Yours, For Good (Cozy Latine Billionaires #4)

33. Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Javier

If my heart had been running in my chest before Nora arrived, seeing her come into my home put the poor organ into overdrive. I devoured the sight of her, with her cute purple skirt whose fun pattern drew my eyes to her hips. The small brush strokes in a polka dot pattern made my fingers tingle with the pull to touch them, to see if they had texture to them. Her simple lilac tank top disappeared at the waist, and a thin belt completed the look. A forest green cross-body purse dented her shirt in between her breasts. Everywhere, soft skin called for my hands and my lips and my arms and all of me. Swells and rounds promised handfuls and asked to be grabbed. I took it all in like a starved man; I didn't know what to expect of her visit, and nerves had me preparing for it to be the last time I saw her.

Maybe. Perhaps I could convince her to give me a chance. She had come to see me for a reason.

I pulled down from the bottom of my shirt to manage the jitters in my fingers. "Thanks for coming, Nora."

I closed the door and we stood immobile in the foyer, facing each other.

Uneasiness oozed from her. "I don't know what I expect to happen… but something has to happen."

I nodded. "Where do you want to talk? We could go to the drawing room— same place as last time. Or outside. There's a patio at the top… but I don't have it set up, so maybe not. My office? I…"

"Can I look around?"

"Of course."

She walked into the house with slow steps, as if lost in her thoughts.

She stopped by the stairs. "Can I go up? I'm curious about your house, but you don't have to entertain my nosiness—"

"Please. Go wherever. All rooms are open to you."

She took off her purse and hung it from the banister. "What would you do if I started opening shelves and drawers?"

"I'd let you."

"Wow. I'm not going to do that, but I wondered. You really are willing to show me everything, aren't you?"

"I am."

"Then why hide behind Mr. B. to begin with?" She went up a few steps. "Reading your journals showed me your logic, but I can't say I agree. I'm…"

She let out an irritated scoff. Her steps quickened as her anger bubbled up. I followed her up the stairs.

"I'm seething. You hid such a big thing from me! It gave you choices I never had."

I dug my hands into my pockets and rubbed my lips together, listening carefully to every word.

She turned left on the second floor in what seemed like a mindless decision. "You know what I kept thinking since you told me the truth? That suddenly I have someone in my life who knows about the most tender parts of me and never made me feel bad for it. Yet I didn't get to trust you with them! You robbed me, Javier."

I winced but said nothing. It was the truth.

She made it into the kitchen at the back of the house and stopped in her tracks. Without speaking, she turned in a circle studying the breakfast nook by the windows, the classic lines of the white cabinets and their black hardware, the white subway tile backsplash with black grout, and the modern appliances. She ran a finger down the built-in espresso machine.

I curled my hands into fists in pockets. "Uhm… would you like something to drink?"

Her eyes snapped to me. "No, thank you."

I nodded and didn't make a comment on our sudden formality.

She pursed her lips and walked past me toward the other end of the house. I followed her in silence once more.

Her skirt swayed around her legs as she passed the stairs into the dining room. "You said in one of your emails that the ethical thing would have been to never meet me. You were right— it would have been the right thing. So why does it make me so sad to imagine never knowing you? If you had never been in the picture, eventually, I would have been fine! I would have graduated from the John Grier Home and found a room somewhere and a job and maybe in five years I could have started my business in a much more modest way. And yet…"

Her words landed an uppercut squarely on my jaw. Would she have preferred to have never met me? Sounded like it. I had likely messed up too badly for her to want to give me any real chance.

She rounded the ten-place table, admiring the subtle florals on the dark wallpaper, the white wainscotting, and warm honey woods of the furniture. A contemporary chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, and it caught her eyes for several seconds.

She gazed at it but a veil covered her eyes. She watched it without seeing. "It makes me so angry that I think it's sweet that you couldn't stand the thought of my struggles. That above all, you didn't want me to feel sad and alone. You didn't even know me and you wanted to help! But you doing good was at my expense and it's all just a big mindfuck."

Her eyes dropped to mine. A mix of melancholy and gloom and pain drowned the usual joy glimmering in them. It grabbed my throat with sharp talons and pulled, weighing down my heart until it dropped to my feet.

My vocal cords had tightened, and my voice came out heavy. "I'm sorry, Nora."

"I hate that I felt like our friendship was magical when it was a half-baked plan." Her eyes stayed on me with the same darkened shadow on them, but she grabbed the back of a chair until her knuckles whitened. "Sure, you didn't plan to spend a few hours having coffee with me that time and you had to improvise, but what about Halloween? That was all you. And maybe I invited you for Christmas but then you practically invited yourself for my grad event, and I just…"

She searched my eyes for an explanation, her brow pulling in a tense wrinkle.

