Authors: Bebe Wilde
“Bonjour,” he said.
“Hi,” I replied and stood, smiling a little at him. “I hadn’t heard from you about selling the house.”
“Yes, my lawyer took care of it for me,” he said.
“Were you happy with the price?” I asked, knowing I was. It had sold at almost asking. “We got the six-point-three.
Almost what you wanted.”
“It was a good amount for the kids,” he said and shrugged.
“Excuse me?”
“I have a foundation for troubled youth,” he said. “Part of the sale will go to them.”
Wow. So he rode my ass about the price so he could basically give it to charity? What kind of man was he?
The best?
Oh, my God, I’d just cut him out over Kier. Over Kier! I was the world’s biggest dumbass.
“It’s just how I give back,” he said.
“Nothing too major.
And I don’t like to do fundraisers, which are a nightmare,
oui
? Besides, most of the time, it costs more to host them than they bring in.”
“Oh,” I said and nodded that I understood.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“There is one thing,” I said. “I….” I stopped and shook my head, walking over to him. “I…” I started again. I stopped in front of him and stared up at his handsome face and I knew right then and there if I couldn’t get him back, no other man would ever do for me. I wanted him and him alone. If he didn’t want me, I would be absolutely devastated.
“What is it,
Teagan
?” he asked softly.
Tears streamed down my cheeks and I said, “It’s just that… I…” I couldn’t get the words out. They would not come out. I was a garbled mess of emotion and the thoughts in my head would not come out of my mouth in a coherent way. “I was wrong,” I finally said. “I was so wrong about everything.”
He smiled as though he couldn’t help it.
Aha! So I was right!
he
seemed to say to himself. And he had been, just as I’d been wrong.
“I won’t make you explain,” he said and took me by the chin, lifted my face to his and kissed me. And he kissed me with passion, with the knowledge that while I had left his life, I had never left his heart. I had just been too afraid to admit it.
I pulled back and smiled at him.
“And so you are back?” he asked. “I knew you would be.”
“You did?”
He nodded. “Leopards don’t change their spots,
Teagan
. No matter how hard we want them to.”
He was right about that. He was
so
right about that. Kier was who he was. He just wasn’t the right man for me.
“I am back,” I said. “But I don’t know what’s next.”
“What’s next?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Next you find me a new place,” he said.
“In
New York City
.”
New York? The thought of that real estate market was enough to make my mouth water. But then again, I knew if I was with Roman, I probably wouldn’t be working that much. I smiled at him and said, “Of course.
On one condition.”
“And what is that?”
“That we buy it together.”
He broke out into a big smile,
then
pulled me into a tight hug. “I would like nothing better.”
Me either.
“Je
t’aime
,
Teagan
,” he said softly.
It was always his way.
“I love you,” he said again, my way.
I smiled. It was good to finally hear it from him, from his lips. It was better that I believed it; that there were no contingencies. I smiled because I knew then that I had loved him from the moment I had laid eyes on him. That’s when I knew I’d been through all of this in order to get to him, to his love. Love was what I had been after and though I thought I’d found it with Kier, it wasn’t true. With Roman, it was, it was true love.
“I love you, too,” I said, then, “
Je
t’aime
, Roman,”
and felt it, felt that love and all that it meant. Sometimes love is a little bit scary. It’s a little bit controlling of the person it possesses. It’s a little bit rough with their hearts. But it can be a little bit submissive, too, as it makes a person concede and acquiesce and, ultimately, allow it to dominate their minds, their bodies and souls. And all it takes is a little bit of trust.