“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t expect—”
“I’ll probably be missing a million more flights for you over the years.”
I looked at him, confused. He wasn’t making sense at all. He was jumping around, and I couldn’t keep up.
“I once almost fired a guy for putting his wife before my business.”
“Okay?” I dragged out the question.
“I’m happy I didn’t. I now see why people put the ones they love before work. I’m going to miss a lot of flights for you, and I’m going to expect a damn apology for you confiding in a stranger before you confided in me. I’m going to expect a lot from you.”
He stood up and started pacing at the foot of my bed.
“Jett, I don’t expect anything from you. You don’t even have to be here.”
“Oh, I will always be by your side from now on. Make no mistake.”
“What are you talking about?” I narrowed my eyes at him, wanting to believe but not sure I could. “I might be sick, Jett. I had cancer. I just got sideswiped in traffic probably because, in all honesty, I haven’t been taking my vitamins or my heart meds. I’m a mess!”
He chuckled and shook his head as he continued to pace. “Yeah, you really are. Well, we will see what the doctors have to say.”
I glared at his assessment of me. Sure, I could say it, but I didn’t need him to confirm I was a mess. “Well, thank you but you can go. I’ll see what the doctors have to say and I’ll take care of myself. I’ve done it this long. I don’t need my boss helping me out. Thank you very much. I get that we had a thing, and that we screwed it all up. I don’t need you swooping in. I have it under control.”
He stopped and pinned me with his intense gaze. He scanned me from the tips of my toes all the way up to the crown of my head. When our gazes met, his was filled with anguish. “I actually believe that you do have it under control. For some reason, you could tempt the grim reaper and he’d probably walk away from you smiling. You’re a walking beacon of life. Still, you need me to be there when that beacon needs a recharge, Vick, and I’m going to be. For me, it’s you before everything else from now on. When I thought for a second your flame might have been extinguished, mine was too. The business, the life I lived, nothing mattered. You’ve been the damn sun I’ve been orbiting for a while now, and I just didn’t see it.”
The words I tried to form wouldn’t come. His confession rendered me speechless.
“I just agreed to a partnership with Bastian.”
“You what?” I gasped.
“You need more from me. I’m putting my girlfriend first. He’ll help.”
“He’s the freaking mob!” I yelled.
“Jesus. Do you have to be so damn loud?”
“Okay, this was a verbal agreement, right? He can’t hold you to—”
“Don’t rack your brain, woman. I don’t want you to lawyer me out of my decision. Plus, like you said once before, the mob doesn’t care about legalities.”
“So, you’re in the mob now?” The question sounded ridiculous, and yet, I was absolutely serious.
“I’m thinking if you’re dating me, you probably are too.”
The thumping of my heart drowned out the beeping.
He leaned on the foot of my bed. “I’m serious when I say I need to trust that you’re going to put me before everyone and everything like I’m going to do for you. My business will come after you. I will be there for you. I’ll shield you from brightening everyone’s day when you’re having a shitty one. You get to cry with me and sometimes I hope you laugh with me too. We’re going to be a family, Victory Blakely, and my family doesn’t have the sky as the limit.”
“You know I want to be married with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence in a few years, right?” I threw back at him, testing how serious he really wanted this to be. “Even if I’m in the mob …”
“You want a proposal now?”
A laugh bubbled out of me. “You better not, Phantom. I hate hospitals.”
He smiled and rounded the bed to sit beside me. “If you want all that, we’ll get all that.”
“I can’t have kids.” The confession flew out of me before I could stop it. The one secret I’d hidden from everyone, the bone-crushing burden, the empty void that seemed to stop my fairy tale before it had even begun. I shrugged when he raised his eyebrows. “All cards on the table, right? The cancer took that from me.”