Wild Billionaire Romance - Chapter 73: Chapter 73

MEREDITH
This motherfucker.
I thought I’d get a little reprieve from all his potent masculinity during the flight, but of course not.
Josef took the aisle seat beside me. He actually squeezed his big ass frame into the admittedly large seat for a normal sized person, but just a touch too small for him, right beside me.
I bit back my moan as the entire side of his hard, warm body pressed into mine.
“Seat belt.”
“What?” I asked dumbly.
“Put your seat belt on, Little Red,” he repeated, taking the thing from my useless hand, and clipping it in place.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked, finding my nerve.
“About your seat belt? Absolutely. Safety first,” he repeated, turning his attention to his cell phone.
“No, you ass. I mean, are you sure about marrying me?”
He just stared at me until I started fidgeting.
This wasn’t me. I wasn’t the sort of woman who looked down when in the company of men.
I was confident. I was a badass. In my line of work, I had to be.
Never one to back down, I faced down angry husbands and boyfriends at St. Elizabeth’s all the time.
My job as an intake counselor meant I had to deal with the brunt of them and really, doing that was nothing compared to having to ask this man if he was serious about this.
“Isn’t there something else I could do to save those people’s jobs besides marrying you?” I whispered, feeling like an idiot.
Flashes of the past scattered through my frazzled brain. I remembered the things we’d done once upon a time, and it made me want to weep.
How could he sit there so unaffected?
It had all been so new and fresh. Scary, too. He was the first man I had ever wanted physically and emotionally. Just being near him made my pulse race and my entire body tremble in my seat.
“Josef?” I said his name, but it was a question. A repeat of what I’d already asked him.
I hated how fragile I sounded. But that was what he reduced me to. A shivering shadow of myself trapped somewhere between nightmares and dreams. Our past and our future.
Josef wasn’t like the men who came to St. Elizabeth’s pounding on the door because their wives and girlfriends had left, refusing to be their doormats anymore. Those men I could face. Those men I could argue with.
No, Josef was not some abusive, angry ex. But I thought maybe he was worse.
He was my first love. The man who broke my heart. And I knew if I did this, if I married him, I would give him access to that part of me all over again.
This was madness. There had to be another way—but my hopes were dashed when he pressed his finger against my chin and lifted my face, so I was forced to meet his gaze.
“No.”
That was all he said. That one syllable. And it was so final.
I turned my head towards the open window, taking in the evening sun as we taxied on the runway. I needed to put a name to what I was feeling, and I tried. I really did. But what I found was not exactly reassuring.
I should have been angry or outraged at Josef’s bland announcement that I would marry him if I wanted to save Gray Corps employees’ jobs.
But I felt none of that.
Nope.
My traitorous heart felt something that shouldn’t even be in the vicinity of my emotions when it came to this man.
Relief.
I felt relief.