"I’d get there on my own. It might take longer, and it might be harder, but it would be mine."
I shake my head, refusing to let her go.
"I know you will. I’m just trying to give you the headstart you deserve."
"But at what cost? I can’t spend my nights pining for a man who treats me like a line item in a budget. It’s not worth it if I’m falling in love with a ghost who’s never going to love me back."
The air leaves my lungs. The kitchen, the brigade, the scandal, all of it fades from my mind. My pulse rate accelerates. The sound deafening in my ears.
"Hold on. Are you saying you love me?"
62
Harper
I sensed his struggle as he tried to tell me that he loves me but couldn’t.
What he feels for me isn’t strong enough to overcome his restraint. He’s still holding back his feelings. And I deserve more.
My stomach bottoms out.
The sorrow that moves through me is like an anchor that settles in my soul and drags me down.
He can insist the marriage is more. But if he cannot say the words, if he cannot meet me where I'm standing, then it’s not enough.
I know the wounds he carries.
The family that gave him up for adoption. The men he lost. The control he built so carefully around himself that he forgot it was supposed to come off sometimes. I understand all of it.
But understanding why he can’t express what he feels for me aloud does not make up for the silence filling my ears.
Sorrow squeezes my chest. My heart feels like it’s breaking.
I deserve the words. I deserve to be chosen the way I am choosing him.
So I will give him one last thing. I will step off the edge completely. Leave nothing back. Not because I think it will save us.
But because I need to know I tried everything before I let go.
Maybe, if I’m completely vulnerable with him, it will help him be honest with me?
"I love you, James Hamilton.” I tip up my chin and let him see the depth of my feelings in my eyes.
“I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you glowering at me in that nightclub."
A feeling of lightness pours into my chest. Something inside me unravels. I wondered how it would feel to say it aloud, if it would be terrifying to share my innermost feelings. But now that I have, I feel happy.
A rush of warmth spreads through me. Joy trembles under my skin, and for a second, I understand what it means to be weightless. As if loving him and saying it out loud has untethered me from the ground.
James, on the other hand, looks like someone punched him in the chest.
Some of the buoyancy inside me fades.
"Is it that much of a surprise?"
"It’s…" He shakes his head as if to clear it. "It’s something I wasn’t expecting."
"But you sensed it?”
