I pause.
Dear Diary, he looks tragically confused.
I inhale. “If you need me to shut up—”
“Never,” he says deeply, and I’m glad he cut me off there. “Never stop talking, Jane.”
He’s my everything and more.
I lift my chin to meet his serious brown eyes. “I’ve been thinking,” I continue, “about how I’ve been so insecure about my worth if I don’t find a passion, even more so now that I’m tied to you.” Emotion burns my eyes.
His chest tightens. He’s barely breathing too, but he nods me on.
I’d be pacing back and forth if the closet were bigger. I’m happy to be forced to stand perilously still in front of him. His comfort blanketing me.
“If I knew at seventeen what my future held, that I’d be passionless, ambitionless, and the world would attach my value to a man, I would’ve screamed at the top of my lungs. The realization—to think—that all I could be good for is to be your girlfriend, to be a sister, a cousin, best friend, daughter, and nothing else, it’s terrifying. It’s scared me to know that my purpose in life is just love.” I wipe a hot, escaped tear. “Love.” I repeat the cofounding word. “When this is all said and done, where am I supposed to end up? Married? With children? Giving love to you and them?”
“We don’t have to get married, Jane,” Thatcher says suddenly, seriously—staring down at me while I look right up at him. “I’ll never make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
My heart thumps strangely. “You wouldn’t want to be married one day?”
His jaw tics. “I would want that, but if the choice were marriage or you, I’d rather just be with you.” He holds my waist, his hand sliding around my hip to the small of my back. He’s not letting go of us, and I don’t want to either.
I know, deep in my heart, that we’re already bound together. And maybe our story won’t end like a Shakespearian comedy. No wedding in our future.
No marriage.
Possibly, that’ll do.
I nod and breathe and say, “I’m absolutely positive about one thing. I don’t need a passion.”
Thatcher Moretti is smiling. “You don’t.” He agrees.
I smile into a flood of tears. “I’ve never needed to have ambition, and it’s taken me so long to reach this place. Years. And you’re the first person I wanted to tell.”
He sways at that realization, then cups my face, brushing away the wet streaks. “What else?”
It bursts my heart.
How well this man knows me.
How he knows when I have more to say.
“I don’t need a career to be a smart woman.” I go on. “I don’t need a job to be talented. I am both smart and possess talent, and the love that I give is just as important as the fashion empire my mom built. I am enough just as I am.”
It is so freeing, and I soar. He hoists me in his arms, my legs wrapping around him. My hands threaded behind his neck, and our foreheads nearly press together as we stare into each other.
Very deeply, he tells me, “I am in awe of you.”
Tears spill, and our breaths come fuller, timed together. “The feeling is mutual,” I whisper, thinking of his self-restraint with Tony. “You’re a good man.”
“You’re a better woman.”
I choke on emotion, and he cups my cheek and whispers, “Jane.”
Thatcher.
His name is inside a kiss, our lips colliding with slow-burning affection that floats me up another thousand feet high.
We can’t stay hidden in the broom closet for long. To be frank, we could easily be carried away and seal this moment with glorious sex. As we often do, but we’ve accepted house duties. Thatcher takes the third floor, as promised.
He pats my ass and moves past me.
I flush, my lips rising with my heart, and I continue on the second floor, clipboard in hand. Perhaps the year won’t end so sadly after all, and excitement carries me like a gust of wind. I’m dying to share my epiphany with my best friend now.
Like perfect happenstance, his bedroom is the next stop on my checklist. I can’t quell my smile. The door is shut, so I turn the knob and breeze inside.
“Moff—” My feet brake, body frozen in alarm.
Farrow is on top of Moffy, sheets unfortunately bunched at the foot of the bed, and his tattooed body bears down and welds against Maximoff’s back and…bottom, while Moffy sinks into the mattress. I can also unfortunately tell that they’re nearing the end of an intimate moment that I’m not supposed to see, one that I’ve so mortifyingly interrupted.
I’m too distraught and scarred to describe why I can tell.
Farrow immediately stops moving. He swings his head to me, breathing hard like he’s…well he is having sex, so… “Shit,” he curses.
He is very quick to toss a pillow at Moffy, blocking my cousin’s view of me, and then he whips up the green sheets. Covering themselves.
“I’m so…so sorry,” I squeak out.
Move, Jane.
I still have a massive flaw called the inability to divert from embarrassing situations. My eyes are popped and unable to close.
Please close.
“I thought you locked the door?” Maximoff speaks to Farrow, shifting out from under his fiancé.
“I did,” Farrow says, sounding truly certain.
I roast head-to-toe and force my feet to back up. Go to the door. I’m a voyeur here, and I don’t particularly love seeing a family member hot and heavy. “I’m so, so, so sorry.” I ramble out more deep apologies, and I reanimate more and lift my clipboard to my face.
Perfect.
I can’t see them.
I do my best to tune out their private conversation too, but I pick up a bit of the exchange.
“Are you okay?” Farrow whispers. “Wolf scout, hey, look at me.”
“Are you alright?” Maximoff replies with total concern. “You’re okay?”
Finally, I spin around and reach the door, and I’ve never been happier to clasp a knob. I tug and—oh God.
It breaks off the wood. Dislodging right from the door.
I gape wide-eyed at the brass knob in my hand. “No.”
No, no, no.
Frantic, I try to open the door without the knob, but it’s jammed into the frame. I rattle the wood, realizing that Farrow most likely did lock it earlier. But the door is old and worn and revolting on us all.
“Come on,” I say in distress, my pulse reeling. I pound a fist on the wood. “BANKS! Banks!” Please save me from embarrassment. Merci beaucoup.
Footsteps sound.
My archangel. He’s arrived.
“Jane, what’s wrong?” Shadows flit beneath the door. He must be right outside the room. “Talk to me, honey.”
Shock has my tongue, but I breathe out. “I accidentally walked in on Maximoff and Farrow, and I’m trying to leave and the knob broke, and now I’m trapped in this room.”
“Hold on. I’ll get you out of there.” He works on wedging open the door from his side.
My panic begins to recede. I think of the time I saw Donnelly giving Luna head, and I wince. “I can’t believe this is happening again.”