at arm's length so he can look me dead in the eyes. “And I don’t want you ever thinking that just because I’m mad or any other emotion, the first thing I’m going to jump to is a breakup. Do you hear me?”

I nod my head slowly, letting his words wash over me.

He cracks a side smile, then. “Sorry, baby, but you’re stuck with me. For forever, if you’ll have me. I have no plans on going anywhere.”

My heart soars.

And just like that, Theo has checked off the ninth item on my list.

Number 9: Committed.

But still, my mind is spinning, trying to catch up with everything I seemed to miss by taking the morning off. “You said you resigned?” I ask.

He gives me a tight smile. “I did.”

“But—why?”

Theo runs his hands up and down my arms and takes a deep breath.

“I was given an ultimatum: either I resign, or we could no longer have a relationship given our positions here at the company.” I open my mouth to protest, but he doesn’t give me the chance.

“There was only one correct choice. And it was you.”

As I study his face and recognize the sincerity behind his words, my heart starts to race, and my eyes begin to sting. “Theo—”

“That’s why I’ve resigned and recommended Chase for the job. He’ll get it, of course, but it’s a courtesy anyway.”

“Chase?” I ask, dumbfounded. My head is still spinning with all the changes that have happened in such a short time.

“Yes, you’ll be working under Chase now. Granted, the Board chooses him to fill my place.”

“What about you?”

Theo takes a breath and walks around to me. “I’ll be applying to fill the CEO position at Pinnacle. I made a few calls and pulled a few strings. I’ll likely be given the position there.”

My mouth opens and then closes. “Theo, that’s—”

“I know, it’s not ideal,” he says. “Things will be different for us. But I do think it’s for the best.”

“It’s going to be so weird walking in here and not seeing you behind this desk,” I say, glancing at the big oak desk at the end of the room.

“And I swear no one will ever be as good to me as you are.” He smiles before leaning in and pressing his lips to my cheek. “But now we’ll have the opportunity to focus on what makes us us outside of these walls.”

Uncertainty sets in again, and I give him a wary look. “We still need to talk about what happened this morning.”

“We will,” he says as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Tonight. Preferably with a bottle of wine.”

“You’re not mad?” I ask hesitantly.

He studies me for a second but then shakes his head. “No. I’m not sure I could be mad at you. And even aside from that, I don’t have the whole story. We’ll talk about it. Tonight, okay?”

I nod and step forward, pressing myself into his chest again.

Theo wraps his arms tightly around me, holding me close enough that I can hear his heart beating against my ear.

He tucks his cheek against the crown of my head.

We stay that way for a few minutes, holding tightly onto each other when he finally breaks away again.

I raise an eyebrow when a mischievous smirk appears on his face. “Just promise me you won’t tell Chase we had sex in his office whenever you move to the new building,” he says with a wink, and I can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of me.

A knock on my door has me flying off the couch and crossing my apartment in record time.

When I swing open the door, Theo is leaning against the frame in a way that has my heart skipping a beat.

He’s watching me with his warm, brown eyes, and his lips twitch up.

He raises his hand, showing me the bottle of white wine—likely an expensive one—that he brought, just like he said he would.

I open the door further, inviting him inside.

I grab two wine glasses and then join him on the couch.

Theo pours us each a healthy glass and then hands me mine.

Right away, I take a big gulp, feeling the alcohol warm me all the way down.

Then I settle into the cushions of my couch and turn to him expectantly.

As if this was the silent encouragement he needed, he jumps right in. “So, tell me about this list.”

Even though I know I can trust Theo in every possible meaning of the word, I’m still entirely too self-conscious about this. My eyes fall to my glass as I steel myself to tell him the truth.

“I don’t know how it started. I think it was when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school.” My eyes find him again, and I give him a wry smile. “In other words, a teenage girl with fantastic ideas about what love should be.”

“And so that’s what that is?” he asks as he turns toward me. He hooks his arm over the back of the couch and folds one of his legs elegantly underneath him. The picture of ease. “A checklist for true love?”

I give him a shrug. “Maybe? I don’t know. I think it started off because the boys I dated in high school were utter jerks. And so, I made this list of all the things I wanted my ‘Perfect Man’ to have. And then, for whatever reason, I just continued it.”

