AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She stares at me unblinking. “That’s really admirable,” she says eventually. “To be kind of lumbered with the responsibility right out of college, and you made it a success. You made something of yourself, where others would have folded. I guess as time goes on, we all get lost on the never-ending hamster wheel. I still have dreams, things I want to achieve, and this vacation has made me realize it even more so.”
I love how her eyes light up when she talks about it. I can tell right away her true passion lies within going after her dreams, not wasting her life away in a dead-end job.
“Which is why you should go for it. Life’s too short to sit and wonder what could be. If you don’t do it now, then you will never do it. I used to make up excuses too. I was too busy. Too tired. Too everything. But that’s what all those things are, excuses,” I go on. “Sometimes you have to sacrifice in the short term to get where you want to be in the long run.”
She smiles as she casts her warm glow on me. “You’re like the Anthony Robbins of pep talkers.” She laughs. I smile back at her.
“I can safely say I’ve never been called that before.”
“But you make sense. Maybe it’s because I’ve been on vacation, and when you’re not at work and you’re away from your real life, you start to wonder what a new life would looklike.” She takes a sip of her wine, her eyes sparkling with delight at what her dream would look like.
And I want her to have it. I really fucking do.
I want to be the one to fucking give it to her, but more than anything, I want her to have it for herself.
If this is her slightly unhappy with her life, I can’t imagine how she’d look if she were really happy.
Ariana Michaels is the type of woman that is sensational, but she could be spectacular in every inch of her life if she’d take it by the reins.
She doesn’t need a man to lead her, but I’d love to be the one beside her.
What the actual fuck?
Well, we’re all allowed to dream.
The turning point in changing your life is never taking less than you deserve. I tell her as such and she looks down at her plate, like when she’s thinking something but won’t say it.
“You know you can tell me, Ariana,” I say, when a silence falls between us. “Whatever it is you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking we should get dessert to take with us,” she says, looking up at me with a shy smile.
I know that wasn’t what she was thinking, and I want to explore it more, but she tends to shut down and kid around when things get too serious.
“Let me ask you something,” I go on, ignoring her dessert implication, though I call the waiter over at the same time. “What stops you? Aside from the obvious fear of trying something new.”
She circles the rim of her glass as she thinks. “I guess I have self-doubt. Procrastinating is a wonderfully horrible thing. It gives you hope that there’s a dream there, but it’s just out of reach enough for you to say that you’ll see tomorrow, or the next day. It’s a vicious cycle, at least for me.”
“All successful people suffer from imposter syndrome,” I tell her, leaning forward. “I made mistakes in business, many mistakes, in fact. But I got back up. I didn’t let the knocks keep me on my ass. I got on my feet, and I tried it again, a different way. Failures aren’t always a bad thing. They teach you what to do right next time, so they make you stronger.”
She bites her lip as she smiles at me. “That’s good advice, Mr. Bentley.”
So, I’ve redeemed myself?
My heart lurches at her beautiful face. She looks at me like I’m a fucking messiah.
When really, I’m just a middle-aged man who is falling for a woman I can’t have. And what’s worse? If I let her know and she wants to keep seeing me, I’ll end up losing her, because eventually, she’ll realize I’m a workaholic who can’t commit.
With her, though, I feel like I could be everything she needs. Everything she could want.
Having another woman after her somehow feels foreign to me, like I’d be betraying her, and that’s got me all fucked up inside.
How in the world did I let this happen?
She got under my skin. And I let her.
I can’t help it; I have to touch her.
I lean over the table and brush my knuckle over her cheek, then palm her jaw. She leans into my touch and closes her eyes. I’ve never had a woman do that to me before.
