It’s clear within just a few hours of being here that she has the respect and admiration of her employees and her frequent customers.
She’s impossible not to love.
And the more she matures, the more she’s become that woman, the unavoidable and irresistible woman that deserves every bit of admiration she gets.
Men have been falling for her since well before I met her.
She’s never used her sex appeal as a weapon or fully wielded its power. If she were ever to harness that, she’d be a black widow sort of fucking lethal.
And I’d be a dead man.
I’ve barely been able to tear my eyes from her today after denying myself for so long. I’ve never known another’s body as intimately, nor mapped it as intricately as I have hers.
Instinctively, I still know it.
But she doesn’t see herself the way men do—the way predators do. Especially because for a majority of her life, she felt like she was undeserving of love. I fed into that ridiculous notion when I was at my weakest to keep us from eating each other alive, but I fucked up royally in doing so.
I refused her heart when she begged me to retrieve it, revive it.
Jealousy isn’t something I’m used to dealing with. Women have come and gone with me; my mission always taking precedence. Yet, this one woman has made it impossible to ignore that inside me lurks a heart in need of what only she can give it.
It wasn’t until the day I witnessed how they loved her, the way Sean and Dom loved her, that I became acquainted with that type of bone-deep jealousy. And in feeling that, I lost control.
Briefly, I close my eyes and shut my laptop.
I signed up for hard.
I came ready for hard, to face and deal with the impossible, but it’s the guilt that makes it the hardest.
It’s the tension that’s killing me right now. Her hesitation to even look at me.
I recall some of yesterday’s conversation in the parking lot. Fuck being okay with whatever ending we get. That’s not good enough. I want her happy. I want our ending happy. That’s what I decide as I watch her interact with the people in her café. I want her smiling about thoughts of us before she ever greets a stranger.
I will do everything, anything, to make our ending blissful.
Simply being together is not enough. We aren’t settling.
While she remains weary, I’ll be ambitious for the both of us.
In our time at her father’s house, we were blissful, content, despite our circumstances and the underlying threats to that peaceful state. Despite the fact that I knew we were a time bomb. Despite me.
Our pleasures came easy. She could look at me then. Now she avoids it.
Standing abruptly from the counter to stretch my legs, filled with restless energy and entertaining snacking on a napkin, I shoot off a text on my new phone.
It’s me.
Sean: Me who?
Funny.
Sean: I’ll shoot the number out to the crew.
The bubbles start and stop. I pause when I read his message.
Sean: How’s it going?
Do you give a fuck?
Sean: Of course, I give a fuck. Report.
She’s fine. She’s good. Really good. She bought a café. It’s nice. Her house is too. She’s doing the daily grind.
Sean: Knew that already. What about you?
I read the text again. A question I didn’t expect. When he, correction, when Tessa invited me to their wedding, I thought maybe then we might start to repair what was broken between us, but even then, things were off. The day we buried Dom, he looked at me like he hated me. And I know he did. This olive branch he’s extending feels just as foreign as my position in my new life. I’m at the mercy of the people I hurt.