Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 86068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 430(@200wpm)___ 344(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
“Oh, I want to come,” Michael says, looking at them. “Are you going golfing?” He turns and yells for Dylan.
“No,” Xavier says. “I have a meeting with Nico.”
“Oh, you joining the team?” Michael says, not even knowing the backstory. “Vivienne going to finally call Dallas home?”
All eyes turn to me as my heart speeds up. No one has asked me the big question about what he would decide. Not to say I didn’t think about it because I did. Every single time he walked out of the room to go to a meeting, it’s all I thought about. Would he choose this city? Then I would google what is the best thing to do in the city. I would tell myself that I’m reading too much into it. Then I would try and write and have zero words because all I would be able to think about was what he was doing and how he was feeling. The eyes on me make my heart speed up even more. “Umm.”
“We should get going,” Xavier urges to help me escape the looks and the question.
Walking out of the house, I hold his hand as he drives back to the condo. He doesn’t say a word, and neither do I. Instead, I sit the whole time, trying to think of the words to tell him. When I open the door and toss the keys on the table in the hall, he looks over at me. “I’m going to shower,” I tell him, needing more time to catch my bearings.
Starting the shower, I undress, my head going a million miles a minute. “What if he doesn’t want you to move with him?” I mumble to myself, looking to make sure I’m still alone. I get into the shower and take the longest shower I’ve ever taken in my life that wasn’t filled with sex. When I get out and wrap myself in a towel, I step into the room, shocked that he’s sitting there on the bench in the dark. “Jesus.” I put my hand to my chest. “You scared the crap out of me.” I stop walking when I see him looking down. “Are you okay?” He looks up at me, and the moonlight from outside only gives me a small glimpse of his eyes.
“Yeah.” His voice cracks, and he laughs nervously. “Actually,” he says with a sad smile, “no, it’s not okay.”
The minute he says the words, my heart sinks to my feet. “What’s wrong?”
“I was sitting here thinking I should give you space.” He starts talking, and I take a step toward him. “But then the other side of me was telling me to just tell you how I feel.” He chuckles. “To be honest, I usually do this with Beatrice, but she’s not talking to me right now.”
I stop in front of him. “You can tell me anything,” I assure him, but what I really want to say is, you can tell me anything as long as it’s not that you don’t want me anymore. I get down on my knees in front of him, wondering if he knows that he holds my heart in his hand.
“Today, your family asked you if you would move to Dallas.” I swallow when he starts to talk, and from his tone, I have no idea if it’s a good conversation or a bad one.
He looks into my eyes. “About that,” I start to say, “this is so hard.” I shake my head and clear my throat. “Which is silly since it’s my job to think of words. Yet all the words are all jumbled on the paper.”
“You don’t need to move with me,” he says to me. “I would never make you choose.”
“What if I want to choose?” I put my heart out there one more time, not knowing if it’s going to bite me in the ass or not. “What if I want to be where you are?” His eyes light up. “What if I told you I checked out every single city we went to?”
“I would say it makes me really fucking happy,” he says, his hands coming to hold my face. I can’t help the tears that fall. “But your home is in New York.”
“My home is wherever we make it.” I emphasize the we. “My home can be anywhere.” He bends his head, his forehead touching mine. “My home is where you are.” The words are even harder to say than I love you.
“I want you to be there with me,” he admits to me. “I just didn’t want to be a selfish bastard and ask you.”
“I didn’t want to be a pushy person and assume,” I confess to him, and he laughs.
“If you didn’t look like your sister, I would think they took the wrong baby from the hospital.” I can’t help but throw my head back and laugh.