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He glanced down at his t-shirt and jeans. It was maybe the first time he showed up in something so simple. “Uh, no.” He didn’t offer her further explanation, even though a part of him wanted to. After all, this was how most people dressed
in their downtime.
He waited as she poured herself a glass of white wine, then motioned toward the settee in the great room.
Once they were settled next to each other, Jen surprised him by saying, “I’ve thought about it, and I’m sorry I ever let you go along with the nanny thing my father suggested. I should’ve stood up to him. I see that now.”
Blake blinked, taken aback. He hadn’t expected an apology from her. “That means a lot,” he said. “Thanks.”
She nodded, then met his eyes and grinned. “So . . . now that we have that out of the way, I thought I’d call Clarence and have him whip us up a special dinner.” She trailed her fingers over his t-shirt. “Something nice, just the two of us.”
Blake blanched. Of course she thought it’d be this easy. Blake had always made things easy, and they’d never really and truly gotten in a fight before. This past week of tension had been the closest they’d come to a blowout fight. Funny how most of it was silence.
“Jen . . .” he started, but clearly she had her own idea of how today would go because she inched closer and grinned.
“Maybe afterward, you could clean up, and we could go out for drinks.” She trailed a finger down his arm, glancing up at him from underneath her lashes. “Or we could stay in if you prefer,” she purred.
Blake bristled at the suggestion he “clean up,” but tamped down his annoyance as he said, “Jen, I didn’t come here about last Saturday, or for dinner.” Her smile faded, but he plunged on, “We’ve both known since we started dating that we came from two different worlds.” He offered her a soft smile, hoping in vain it might somehow soften the blow of what he was about to say. “And I think I realized this past week, or maybe I’ve always known but hadn’t wanted to see it, that this will never work, you and I”—he motioned between them—“at least not long-term.”
Jen stared at him, her expression frozen. Several seconds passed in silence until she finally drew a breath. “Are you saying. . .” She squinted as if she didn’t understand.
Blake nodded. “I think maybe it’s best if we end this now, rather than later.” He reached out and took her hand. “Jen, you’d never be happy with me, and I’ll never live up to your family’s expectations. I’ll always feel like I’m not good enough, and I don’t know if I can change that.” Maybe if he put it on him, he could soften the blow.
“All of this because of my father’s comment about being a manny at the dinner party? Because if—”
“No. Because I’m almost certain what we want and see for our future is entirely different.”
She trembled as she took in this information, and when she wrenched her hand away, he let her. She had a right to be angry. Surely, she was blindsided. Blake went from getting a job watching children to prove he’s husband material to telling her he wanted to break up practically overnight.
“It’s an excuse.” She straightened, her back rigid. “You just can’t handle the fact that my family comes from money. That’s it, isn’t it? Some kind of macho superiority complex.”
Blake sighed and ran a hand roughly through his hair. “It’s not that, and you know it.”
Jen shot up from her seat and spread her arms out in front of him. “Then what? You say our futures don’t align, but we talked about a wedding at The Plaza in June.”
“That’s superficial, irrelevant details.”
Her brows rose to her hairline. “Irrelevant? A wedding is an irrelevant detail?”
Blake stood and faced her, pleading with his eyes for understanding. “No, but it also says nothing about what we want out of life. It’s an event, one day out of thousands. It’s flowers and menus and seating charts. A marriage is for life. It’s children and a home and sharing the same values and goals and wanting all the same things.”
She stabbed a finger at him. “We both want children.”
“That may be, but I’m pretty sure when we want them and how we want to raise them are different. I want to be fully involved in their lives from the time they’re babies with little to no help, while you’ll want Trish at your beck and call.”
She stumbled back like she’d been slapped. “She’s practically family. She raised me,” she said, her tone indignant.
“I know. That’s my point.” Blake nodded. “And that’s fine for you, but I want family-style dinners around the kitchen table with meals we cooked together, not some fancy dishes prepared by Clarence, our personal chef. I want to teach my kids how to clean their own rooms and help them with their math instead of hiring a tutor. I want to teach them the value of hard work and how to be independent.”
Jen placed her hands on her hips. “There is nothing wrong with making your life easier, with being able to afford the finer things in life.”
“You want to stay in Manhattan,” Blake pointed out.
Her jaw dropped. “And you don’t? You’ve never said—”
“I know.” He hung his head, hating himself for the situation he’d put himself in. For the whole of their relationship, he set aside any of his desires to fulfill every one of hers. He went along with everything she wanted. It was wrong, and now they were both paying the price. “But I don’t think I want to live in the city with kids. I want a house I can make a home.”
“We can get a townhou—”
