Page 175 of Letters From A Stalker

My heart begins beating harder.

“I noticed you the first day you walked into my office. I noticed your hair, your eyes, the way you were trying to make a joke while every part of you looked like you wanted to run.” His mouth pulls into the faintest, aching smile. “And then you kept coming back, and I got to know you, and it got worse.”

Despite the pressure building behind my eyes, I almost laugh. “Worse?”

“For me? Absolutely.” The smile disappears, leaving something much more vulnerable behind. “You were funny when you didn’t mean to be. Stubborn as hell. You argued with me when you knew I was right, which happened often enough to become exhausting.”

“Careful.” I feel my eyebrow arch but I’m smiling.

“There she is.” The words are quiet, almost affectionate enough to hurt.

Kai’s gaze moves over my face before settling back on my eyes.

“I fell in love with the woman sitting across from me every Thursday. Ghost was just the part of me that wanted her without pretending otherwise. He wanted to touch you, yes, but he also wanted to hear you laugh when you weren’t trying to hide behind it. He wanted to know what you looked like when you felt safe enough to fall asleep against him. He wanted every part of you I had already spent weeks trying not to want.”

My eyes burn.

“And instead of doing the right thing, I found a way to have you without risking hearing you tell me no.” The words hit with enough force that neither of us moves for a moment.

“That’s the part I understand now,” he continues, quieter. “I should have transferred you the second I knew I couldn’t be only your doctor anymore. I should have waited until I was allowed to come near you as a man, and then I should have knocked on your fucking door with my own face showing and asked you out.”

A tear slips free before I can stop it. Kai’s hand moves instinctively before freezing at his side.

“You want to know the really shitty part?” I ask, wiping the tear away myself.

His mouth twists. “I suspect there are several.”

“That probably would’ve worked.”

He stares at me.

“If you’d transferred me and waited, and then one day showed up on that ridiculous motorcycle wearing jeans instead of one of those criminally expensive suits and asked me to dinner…” My throat tightens around a laugh that doesn’t quite make it out. “I would have said yes.”

The look on his face nearly breaks me.

“You didn’t need Ghost, Kai.”

His eyes close briefly. “No.”

“You were already enough.”

When he opens them again, there is no protection left in them.

“You should have let me decide it.” My entire body is shivering over the way he’s looking at me.

“I know.”

“And if there is ever anything between us again, you don’t get to decide for me because you think you know what my answer will be.”

Kai goes very still. I hear my own words a second after he does.

If there is ever anything between us again.

Hope touches his face so carefully that I almost want to look away. “What are you saying, Julia?”

I draw in a breath.

“I’m saying I don’t want Ghost back.”