“I’m not quitting,” I say softly. “I mean, not immediately. But eventually, I’ll have to find my own way.”
His brows draw down hard. “I don’t see why.”
“My job is to be with Sophie,” I say gently. “When she moves on”—I lick my lips, forcing the words to form— “I won’t have a job here. We’re not going to live with you forever, Mr. Grayson.”
“Sophie’s not going anywhere,” he says, instantly rejecting the very idea. “And neither are you.”
Chapter 2
Nathan
The mere idea of Jasmine leaving—eventually, someday—brings me to an utter standstill. Hits me hard.
She’s my stepdaughter’s best friend.
She’s twenty-three—bright, beautiful, talented—with her whole life ahead of her.
She’s an unexpected gift that came into our lives and stayed. Stitched herself in.
Sophie and I needed her—first because Sophie decided to stay in the PNW and live with me when her mother, my ex-wife, got married again, and she couldn’t function without Jazz at all. Her asthma, her anxiety, with a hefty dose of neglect on my ex’s part, meant Sophie became emotionally attached to her best friend.
Later, after a few years of Sophie settling into my penthouse and my life, my extensive travel slowly winding down, and Jasmine losing her mother… it was natural to invite her to live with us.
To make her role as Sophie’s all-around caretaker official. To pay the poor girl for all the unpaid, un-thanked tasks she did around my house.
I look around the house, noticing the little changes she’s made—houseplants on windowsills, colorful mugs that don’t match my all-white dinnerware, a basket by the door where she insists shoes belong.
Nothing flashy, just pieces of her that have quietly claimed the space.
I can’t remember a version of this house without her stamp—her shy smiles and quiet steadiness, her colorful stacks of notecards, her voice drifting through the hall when she reads to Sophie in distinct voices.
I can’t imagine it without her.
Betrayal, a sense of abandonment, utter misery sit on my chest.
She’s not leaving.
She can’t.
I catch myself scowling in her direction and push away from the island, moving around like a caged animal.
What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m a forty-three-year-old man, not a teenager at the mercy of his hormones.
I need space from the intensity of how… attached I feel to this wisp of a girl—from her big, beautiful eyes to the bold, unspoken questions glinting in them today.
But I don’t want space from her. That’s the damn problem.
The soft pressure of her gaze on my face compels me, as if it were a tractor beam tugging at me. I turn fully to have my fill of her, instead of sneaking glances as I’ve been doing since I walked in.
She’s wearing the usual thin black tank top and shorts that cling to her hips like they’re stitched on. Her skin’s got that post-yoga sheen, a faint, flushed glow that makes her golden-browncomplexion look warmer—like sunlight trapped under smooth skin.
Her long, silky hair is in a low braid, swinging over one shoulder as she moves efficiently around the kitchen.
Everything about Jasmine is neat. Practical. No frills, no drama. And yet, she distracts the hell out of me.
Maybe because I’ve spent a lifetime looking after and managing a damned caravan of highly strung people like my mother, my half-brother Zayn, and my ex. Even Sophie, to some extent.
It’s only Jasmine that’s never asked me for anything. Only Jasmine who pays attention to my simplest needs instead of the other way around.
