I smiled. “Thank you for saying that.”
She nodded. She looked like she wanted to reach out and touch me or kiss me...but I wasn’t quite sure which.
“Jake,” she said before I could continue. “Can I ask you a kind of personal question?”
“Shoot,” I said willingly.
“Well, I guess I wanted to know…if you were still in love with your wife,” Kristen asked tentatively. “And, remember that there’s no wrong answer.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You wouldn’t mind if I said I was still in love with her?”
“No,” she said quickly, and then she stalled a little. “Well…maybe I would mind a little, but that would be purely selfish on my part. I would understand, of course—at least I would try to.”
I knew it was an important question, and I wanted to be fair to her, as well as honest about my feelings. “I will always love Daphne,” I said at last. “But I think I’m starting to realize that she’s my past, and I need to start focusing on my future.”
Kristen listened carefully. She looked conflicted again, and I wondered if I saw fear in her eyes for a moment.
“Thank you for answering honestly,” she replied finally.
“I don’t come with a clean slate, Kristen.”
“I know that,” she said. “And, I don’t care.”
“You might care later.”
“We all have pasts, Jake,” she told me gently. “I understand that your wife was an important part of your life. And, I know she’s still an important part of your life. How can she not be? You have a wonderful child with her. But I just need to know that there’s room in your life for…someone else.”
I smiled. “I think there is,” I replied. “And, that’s something I realized only recently. Actually, you were the one that helped me realize it.”
“Really?” she asked. “When?”
“Around the time you kissed me for the first time,” I said. “The night we had sex.”
She blushed. “That night was very special to me,” she said, in an almost shy tone.
“It was for me, too. I like you, Kristen,” I said. “I want to get to know you better. But I also think I need to take things slow, for obvious reasons.”
“I understand.”
“I’d like to have dinner with you this weekend,” I continued. “But…let’s take sex off the table.”
I saw a glimmer of surprise in Kristen’s eyes, but I also noticed that she looked pleased. “I’d love to have dinner with you,” she agreed.
I hoped I could hold out and keep my hands off her at the end of the night. I knew it would be a challenge, but I wanted to see this through because I wanted to put my past behind me. Finally, after three long years, I was ready to move on.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kristen
I could almost feel the burn in my lungs as I pushed myself to keep running for another minute and thirty-four seconds. My legs were aching, and I could feel my willpower slipping, but I gritted my teeth together and forced myself to keep going. The moment I reached fifteen minutes, I reduced the treadmill speed until I was at a walking pace and panted with exhaustion.
“You are insane,” Melody announced, shaking her head at me.
I didn’t answer her right away. I waited till I could talk without huffing out my words and then I spoke. “It’s exhilarating…at least when you’ve finished.”
“You ran for fifteen straight minutes.”
“That’s the point, to train your body to keep at it for longer periods of time,” I said. “When I first started, I could only run at that speed for four minutes; I kid you not.”