“I would go anywhere with you,” I said in a whisper. My words seemed to rock something inside of him, because when he opened his eyes he looked torn, broken. That’s how Jensen was, though, and with the baggage he carried, I couldn’t blame him.
He didn’t say another word—just nodded once and pulled me into the house. I walked around his room as he packed his overnight bag. I busied myself by picking up and putting down random things he had scattered on his nightstands, his desk, the floor. His room looked the way it always had, as if he still lived here and not thousands of miles away.
“How was your flight?” I asked, breaking the silence as he opened and closed drawers.
“It was okay.”
I looked over at him. His brows were pulled together as he rummaged through his duffel bag.
“Did you lose something?” I asked.
His hands stopped moving, and the edge of his mouth moved into half of a smile. “Found it.”
I smiled back, searching his face for clues as to what was wrong with him. I wanted to ask if he’d spoken to his mother, or if he’d gotten fired from his job, or if maybe the children’s book he was shopping to agents got turned down, but I didn’t want to push him, and I didn’t want him to close himself off again, so I stayed quiet.
His smile wavered as he looked at me; the longer he stared, the harder I found it to stay rooted in place.
“Come here,” he said, the need in his voice carrying me to him. “You know you mean the world to me, right?”
Normally those words would have made me melt right in his hands, but the way he looked at me when he said them made my heart hurt.
“What in the world happened?” I asked. “You’re really starting to worry me.”
He breathed out heavily, crushing my body against his again. “God, Mia, I don’t even know where to start. Can we pause the conversation and have it later though?”
I reared back and looked at him, nodding. “But you’ll tell me,” I said. I didn’t want this to be one of the situations where I hated that I had to practically extract the information from him. I wanted to think we were in a place where we could tell each other everything and anything and not worry about the other judging.
“I’ll tell you everything, baby. Everything,” he said in a whisper as he ran his thumb over my bottom lip. “God, I missed you,” he said, pulling my lips to his. We definitely needed to talk, but I was willing to wait a couple of hours if this was his way of temporarily shutting me up.
Chapter Four
Past
“OUR WAITER KEEPS staring at you,” Jensen said, glaring at the man standing a few feet away from us.
“He does not,” I said, shaking my head with a smile. The waiter was staring at me, but he always did when we ate there. More than a handful of times I’d caught him looking at my boobs as he refilled our water, and that alone was pretty funny considering I didn’t have much to look at. I didn’t want Jensen getting mad though. Especially not when we were celebrating our two-year anniversary. As it was, he’d gone from zero to ballistic earlier today when my friend, Nathan, sent me a text to wish me a happy belated birthday.
“He is, and I don’t like it.”
“Hey,” I said, placing my hand over his to beckon his attention. “What’s with you tonight?”
His eyes flicked to mine. “I just … nothing.”
I raised an eyebrow and opened my mouth to press him further, but our food arrived. “Saved by the food.”
Jensen grinned. We talked about our classes as we ate, debating which class was better and what teacher taught it better. He was graduating soon and had been accepted into the Graduate English program at NYU; he hadn’t planned on going for it, but I pushed him. His argument had been that he wanted to be a writer, and he didn’t need one. In the end, after we visited the school together, he decided he wanted to do it. It didn’t hit me right away that he would be leaving soon, and I was staying behind. We would be worlds apart, but I loved him enough to let him go and support him while he was there. We’d decided to take our relationship a step at a time while he was away, and that was something that made my stomach coil with unease.
We stood up and held hands, and, just as we walked out, he stepped up to our waiter and said something to him. I couldn’t hear what it was, but from the look on the guy’s face, I knew it wasn’t anything nice.
“What’d you tell him?” I asked as he opened my car door.
“I told him that if I catch him checking you out the next time we come here, I would rip his eyes out and stomp on them.” He closed the door and left me gaping at him as he rounded the car to get into the driver’s seat.