Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 148434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 742(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
I inhale. “If you need me to shut up—”
“Never,” he says deeply, and I’m glad he cut me off there. “Never stop talking, Jane.”
He’s my everything and more.
I lift my chin to meet his serious brown eyes. “I’ve been thinking,” I continue, “about how I’ve been so insecure about my worth if I don’t find a passion, even more so now that I’m tied to you.” Emotion burns my eyes.
His chest tightens. He’s barely breathing too, but he nods me on.
I’d be pacing back and forth if the closet were bigger. I’m happy to be forced to stand perilously still in front of him. His comfort blanketing me.
“If I knew at seventeen what my future held, that I’d be passionless, ambitionless, and the world would attach my value to a man, I would’ve screamed at the top of my lungs. The realization—to think—that all I could be good for is to be your girlfriend, to be a sister, a cousin, best friend, daughter, and nothing else, it’s terrifying. It’s scared me to know that my purpose in life is just love.” I wipe a hot, escaped tear. “Love.” I repeat the cofounding word. “When this is all said and done, where am I supposed to end up? Married? With children? Giving love to you and them?”
“We don’t have to get married, Jane,” Thatcher says suddenly, seriously—staring down at me while I look right up at him. “I’ll never make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
My heart thumps strangely. “You wouldn’t want to be married one day?”
His jaw tics. “I would want that, but if the choice were marriage or you, I’d rather just be with you.” He holds my waist, his hand sliding around my hip to the small of my back. He’s not letting go of us, and I don’t want to either.
I know, deep in my heart, that we’re already bound together. And maybe our story won’t end like a Shakespearian comedy. No wedding in our future.
No marriage.
Possibly, that’ll do.
I nod and breathe and say, “I’m absolutely positive about one thing. I don’t need a passion.”
Thatcher Moretti is smiling. “You don’t.” He agrees.
I smile into a flood of tears. “I’ve never needed to have ambition, and it’s taken me so long to reach this place. Years. And you’re the first person I wanted to tell.”
He sways at that realization, then cups my face, brushing away the wet streaks. “What else?”
It bursts my heart.
How well this man knows me.
How he knows when I have more to say.
“I don’t need a career to be a smart woman.” I go on. “I don’t need a job to be talented. I am both smart and possess talent, and the love that I give is just as important as the fashion empire my mom built. I am enough just as I am.”
It is so freeing, and I soar. He hoists me in his arms, my legs wrapping around him. My hands threaded behind his neck, and our foreheads nearly press together as we stare into each other.
Very deeply, he tells me, “I am in awe of you.”
Tears spill, and our breaths come fuller, timed together. “The feeling is mutual,” I whisper, thinking of his self-restraint with Tony. “You’re a good man.”
“You’re a better woman.”
I choke on emotion, and he cups my cheek and whispers, “Jane.”
Thatcher.
His name is inside a kiss, our lips colliding with slow-burning affection that floats me up another thousand feet high.
We can’t stay hidden in the broom closet for long. To be frank, we could easily be carried away and seal this moment with glorious sex. As we often do, but we’ve accepted house duties. Thatcher takes the third floor, as promised.
He pats my ass and moves past me.
I flush, my lips rising with my heart, and I continue on the second floor, clipboard in hand. Perhaps the year won’t end so sadly after all, and excitement carries me like a gust of wind. I’m dying to share my epiphany with my best friend now.
Like perfect happenstance, his bedroom is the next stop on my checklist. I can’t quell my smile. The door is shut, so I turn the knob and breeze inside.
“Moff—” My feet brake, body frozen in alarm.
Farrow is on top of Moffy, sheets unfortunately bunched at the foot of the bed, and his tattooed body bears down and welds against Maximoff’s back and…bottom, while Moffy sinks into the mattress. I can also unfortunately tell that they’re nearing the end of an intimate moment that I’m not supposed to see, one that I’ve so mortifyingly interrupted.
I’m too distraught and scarred to describe why I can tell.
Farrow immediately stops moving. He swings his head to me, breathing hard like he’s…well he is having sex, so… “Shit,” he curses.
He is very quick to toss a pillow at Moffy, blocking my cousin’s view of me, and then he whips up the green sheets. Covering themselves.