Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
I don’t say it back, but he reads it in my eyes.
For a long minute, neither of us speaks. We just let the sounds of the café settle over us: the scrape of a chair leg, the low hum of Billie’s voice, the patter of rain. Outside, the world is cold and gray, but inside, it feels like the last safe place on earth.
Finally, Thomas sets his mug down, hard enough that it clinks. “We should talk about this,” he says. “About us. If you’re comfortable.”
I nod, but my heart is beating so fast it drowns out the words.
He leans forward, elbows on the table, fingers tented. “When this started, I thought it was just chemistry.” He watches my face for a reaction. “Just a fling, nothing else. But it’s more than that now. You know it is.”
I can’t look at him, so I fix my gaze on the rising swirl of milk in my cup. “It is,” I say, barely above a whisper.
He exhales, the sound shaky. “It scares the hell out of me, Andie. You’re so young. I’m…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.
I finally meet his eyes, and the nakedness in them nearly undoes me. “I’m not that young,” I say. “And you’re not that old.”
He laughs, soft and genuine. “You’re right. But the math isn’t the problem.”
“What is?” My hands tighten on the mug.
“Stella,” he says, the word landing like a dropped weight. “She’s the problem.”
I bite my lip, feeling heat rise in my cheeks. “She’s my best friend,” I say, and even as I say it, I know how small it sounds.
Thomas nods, and his hands find each other, fingers lacing tight. “I know. I’ve tried to figure out if it would be worse for her to find out from me, or from you, or from someone else. It’s a shit scenario all around.”
A couple of beats go by, filled only by Billie’s voice and the clatter of spoons in the bus bin.
Finally, he says, “I want you, Andie. I want all of you. I wish you were living in my penthouse, not in that shared apartment with Stella and your friends. I want to feed you by hand, to wake up with you. I want to…” He trails off, searching for the line between confession and threat.
The words wrap around me, too heavy and too sweet at the same time. My eyes drop to the table, and I tuck my hair again, fingers shaking.
There’s something I’m not saying. Something huge and poisonous that sits in the back of my mouth, threatening to spill out. I almost blurt it—about the bet, about the sex video on my phone, about how I don’t deserve any of this. But the words die there, on my tongue, and all I do is nod.
Thomas leans back, his gaze burning through me. “We didn’t meet in a normal way, you and I,” he says. “We don’t have what a lot of people would define as a “normal” relationship because of our age gap. But I’d rather have this more than anything.”
My throat is tight. I force myself to swallow, then say, “Me too.” My voice is raw, stripped down to the nerve.
The billionaire smiles then, a real one. “That’s my girl,” he says. He reaches for my hand again, this time holding on.
We sit like that for a long time, the rain turning from drizzle to downpour, the windows shivering with each gust of wind. The café grows quieter, the other patrons fading around us, until it feels like we’re the only people left in the room.
I look at him, really look, and realize: I want all of him, too. The mess, the risk, the way he makes my skin come alive.
But there’s still the matter of the secret. The thing that hangs between us, unsaid.
I try to push it down, just for today.
Because for now, in the golden warmth of Café Soleil, in the shelter of his hand, it almost feels possible. Maybe even real.
Maybe enough.
Thomas lets the silence hang as long as possible, then breaks it with the confidence of a man who knows what he wants.
“We need to be smart about this,” he says, voice shifting to the register I’ve heard him use in boardrooms and at donor dinners. “I’m a trustee at Century, and you’re a gorgeous young co-ed. This isn’t a normal problem, Andie.” He runs a hand through his hair, then gestures at me, helpless. “I could lose my position. You could lose everything.”
He looks at me, and his face is so open, so unguarded, that I want to crawl across the table and bury myself in his chest. Instead, I just nod.
He goes on, “Stella will be hurt, but not forever. My daughter’s headstrong, but she’s not a bad person. And I think—” He hesitates, then finishes, “—I think she already suspects.”