“Do you know how much I’ve missed you?” he whispers.
I stare at him in some kind of strange detached state.
“Did you miss me?”
Instantly I’m overwhelmed with emotion. I stay silent as I battle the lump in my throat. I hate that he makes me feel so weak and vulnerable. I pull my hands out of his grip. I need to create some distance between us.
“Em.” He frowns. “I . . .” It’s clear that he has no idea what to say. “When I saw that image of you kissing Jake—”
“Jameson,” I stammer.
He holds his hand up to signify silence, and I close my mouth. “Something snapped inside of me. I was so thrown that it upset me so deeply that I . . .” He frowns as he remembers it. “I was furious—firstly with you, but then with myself.”
Our eyes are locked.
“I was going through so much shit at work, and the very last person on earth that I thought would lie to me . . . was you.”
I drop my head in shame.
“And then when I calmed down after a few days and realized that you had been set up, the future mapped itself out to me.”
I frown.
“There is always going to be someone like Ferrara who is prepared to step on you to hurt me.”
My heart drops.
“And I don’t want that for you.”
“Jay,” I whisper sadly.
“I don’t want you to be married to a workaholic who has to travel all the time and is stressed out of his head. I don’t want you to have to remind your husband not to drink too much or stop being rude to people because he’s too busy to care. I don’t want you to have to remind your husband that he’s neglecting you.”
“Your bottle of wine.” The waiter appears out of nowhere. He opens it and pours us both a glass.
“Thank you,” I reply. My eyes go back to meet Jameson’s.
The waiter leaves us alone.
“I don’t want you to come second to Miles Media. I don’t want you to ever come second to anything.”
“But—”
“Let me finish, please,” he demands.
I sit back in my chair, annoyed that he wants to speak first.
“The thing is, if you’re with me—married to me—your life is going to be all those things.”
The lump in my throat gets big.
“I love you too much to let you live that life, Em.”
He’s ending it again. My eyes fill with tears.
He takes my hand over the table and lifts it to his mouth and gently kisses it. “Don’t cry. I hate that you’ve cried over me.”
I blink to try and get rid of these stupid tears.