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Before she could screw up the courage to knock, Jonathan’s door jerked open in front of her.
Chapter Thirty-One
Jonathan glared at her, wary and unsmiling. “What are you doing out here?” He was blocking the doorway with his body, his hand perched on the knob in case he decided to shut the door in her face.
Esther swallowed. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He didn’t sound the least bit happy to see her, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, but cut deeper than she was prepared for.
“Can we talk?” Her voice sounded feeble and paper thin. Exactly the way she felt.
He looked down at the ground, and she died a thousand tiny deaths while she waited for his answer. After a few seconds he nodded and stepped back.
Esther walked past him into the apartment. He’d made sure to step back far enough that there was a wide gap between them and no chance of her accidentally brushing against him. He shut the door behind her and waited, standing by the exit. Ready to throw her out again.
She fidgeted under his gaze. She wasn’t used to having him look at her like this—like he didn’t want her around.
“Well?” He was impatient. Annoyed. “You said you wanted to talk, so talk.”
Esther didn’t have a game plan. For all the time she’d spent fretting over this conversation, she hadn’t actually settled on what she wanted to say. How best to begin. And now that she was here and he was looking at her like that, she was paralyzed.
What could she say? What could possibly make up for what she’d done to him? Why was she even here? He’d moved on, remember? He had a new girlfriend now. He didn’t need her—or want her—anymore. That much was obvious.
As she stood there mentally flailing, Eric’s advice came back to her: make yourself vulnerable.
“I was wrong,” she said. “I was so wrong.”
Jonathan’s expression didn’t change. “About which part specifically?”
“All of it.”
His hair was a tousled mess, falling in puffs across his forehead and into his eyes. Her fingers ached to reach up and push it back for him. She took a tentative step toward him, and he backed up flat against the door, reminding her she wasn’t welcome in his space anymore.
Esther’s chest clenched painfully. The hand that had been itching to touch his hair worried at the collar of her shirt instead.
“I never meant to hurt you,” she said.
He didn’t react. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry. And you were right.”
Jonathan rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing. “About what?”
“I was scared to let myself admit I had feelings for you.”
She caught a fleeting glimpse of…something in his eyes before they skated away from hers. Hope, maybe. She hoped it was hope.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked, terrified of the answer. He was going to say yes, and that was going to be it. There’d be nothing left for her to do after that except leave. And she didn’t want to leave.
He looked at her, his expression shifting to confusion. “What?”
“The woman you were with last week…”
His mouth twitched. “My sister.”
Some of the knots in Esther’s stomach loosened. “That was your sister?”
He nodded. The mouth twitch had turned into something that wasn’t quite a smile, but might be the beginnings of one. An embryo of a smile. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
