“We will,” he says as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Tonight. Preferably with a bottle of wine.”
“You’re not mad?” I ask hesitantly.
He studies me for a second but then shakes his head. “No. I’m not sure I could be mad at you. And even aside from that, I don’t have the whole story. We’ll talk about it. Tonight, okay?”
I nod and step forward, pressing myself into his chest again. Theo wraps his arms tightly around me, holding me close enough that I can hear his heart beating against my ear. He tucks his cheek against the crown of my head. We stay that way for a few minutes, holding tightly onto each other when he finally breaks away again.
I raise an eyebrow when a mischievous smirk appears on his face. “Just promise me you won’t tell Chase we had sex in his office whenever you move to the new building,” he says with a wink, and I can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of me.
A knock on my door has me flying off the couch and crossing my apartment in record time. When I swing open the door, Theo is leaning against the frame in a way that has my heart skipping a beat. He’s watching me with his warm, brown eyes, and his lips twitch up. He raises his hand, showing me the bottle of white wine—likely an expensive one—that he brought, just like he said he would.
I open the door further, inviting him inside. I grab two wine glasses and then join him on the couch. Theo pours us each a healthy glass and then hands me mine. Right away, I take a biggulp, feeling the alcohol warm me all the way down. Then I settle into the cushions of my couch and turn to him expectantly.
As if this was the silent encouragement he needed, he jumps right in. “So, tell me about this list.”
Even though I know I can trust Theo in every possible meaning of the word, I’m still entirely too self-conscious about this. My eyes fall to my glass as I steel myself to tell him the truth.
“I don’t know how it started. I think it was when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school.” My eyes find him again, and I give him a wry smile. “In other words, a teenage girl with fantastic ideas about what love should be.”
“And so that’s what that is?” he asks as he turns toward me. He hooks his arm over the back of the couch and folds one of his legs elegantly underneath him. The picture of ease. “A checklist for true love?”
I give him a shrug. “Maybe? I don’t know. I think it started off because the boys I dated in high school were utter jerks. And so, I made this list of all the things I wanted my ‘Perfect Man’ to have. And then, for whatever reason, I just continued it.”
Theo watches me thoughtfully. “You had other guys’ names in there, but they didn’t have as many checkmarks as me.”
My cheeks heat with embarrassment. “No, they didn’t.”
“So what does that mean? Am I ‘your perfect guy?’” he asks, twitching his fingers as he makes air quotations.
“It would seem that way,” I say softly.
Theo’s still holding my gaze as he takes a deep breath in, which makes his shoulders rise. He lets it go with awhooshand then looks down at his hands. “I don’t like to be compared toother people. It makes me feel like I’m under a microscope or that every little thing I do is being evaluated.”
“No, Theo, that’s not?—”
“I mean, how would you feel if you found out I had been outwardly comparing you to Lauren?” he asks. I frown at the mention of his ex-girlfriend.
“I’d feel pretty terrible.”
“Right,” he says, his lips curving into a small empathetic smile. “I want whatever we’ve found between us to be genuine.”
“It is,” I argue.
He laughs under his breath and shakes his head. “But when I see my name stacked up against all those other boyfriends, I feel insignificant. And I’d like to think that what we have is significant.Verysignificant. At least, it is to me.”
“It is to me, too,” I say, my voice soft.
He takes another breath. “I may have overreacted about this whole thing this morning, and I apologize for letting my feelings get the better of me.”
Now I shake my head. “You didn’t. You had every right to be upset. I should have told you about it instead of hiding it from you.”
His lips twitch into a smile. “Maybe. But what’s done is done. So now we have to decide how to move forward.”
“Cause we’re not breaking up,” I say, reassured by what he told me in his office earlier today. It’s weird to think that those private moments we had together today would be our last together in that building. After today, Theo will no longer be the CEO of Nexus Realty Group. Or my boss.
He’ll just be Theo.
My Theo.
