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I raised an eyebrow. “Sure, we’ll go with that.”
“Jareth, don’t be a jerk. You owed her that apology. I hope you at least sounded sincere.” She gave me that look of ‘what am I going to do with you.’ An entirely typical Hazel stare that she seemed to reserve just for me.
I had been sincere. I still stood by the fact that Katia knew the score and I hadn’t promised her anything, but I acknowledged Hazel’s point that it was a shit move to flaunt the two of us in front of someone I’d slept with five months prior.
Hazel was hell-bent on making me a better person. “I hope you’re not thinking you can change me overnight,” I teased.
She stopped short. “I don’t want to change you.”
“Just some things then,” I pressed. Some twisted part of me wanted Hazel to say she wanted to change everything about me because if she did, it proved I was right. I wasn’t good enough for her as myself.
Hazel ran her hands up my chest and laid her palms against my fast-beating heart. The tingles that followed the slide of her fingers made me lose focus. The warmth of her hand on my body had my cock sit up and take notice. The sincerity in her gaze was enough for me to forget the reasons I’d pushed her away for so long. It was like the world narrowed, pinpointed to just the two of us, in moments like this. I cataloged these seconds of time for when she realized I was right about us and walked away.
“Jareth, you don’t need to change to be with me.” It was like she could read my mind. Her lips pressed against my chin for the briefest kiss. “I see you. The real you.”
I shook my head and placed my hands over hers to cup them. “I will disappoint you.”
“You could never disappoint me,” she said, a slight gleam in her eye as she repeated my words from yesterday. Touché.
I decided to play along. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.” Her voice sounded so sure.
“How?” I asked, genuinely interested in her answer.
“Have you ever felt like you were your true self with anyone?” Her unwavering gaze held mine steady.
“Only one person. My dad.” Without a doubt, I kept myself at a distance from people and only showed them what I wanted them to see. Not the real me. My enemies would use that information in ways that would undermine me personally and professionally.
“Does it make you happy to always need to pretend?” We’d gotten a little off script, but I cared enough about her and her opinion to want to know what else she would say.
“I’ve stopped measuring my life in happy moments,” I admitted for the first time. “I look forward to accomplishments and revenge.”
She squeezed my hands. “Whose fault is it that you don’t even try to be happy anymore?”
I gave her the same response she gave me, except I didn’t question it. I knew I was the problem. “Mine.”
Her firm, pouty lips gently kissed the backs of my hands. I thought about getting a tattoo of her lips in that spot. “No. Your life has taught you to keep everything close to your chest. To not trust anyone. Right?”
I nodded, too enraptured by what she would choose to reveal in her next words to say anything in response.
“In the last three years, you’ve grown to trust me, and I see pieces of the good man you try to hide. It’s true you make morally questionable decisions… ” She grinned, letting me know she didn’t see that as a deal breaker.
She wasn’t wrong. We both knew I wasn’t above a little kidnapping, extortion, and blackmail. I’d been involved in the darker, seedier side of life in my quest to find my father’s killer, but since she came into my life, I’d started to pull back from that. Especially in the last few months.
“I need you to know… I need you to hear that at the heart of it all, you, Jareth Vizier, have a damn good reason for making those morally gray decisions. You would protect a loved one with your life if it came to that. And in the last year, I’ve seen you opening up to others. Not all the way, but enough that I think you have true friends who like you, not your money, and not for what you can do for them. They like you. And you are good enough and deserving enough to find happiness.”
Well, fuck.
I had no idea what to say to that. My little speech in the plane paled compared to how she laid my heart open and massaged it back to life. If I didn’t watch myself, there was a very good chance that, in the end, I’d never be able to give her up.
“You are?—”
She let go of my hands and quickly pressed her fingertips over my mouth. “No, I’m not going to let you sarcasm your way out of this or say something dumb to diminish my words because you don’t believe them yet. I said what I said. And I’ll believe enough for the both of us.”
I nodded solemnly to let her know I heard her even if I might disagree. To create a little levity and take the attention away from our discussion, I pulled an uncharacteristic move and licked the inside of her hand.
She yanked them back and held them close to her chest. “Why was that completely disgusting and sexy all at the same time?”
