“I understand all the reasons you left last night.” He gripped the back of his neck before lowering his hands to his sides. “But I don’t want or need you to protect me from some a-hole as Thea calls Dassault, who maybe might try and ruin me. I know you worry for the rest of our family?—”
“I do,” she said hoarsely.
“They all agree with me,” he continued in that emotion-roughened voice, “and I made sure to have a long talk with Chef Marcel today to make sure he knew the situation. You’ll be pleased to know your old mentor swore quite fluently and told me he planned to send Auguste a personal invitation to the opening.”
She was already shaking her head.
“Listen to me, Mad.” He waited until she met his serious gaze. “No one can ruin you unless you let them, and I won’t give him that power. Neither will our friends. So that’s business. Now, let’s get personal. I want to have the privilege of loving you and spending my life with you.”
“Oh, Kyle?—”
“That would mean being in the same boat together, so to speak, come what may.” He pointed to her and then himself. “I’ll bail with you when we have to, and I’ll hold you in my arms as the sun shines down on us. We’re going to have moregreat days than bad ones—I can promise you that. I once asked you to trust me, and you did.”
She remembered. That moment had been one of the hardest ever, but it had gotten easier until she hadn’t thought about it anymore.
“Then I asked you to believe in me, and you tried.” He made a face. “Mostly. Now, I’m asking you to let me love you. Because I have a powerful desire to love you, Mad, and I know there won’t be anyone like you ever again if I let you walk away.”
She clenched her hands at her sides, her heart pounding in her ears.
“So I want you to take this other brick I brought and chuck it to the floor and let down your final walls too. Because I can’t get past your walls unless you decide to let me in. But I’m hoping after all we’ve been through, you’ll know you don’t need them anymore.”
The brick looked small when she thought about the walls she’d built around herself, ones she’d needed to survive and fight and make something of herself.
“I know you’re scared.” His voice sounded choked. “I am too, but I’m more afraid of losing you and letting you down.”
“You didn’t let me down,” she said hoarsely, no longer able to keep quiet. “You’ve done everything you can to help me. Dammit, Kyle, that’s not the issue here.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed again. “Mad, I don’t know what the future will hold and where you will win a Michelin star, but I know you will.”
She knew it too, because she wouldn’t stop—the whole path just looked overgrown with weeds right now.
“I know that’s always been your goal, but I want you to believe I’m going to be beside you every step of the way. Here in Paris or anywhere else. But more than anything else… I want home—with you.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I want that too. But I don’t think we can.”
He held the second brick out toward her. “You know what’s holding you back. Take those fears and all the crap you’ve experienced in the past and throw it on the ground. Break it into a million pieces. Then take my hand.”
Suddenly she remembered that recipe card Thea had brought her. She’d renamed it Madison’s Spicy Reality because she’d known it was going to take a totally new reality for her to be with Kyle.
But she’d done it.
And dammit, she’d been happier than she’d ever been in her entire life. He said she’d opened up his world. Well, he’d done the same for her.
He was right. She had been letting someone else—someone who was a complete a-hole—dictate her reality. And her awful past was joining in the chorus. That was stopping now.
She spanned the remaining steps between them and took the brick from him, watching as that smile she so loved flashed across his face.
