“Oh, yeah. I know you, Jensen. I know that confidence you have isn’t fake. You really do own the world, don’t you? Able to mold it however you want it to. It must be nice.”
“What is?”
“To have everything at your fingertips.”
He shot me a pointed look. “Not everything.”
And call me naïve, but I thought he was talking about me. But that was just silly. He could’ve had me three years ago. Hell, he could’ve had me six years before that, when we first met.
I looked away, not knowing what to say, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “I should go. Let you rest up,” he said softly.
Something like disappointment weighed heavily in my chest, but I ignored it and stood with a smile on my face. “Come on, I’ll show you where I put Elodie down for her sleep.”
Our short walk to my room was made in silence, and I was aware of his every movement behind me with sharp clarity. Jensen was hard to ignore on a good day. But now, after our little hug, after his closeness and vulnerability, it was as if all the strength I had to keep him at a healthy distance was cracking, and I could feel myself breaking underneath all the pressure.
How badly I wanted to break, and yet not at all.
I turned on the lamp in my room, and Elodie didn’t even shift in the bed. She was out cold, and I watched as Jensen watched his little girl with a world of love in his eyes. It was the same look my dad had when he looked at me and my siblings.
It was a look that told me Jensen loved Elodie more than anything else in this world, because it was the same way with my dad.
The wall surrounding my heart cracked a bit more and rubbed at the pain that was forming there at the sight.
Carefully, he lifted Elodie in his arms. I grabbed the small throw blanket I had on the bed and wrapped it around her small body. He shot me a questioning look.
“It’s cold,” I whispered.
He nodded. “Thanks.”
Then we were walking back out to the living room, this time with Jensen in front of me. I tried really hard not to look at his ass. I really did. But I was only human after all, and even in this dim lightning, I could make out enough that would surely give me enough to fantasize about for a month.
God, he was perfect.
No man should ever be this perfect, but Jensen was, and as shallow as it might sound, it was the thing that had held me captive at first sight.
It was why I’d done something as uncharacteristic as agreeing to have drinks with him that first night, just a mere hour after meeting him.
We walked to the door and Jensen opened it with the hand that wasn’t holding his daughter. Then he turned to me, and I must have overestimated the gap of space between our bodies, because the next thing I knew, there was barely any between my body and his and Elodie’s.
Jensen took me in, and I swore his eyes moved to my lips for a millimeter of a second before he looked back at my eyes.
He stepped out the threshold, and I held in the shivers from the cold air, yet I didn’t want him to go. I had the sudden urge to beg him to stay here. Him and Elodie.
Stay with me.
“Emilia?”
“Yeah?”
“Go out with me.”
My tongue felt heavy with the weight of my answer. Never had I wanted to say yes more than I did at that moment.
“No,” I said softly. The look in his eyes told me he knew he was wearing me down. It was only a matter of time, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out the state I would be in when he finally succeeded.
Shooting me one last look, he pivoted around and walked toward the elevator. I stayed where I was, watching him. Our eyes met once, just as the elevator doors closed, and then it was me alone in the hallway.
I let out a deep sigh. “Fuck.”