Page 71 of The Billionaire's Second Chance
“Okay, what?” he asked.
“Okay, I’m listening.” I took a deep breath. “Explain. But start at the very beginning.”
“James’s apartment,” he said, his eyebrows drawn together as if he were in pain, but he nodded. “I wasn’t honest with you then. I should have… When Seb told me not to touch you, I should have told you. No, I should haveaskedyou. I should have gone straight to you, told you he knew. I didn’t. I just listened to Sebastian, and I left you thinking…” He sighed. “Well, I don’t know what you thought, exactly. That I was like James, maybe. That I was just fucking around, probably. Or, I don’t know–” he said, looking away. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Maybe you didn’t think anything of it at all.”
“Iwaited,” I blurted out, my throat suddenly tight and my eyes stinging. “I waited for you. To call me, at first, to ask me–to ask me to dinner, or something. You had always been so sweet to me in school, and then–” I could feel my cheeks burning. And then at the party.You’re sure, Sami?“I thought you would call.”
My heart felt swollen and tender and frantic behind my ribcage. I’d never, ever admitted this to anyone. The nights I’d spent hoping for a text. Waiting for the call he’d promised me as he tucked me into my father’s Town Car, his jacket around my shoulders carrying the scent of his cologne, both familiar and exciting. I had waited for him. For days. Then weeks, staring at the jacket hung over the desk chair in the apartment I’d rented at school. And then, at some point after the winter holidays ended and before the new school year began, I’d realized that the men my father had been inviting into our home for the Sunday dinners I attended religiously, the colleagues and the partners my brother brought around, they were all looking at me. Watching me. Assessing. Sizing me up: my face, my breasts, my hips. My conversation. My manners. Mysuitability.
I’d stopped going to Sunday dinners after that, slowly. I’d been busy with work, more and more, my father’s disapproval more and more evident on the evenings I did show up. When Sebastian moved away, it had been a relief, and when our father died a few years later, an even greater one. And when I’d returned home on an unimportant day some time after his death and recognized a familiar jacket hanging in the closet of my bedroom in my childhood home, I’d taken it down. Given it to the housekeeper to sell or donate or throw in the trash, whatever she wanted.
I had moved on, and not just from him. Fromhoping.
“At least to get your jacket.” My voice cracked. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to look at him. For him to see me like this.
“I didn’t know, Sami–” he said, and I didn’t need my eyes open to hear the heavy emotion in his voice. “Or I didn’t think… You never said a word.”
“You aren’t the only one who doesn’t kiss and tell, Charlie Martin,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t, Charlie,” I said. “It was a long time ago.”
“No,” he said, his voice, too, sounding hoarse and raw. “No, it was just last week. It was just last week that I madethe same god damn mistake.”
I didn’t understand; my head swayed back and forth.
“I didn’t call you. When Sebastian told me back then that I wasn’t good enough, I listened to him. Ibelievedhim. I was young and stupid, and you were–you were Sami Scott, beautiful and smart and funny–and I thought… he was right. Iwasn’tgood enough for you. Then a decade and a half later he showed up here, and came to my office, and told me–not in so many words, but not in too many more, either–you’re good enough now. For you, Samantha. Andfuck, I was tempted, Sam, I was, I won’t lie to you. This was what I’ve been working toward for fifteen years, I thought, being good enough for you.
“But I made a mistake. I mistook being good enough for Sebastian–for James, for everyone else–for being good enough for you. And I’ll never forgive myself for that. I wastedfifteen years.” His shoulders were stiff, his hands fisted by his sides. “I’ll understand if you can’t forgive that mistake. I will. I promise. Ialwayskeep my promises.” He took a step toward me, and I tilted my chin up, meeting his eye. “I thought, all those years ago, that the person I had to prove myself to was your brother. That I needed to earn you.”
He chuckled, the soft exhale of his breath gusting against my face. “I should have known, even then. You always likedSense and Sensibility, didn’t you, Sami?”
My vision blurred.
“And I was in the wrong book entirely, thinking I was supposed to be Mr. Darcy with a tech IPO and a penthouse apartment. Manhattan’s most eligible bachelor.” He laughed again. “You were never interested in that. Sami.” He brought up his hand, then seemed to hesitate. I could feel the warmth of his palm, so close to my cheek, but not quite touching, and closed my eyes, feeling tears fall from damp lashes. “I spent fifteen years thinking I needed to impress your brother, our friends,mybrother.” The heat of his palm vanished, and I blinked up at him. His jaw was set, his brows furrowed, his eyes more serious than I’d ever seen them before. “I made a mistake. The only person I needed to impress was you, and you…”
His eyes were glossy. He blinked, and the sheen disappeared, replaced with a fierce pride.
“You aren’t impressed by that–the money, or the prestige, or whatever it was I thought would impress your brother or our friends or–or theNew York Week. You never were, were you? A man like that, who has everything? He only wants one thing, doesn’t he? That’s been true since Austen.” A smile tilted his lips to one side. “You told me the other day that I couldn’t have it all. You were right. You’realwaysright.
“But I don’t need it all.
“I only need you.”
He took a step back.
“It was always, always aboutyou.” His hands hung loose by his sides, and his dark hair was messy from running his fingers through it, like he always did, but the tension around his mouth was visible, the tight lines around his olive green eyes.
“I don’t expect anything. Not now, not tonight, and maybe not tomorrow or next week or ever. But I wanted to let you know. I love you, Samantha. I always have. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”
It had been fifteen years.
Long enough that I’d thought the old Samantha was dead and buried under a hundred thousand novels, all of them filled with green-eyed billionaires. Long enough that I’d forgotten; long enough that I’d given up.
But Charlie never had.
Because Charlie had never grown up–tired and jaded and bitter and lonely–he’d just gottenmore Charlie.
