“I love you, Jules. It’s us now. You and me.”
“I love you too,” I tell him without hesitation, biting my lip after hearing myself say that to someone.
Anyone in this life.
Not just anyone, Mason Thorne.
If I was able to move my legs, I might feel like running to the roof and screaming it to the world, but for now and forever, the only person it matters for me to tell is Mason.
“I love you, Mason,” I tell him again, and hearing him repeat it back to me, I know we’ll never be able to say it enough.
Not in one lifetime.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mason
Lying with Jules dozing on top of me, I know what real happiness is now. I’ve been looking for it my whole life, thinking it might be in material things or money… power.
But the idea I could feel this, all from sharing just myself with another person, the right person, mind you.
It’s incredible.
It’s amazing.
I’m the richest man alive now, and it has nothing to do with money.
I want to wake her up, just to tell her I love her again, but I also want to watch her sleep.
But I also want to wake her, find out everything there is to know about her.
There’s time for that yet, Mason. There’ll be plenty of time now.
Her lip is curled in a peaceful smile, and her hand twitches as she dreams her sweet dreams. Folded under her chin, it makes her look more like an angel than a woman now.
I guess I must doze off too, and when we do wake up it’s at the same time, and I get to tell her I love her all over again.
Something I know we’ll both never tire of because, like me, I don’t think Jules has ever had anyone tell her, let alone really mean it.
“What do we do now?” Jules asks.
I tilt my head in question, frowning.
“What do you mean?”
“My job, the whole charity auction thing,” she says, and I watch a line form between her brows.
Too many thoughts about things that don’t matter anymore.
I sigh heavily and hold her closer, tight enough so she can’t ask any more questions just yet.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m more concerned about you thinking I’m plotting to buy the world and kick everyone out of it,” I tell her, half-joking but still feeling the burn of her reaction to that message.
“I didn’t know what to think,” she confides, and I have to agree, I still don’t know what to think about it all myself.
“How about for the rest of today, we just do nothing? I could use some jeans and a tee though,” I tell her, raising my brows and craning my neck to see my six thousand dollar suit crumpled on the floor.
“I don’t think my jeans would fit,” she offers.
“How about we grab a bite, maybe do some shopping. If you feel up to it?” I ask, secretly wanting to take her out. To show her off to the world.
To walk around in the world with her on my arm, doing anything, as long as it’s together.
She screws up her face and snuggles deeper into me, drawing up the covers over us both.
I hadn’t even noticed our nakedness, or if we were hot or cold.
Everything, when I’m this close to Jules, is just perfect the way it is, however it happens to be.
But looking around her room, the apartment beyond, I know she deserves better.
Much better.
“You couldn’t live in a place like this, could you?” she asks, not meaning to sound the slightest bit hurt.
“If it was with you? I dunno,” I tell her, thinking it over. “I’m pretty set in my ways. Could you live at my place?” I ask her, more of an invitation than a question.
She sighs quietly and buries her face in my chest again.
“I should call back Florence,” she says finally. “Would she know what’s happening yet? With all that donation money, I mean,” she asks earnestly.
I shrug, not really knowing myself. “I’ll know more tomorrow myself. These executive types, they scatter like dry leaves on the weekends, I think Nicholas is having a hard time mustering them for a meeting tomorrow.”
I don’t want to think about it, a big part of me is doing the math, wondering how quickly I could just dissolve everything. How much I’d have and how many lifetimes it could last me and Jules…
Our own family.
I’m way ahead of her though and smile. “We can stop by there if you want,” figuring she might want to be the one to break some good news to Florence for a change.
Jules stays still and quiet. I get lost in her breathing and we both just lie still for a long time.
“You really did all that for me though?” she finally asks, and I can tell she’s been thinking the whole time I’ve been lying here listening to her breathing.
“All what?” I ask, knowing full well what she means, laughing when she punches my chest softly.
“Millions of dollars for some soup kitchen, breaking up a huge deal from your own company,” she tells me, spelling it out in a way that sounds a lot simpler than it probably really is.
But I guess it really is that simple.
“I did. I will,” I tell her without hesitating. “And, I’ll do more than that. Whatever it takes.”
She looks worried, a cloud passing over her sweet face.
“I just don’t want you thinking I’m trying to buy you, Jules. I bid for you at that auction, sure. But that was when I knew what those other clowns had planned.”
“So you wouldn’t have bid that much for me otherwise?” she says, pouting, teasing me now.
I tickle her under her arms, making her squeal.
“I’d give it all up, right this second if it meant I could have you. To make sure you’d always be mine,” I tell her truthfully.
“Well, don’t go doing anything like that,” she urges me. “I’m all yours,
