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Seventeen
He’d nearly cracked the code by nightfall.
Gia had gone to bed before him, leaving him in the family room to work. He apparently now had two options. Drive home or sleep in the pool house.
It irritated him that she wanted to kick him out. They’d been close lately. Why the sudden line in the sand?
He shut down Big Ben and pulled his keys from his pocket, frowning down at them. He didn’t want to go home. He wanted to stay here—and not in the damn pool house. He couldn’t escape the idea that Gia needed him here, in the actual house.
Not to protect her—the gated community was safe. And the security system he’d insisted she install after he moved out was top-of-the-line. But to just...be here. She’d seemed sad after telling him he could stay in the pool house, and he didn’t want her to be sad and alone.
So, he laid down on the couch anyway, his arm thrown over his head, eyes on the ceiling. He slept a little and thought a lot. About the arguments they’d had behind these walls. Those once impassioned disagreements that turned into apathetic silence, which then led them to split in the first place.
Around six thirty in the morning, he heard her shuffle into the kitchen. He was already at the desk, bleary-eyed and tired, since he’d thought a lot more than he’d slept.
“Morning,” he croaked, to let her know he was there.
“Morning.” Her dark hair was scooped into a topknot and she wore a short silk robe, white with big black flowers on it. She looked soft and approachable and adorable, and his hands itched to touch her.
“You’re wearing glasses,” he observed as he stood to stretch.
“They’re new.” She touched the frames. “I usually wear contacts at work.”
“Oh.” So much had changed, and yet whenever he was here he was somehow frozen in time.
She scooped coffee grounds into a filter basket. “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
She pressed the button on the machine and propped her fist on her hip. She was cute and sleepy and damned sexy. Especially in those dark-framed glasses. “You didn’t sleep in the pool house did you?”
“How did you—I didn’t feel right leaving you.” He lifted a hand to his hair, feeling strangely uncomfortable.
“And you in my house when I told you to leave felt right?”
“What are you trying to avoid by kicking me out, G?”
He could feel the sexual tension between them right now. She was likely trying to avoid this very situation. Them, together, wearing very little.
“You never listen. I have been sleeping alone for a while now. I don’t need a guard downstairs.”
He opened his mouth to tell her he wasn’t guarding her, he wanted to be here for her in case she needed him. But old patterns threatened. If he said that, she’d tell him that he could let go of the need to take care of her since they were divorced.
He didn’t want the conversation to go that way. Time to try something new.
Vulnerability.
Hadn’t that been what Chester recommended?
Jayson didn’t have a good track record with vulnerability. His father had seen it as a weakness to exploit, and his mother felt guilty that she’d caused Jay to feel unsafe. He’d shored up his emotions for a damn good reason—to protect himself and the people he loved. Only now he wondered if opening up to Gia might be the what they needed to bury their past once and for all. Still, opening up could be the ultimate humiliation for him if she rejected him—totally possible.
He needed her closer for this conversation. Tucking a finger into the silky belt at her waist, he pulled her to him. “You like to remind me how much you don’t need me, which makes me feel rejected.”
She blinked up at him. Now that he’d admitted what he was feeling, what he was feeling was exposed. Might as well have loaded a gun and handed it to her. Rather than backtrack, he decided to lean in a bit more. “When we were together I went about protecting you in the wrong way.”
Her eyes widened. She stared as if shocked by his words. For good reason. He’d rarely if ever admitted as his mistakes in the past. He’d always thought he knew best.
“I care about you,” he said. “I never meant to hobble or limit you. I never intended for you to feel like you were a child I was looking after. Despite not wanting to be like my dad, I guess I had a heavy hand after all.”