Theo watches me thoughtfully. “You had other guys’ names in there, but they didn’t have as many checkmarks as me.”

My cheeks heat with embarrassment. “No, they didn’t.”

“So what does that mean? Am I ‘your perfect guy?’” he asks, twitching his fingers as he makes air quotations.

“It would seem that way,” I say softly.

Theo’s still holding my gaze as he takes a deep breath in, which makes his shoulders rise. He lets it go with a whoosh and then looks down at his hands. “I don’t like to be compared to other people. It makes me feel like I’m under a microscope or that every little thing I do is being evaluated.”

“No, Theo, that’s not—”

“I mean, how would you feel if you found out I had been outwardly comparing you to Lauren?” he asks. I frown at the mention of his ex-girlfriend.

“I’d feel pretty terrible.”

“Right,” he says, his lips curving into a small empathetic smile. “I want whatever we’ve found between us to be genuine.”

“It is,” I argue.

He laughs under his breath and shakes his head. “But when I see my name stacked up against all those other boyfriends, I feel insignificant. And I’d like to think that what we have is significant. Very significant. At least, it is to me.”

“It is to me, too,” I say, my voice soft.

He takes another breath. “I may have overreacted about this whole thing this morning, and I apologize for letting my feelings get the better of me.”

Now I shake my head. “You didn’t. You had every right to be upset. I should have told you about it instead of hiding it from you.”

His lips twitch into a smile. “Maybe. But what’s done is done. So now we have to decide how to move forward.”

“Cause we’re not breaking up,” I say, reassured by what he told me in his office earlier today. It’s weird to think that those private moments we had together today would be our last together in that building. After today, Theo will no longer be the CEO of Nexus Realty Group. Or my boss.

He’ll just be Theo.

My Theo.

“No,” his voice grows firm. “We’re definitely not breaking up.”

A warm, fuzzy feeling explodes in my chest and radiates down to my toes. I can’t help the smile that’s forming on my face. It’s something about the way he says it so surely that has any sense of doubt dissipating into nothingness.

I lean forward and set the glass of wine down on the coffee table.

Then, once my hands are free, I crawl across the length of the sofa until I’m curled up to his side.

Theo shuffles his glass to his other hand and then wraps his arm around me.

His hand settles on my hip, his thumb dipping under the hem of my worn-out t-shirt until he’s rubbing soothing circles on my skin.

I nestle myself against his chest and close my eyes, basking in the lovely feeling of being this close to him. His clean scent overwhelms me in the best way possible, and I find myself wanting to be consumed by everything Theo.

We sit like that for a few minutes together, basking in this newfound security of our relationship. Finally, Theo breaks the silence by asking, “So how many things did I actually check off of your damn list?” Then he pauses, and his chest rumbles. “Actually, I’m not sure I want to know.”

I fight off the smile. “Are you sure? It’s a new world record.”

He exhales. “Fine, tell me.”

“Nine,” I tell him.

“You’re telling me I’m not a perfect ten?”

I lean back so I can see him, “Not according to the list. But in real life, you absolutely are.”

He smiles and bends toward me, pressing his lips to mine. When he pulls away, he’s still smiling. “I guess I can live with that. My competitive nature will just have to get over it.”

I kiss him again, content with how this evening—this day—has turned out. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. That was never my intention.”

He runs his free hand over my hair. “It’s okay. I’m glad we talked about it. Just promise me this will be the end of that. I don’t want to feel like every little thing I do is being measured or weighed up against something else.”

“I promise,” I say, wondering if I’ve ever meant something as much as I do now. “I’ll never even think about that list again. All I want is you. Even if you’re not a perfect ten.”

Now Theo laughs and shakes his head. “You sure know how to make a guy feel good about himself.”

I quirk a smile. “I do my best.”

He gives me another fond look before setting his glass down and drawing me into him. He kisses me until I no longer can even think about numbers, let alone any kind of list.

And later that night, when we’re lying in bed and Theo gathers me into his arms, I can’t help but smile.

Because this handsome, trustworthy, honest, successful, attentive, committed man is mine.

All mine.