Page 75 of The Hero + Vegas = No Regrets

Heat starts to bubble inside me. I’m on the verge of telling her everything I’ve been trying to hold back. Here she is, sitting in my home. My wife. I should tell her what I want. Because I’ve been pretending to myself that I don’t know but I do. “I can tell you what I want, beyond the hotel, beyond rewiring our family history.”

“I’d love to hear.”

I sit forward in my chair and take her hand. “I want you,” I say simply. “I want us to tear up those papers and never think about divorce. I want us to move in together. Happy to move wherever you want, because my priority is being with you, wherever that is. That doesn’t mean I’m sacrificing what I want to make you happy, it just means I want you and nothing else matters. I want to build a family together. A future. I’m all in. You’re what I want.”

She stills, but there’s no stopping me now.

“I think Ihavebeen going through life prioritizing other people. But I don’t think that was selfless. Stepping up after my dad died got me what I wanted—I kept my family together. Helping entrepreneurs and businesses made me a wealthy man. Money gives control and choices, and for a boy who had neither growing up, it’s really important to me.

“But you? I want you because I feel like you’ve awoken parts of me I didn’t know were asleep. I feel we’re each other’s destiny. Thinking about you makes me happy. Seeing you makes me fucking joyful. Being with you makes me truly happy. I’m in love with you, Sophia Jones, and I want you to stay my wife.”

What I want to happen next is for Sophia to slide into my lap, put her arms around my neck, and tell me she loves me too.

But that isn’t what happens next.

Her gaze drops from mine and hits the table. “That’s…” She pulls in a breath. “That’s not what I was expecting you to say.”

Silence stretches out between us, but I don’t let go of her hand.

“I mean it, Sophia. You said I should focus on what I want, and what I want is you. I want to share my life with you.”

Sophia pulls her hand from mine and rubs her face. “Worth,” she says. Seconds tick by like minutes. I feel paralyzed, rooted to the spot. “A huge part of me wants that too. In fact, sometimes that’s all I want.”

I want to feel hopeful as she speaks, but I don’t let myself, because I can hear thebutechoing in her words.

“But I don’t trust that feeling,” she says eventually. “I don’t trust anything at the moment.”

I sigh. I can’t blame her. What she’s discovered about her dad would cause anyone to have massive trust issues.

“You’re such a good man,” she says. “You deserve a woman who can give you what you want.”

I feel the vibrations from the beat of kettle drums in my chest, like a warning of impending danger. I don’t care what I deserve—I know what Iwant.

“I told you I’ll wait, and I’m happy to. But you asked me what I wanted.”

She looks over my shoulder at god-knows-what. Why doesn’t she just look at me?

Because she can’t.

Fuck.

“I don’t know how long I’ll feel like this, or if I’ll evernotfeel like this,” she says, her gaze finally meeting mine.

“And I’ve said I’ll wait.”

“But you deserve your future, Worth. You deserve certainty.”

“We’ve been together weeks, Sophia. I’m not trying to force your hand. I’m not issuing any ultimatums. I’m doing the exact opposite. I’m telling you I’ll wait for as long as you need.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not fair. I want more for you.”

“More than you? You’re all I want.”

She presses the heels of her hands over her eyes. “This is going to get worse rather than better. I don’t know who I am if I’m not the daughter of a perfect couple from Cincinnati. I don’t know what that means for me. I have a nonexistent relationship with my father at the moment, and a tenuous one with my mother. I have shit to deal with. It’s shit that stinks. And stains.”

Before I can tell her that I can put up with it all, that I want to hold her hand through the whole thing, she continues.

“I have to do this myself. I know you’re going to say you’ll wait or help me through it…” She shakes her head. “But honestly, Worth, we’ve been together weeks, like you said, and if I’m going to commit the rest of my life to someone, I want to know that I’m with them because I want to build a life and a future. I want to feel sure that I want to create a family with them—all the things you said. And if I’m being honest with myself, at the moment, I’m worried I’d be with you because I was afraid to do this by myself.”

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