Sophie (The Boss 8)

“All right. Just don’t take too long. I won’t be able to sleep if I’m worried about you nodding off and drowning.” He took my hand and kissed it. As I turned away, he pulled me back in. His mouth covered mine, sudden and hungry; it was the way he’d kissed me the night he’d come to my apartment and confessed he still wanted me. The way he’d kissed me after he’d proposed.

He came up for air, nuzzling his nose against mine. “Go on. Unwind. You’ll have a busy day tomorrow.”

I tilted my head. “I didn’t know we had anything planned.”

“We don’t.” He gestured between us. “But I certainly do.”

I shivered and considered following him as he left the room. But patience is a virtue, and delayed gratification a blessing.

Besides, I had a date with my first true love.

My bathtub. My glorious, majestic refuge. My beloved. Smooth porcelain and gleaming copper, an item that could grace Versailles or a humble cottage and still not look out of place in either. I hummed happily to myself as the water ran. I added way too much bubble bath.

From a dinky Chinatown apartment to the Hamptons; that was quite the upward trajectory for a plumbing fixture. I liked to think it felt some gratitude toward me for that.

I stepped into the scalding hot water and sank down with a happy sigh. Life could have been so different, so many times over. I could have gone to Japan. I could have taken Gabriella’s offer instead of staying with Neil. Maybe I would have worked at Porteras under Valerie and loved her. What if I’d written another book? What if we really did move to our god-awful haunted mansion in the English countryside? What if I’d stood outside that isolation room in that London hospital and decided it was too hard to stay?

What if we’d never gone into that weird French sex club and met the love of our lives?

There would be more what-ifs and choices in the future. And I might never figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. No matter what had happened in my life, I was where I was meant to be, with the people I was meant to be with. Whatever happened in the future, it would be with them by my side. Not because I was incomplete without them. Not because we were destined to be together. I had been given a choice.

And I chose them.