“No, but I will if you don’t have dinner with me.” He smiles hopefully.
I stare at him. “Jameson, if you think the Kung Fu Panda sending me a cake and calling me a cheesecake can reverse the damage you have done, you are seriously deluded.”
He takes my two hands in his. “I don’t, Em, but please . . . just let me say what I need to say.”
I stare at him.
“And then if you don’t want to see me again, I’ll stop following you.” His eyes hold mine. “We need to talk about this; you know we do.”
I roll my eyes.
“Please?” He bats his eyelashes to try and be cute; it’s annoying that he is.
“Fine. You have ten minutes.” I sigh.
“Where do you want to go?” He smiles.
“Wherever is easiest.”
“Okay.” He looks around. “How about that Italian restaurant across the street?”
“Fine.” He tries to take my hand, and I snatch it away. “You have got to be kidding,” I snap.
“Jesus, calm down,” he mutters.
I follow him across the street and into the restaurant, and we take a seat at the back of the restaurant. It’s small and darkened with candles on the tables. Red tablecloths decorate the tables. It’s nothing like the usual upmarket Italian that he takes me to, but it will have to do.
“Can I get you some drinks?” the waiter asks.
Jameson smirks and gestures to me. “I’ll have what she’s having.”
I stare at him for a moment and open my menu. “All right, we’ll have a bottle of the Henschke Hill of Grace, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The waiter disappears out the back to the bar.
Jameson’s eyes come to me, and he smiles softly and takes my hands over the table.
“Do you know how much I’ve missed you?” he whispers.
I stare at him in some kind of strange detached state.
“Did you miss me?”
Instantly I’m overwhelmed with emotion. I stay silent as I battle the lump in my throat. I hate that he makes me feel so weak and vulnerable. I pull my hands out of his grip. I need to create some distance between us.
“Em.” He frowns. “I . . .” It’s clear that he has no idea what to say. “When I saw that image of you kissing Jake—”
“Jameson,” I stammer.
He holds his hand up to signify silence, and I close my mouth. “Something snapped inside of me. I was so thrown that it upset me so deeply that I . . .” He frowns as he remembers it. “I was furious—firstly with you, but then with myself.”
Our eyes are locked.
“I was going through so much shit at work, and the very last person on earth that I thought would lie to me . . . was you.”
I drop my head in shame.
“And then when I calmed down after a few days and realized that you had been set up, the future mapped itself out to me.”
I frown.
“There is always going to be someone like Ferrara who is prepared to step on you to hurt me.”
My heart drops.
“And I don’t want that for you.”
“Jay,” I whisper sadly.
“I don’t want you to be married to a workaholic who has to travel all the time and is stressed out of his head. I don’t want you to have to remind your husband not to drink too much or stop being rude to people because he’s too busy to care. I don’t want you to have to remind your husband that he’s neglecting you.”
“Your bottle of wine.” The waiter appears out of nowhere. He opens it and pours us both a glass.
“Thank you,” I reply. My eyes go back to meet Jameson’s.
The waiter leaves us alone.
“I don’t want you to come second to Miles Media. I don’t want you to ever come second to anything.”
“But—”
“Let me finish, please,” he demands.
I sit back in my chair, annoyed that he wants to speak first.
“The thing is, if you’re with me—married to me—your life is going to be all those things.”
The lump in my throat gets big.
“I love you too much to let you live that life, Em.”
He’s ending it again. My eyes fill with tears.
He takes my hand over the table and lifts it to his mouth and gently kisses it. “Don’t cry. I hate that you’ve cried over me.”
I blink to try and get rid of these stupid tears.
“I made a decision to protect you from that life. To push you away. Because I knew that one day, you would eventually be unhappy . . . and I just can’t live with that.”