I pressed my lips into a thin line. "I needed to be there for you somehow. I wanted to celebrate with you."

She closed her eyes and frowned as if my answer hurt her. "Every time I asked Mr. B. to write back. Every single time you and I met. I got what I wanted without getting it at all."

The truth of her words hit me, a punch that took the air from my lungs. It gutted me, scooped out my insides and the intentions I had in the beginning. I meant to give her someone to talk to, support her, keep her company as she gathered speed and soared… but I tarnished it all with my decisions anyway.

"I'm sorry," I said again, at a loss for words.

I betrayed someone I'd grown to care so deeply for, and I wasn't sure how to fix it. I'd do anything to make it better, if only I knew how.

She shook her head and walked away from the dining room. She reached the stairs and went up again.

"You know what else I hate?" she asked, her tone making it clear it was a rhetorical question. "I hate that I feel like a fool for not figuring it out. How did I not see the signs? And I hate the idea you could have been laughing at me behind my back and I would have never known. I sent those letters because I was lonely and I desperately sought connection— and you were a voyeur the whole time without my permission."

"Please, Nora—" my voice came out hoarse. "I never laughed at you. I couldn't—"

She sighed. "I know you didn't. I read your journals. At least I have that."

She couldn't see me but I shook my head anyway. I hadn't found humor in our situation at all.

The door to the guest room was opened and she peeked inside, without stopping there long. She did the same with the bathroom on that floor, before turning to the front of the house.

She shook her head as she passed me by. "I hate that for a second I thought I'd ruined things by kissing you, when you had done worse."

I rubbed my mouth with two fingers, a poor replacement for her lips. She hadn't ruined a thing, but I had.

Nora opened the door to my office and stepped in. "I hate that this whole thing is making me feel indecisive and insecure. I'm not someone who is wishy-washy! I hate that I can't seem to make up my mind."

She stopped in the middle of the room, me a few steps behind her. In one of my favorite spaces in the house, she went quiet and turned on her heels to admire the view.

A dusty navy blue painted the walls. White built-ins filled a third of the room, and flowed seamlessly into the detailed crown molding and coffered tall ceiling. The shelves were full of books, making my home library a collection of stories, poems, and memories I adored.

Decorative curtains fell like waterfalls from ceiling to parquet floor. A banquette made for a perfect lookout to people-watch down on the street. On one end of the room, a large reading chair invited us to get lost in a book, or take an easy nap on a weekend. At the other end, a big desk in wooden tones matched the herringbone at its feet and headed the space.

Without added words, Nora approached it and discovered my journal closed on top of it.

I cleared my throat. "You can read the new entries if you want."

Nora ignored my invitation and turned to gaze at the book spines behind her. After a minute, she turned and made for the reading chair instead. Her skirt fanned around her as she sat on it.

A sudden dream overtook me. In a different life, we might have huddled together there and read our books together. She might have dozed off with her head on my shoulder, and it would have put a smile on my face as I read of worlds far away.

Longing for a time like that with Nora seized my chest. It rocked me on my feet.

Her brow pulled up in dejection and hurt. "This feeling inside, it won't subside. It should be gone, killed by your deceit. But it's there, and it won't leave me alone. How can I want it? Where would it even lead?!"

My heart hammered to be heard in all of this, but I denied it of what it wanted. I deserved for it to break.

All I did was kneel at her feet and fist my hands not to take her in my arms.

She covered her face with her hands. "The smartest thing would be to cut this clean. So why does the idea of never seeing you again make me want to crawl into bed and cry?"

"Please, Nora…"

I didn't know what I meant to ask. I stopped myself regardless. Words crashed in the dam of my throat. Each one of them wanted to beg her not to cut me off from her life, and yet I had to let her make her own choice.

She shook her head in her hands, a rocking motion of confusion. "When I read your journals I thought, maybe this is how it felt for you too. Knowing what the right thing was and finding yourself incapable of doing it. How crappy is that?"

She gazed at me again, searching for something in my eyes. I wasn't a spiritual man, but I would have prayed to a deity in that moment that she found what she needed.

Her voice came out breathy in her confession. "I don't know how to reconcile that I want to be your friend, and I want to kiss you and forget about everything with your arms around me, and the fact I haven't forgiven you and— above all? That I can't imagine losing you now, or making things worse by trying something and losing you in the process anyway."

"Nora…" I choked.

"If it weren't for this program I owe some much to, we could have done this better if we ever met. Now we're here in one of the most beautiful homes I've ever seen, in a dream-like room, and I don't know if I should find a way out of this mess when you broke my trust. If I should fight to keep you or be the one to let you go."

Her words speared cleanly through me, its edges ragged as they cut me open… and all I could do was let it happen, because everything she'd said had been right.