His Naughty Lessons
Chapter 119: A Leap of Faith

Chapter 119: A Leap of Faith

** Eli **

Harper was supposed to be the inexperienced one. Or so she claimed. But as Eli followed her gaze to their interlaced fingers, he had a feeling that she understood their current situation way better than him ... and certainly knew how to handle it way better than him.

"I want you to know two things." She brushed her thumb softly against his. "First, I never judged you for what you told me on Saturday, and I never will. We made it a clear rule at the beginning that our weekend meetings didn’t count as dating, so having dinner with Vanessa doesn’t make you the same as your father. In fact, if there’s anyone you feel like you might have ’cheated on’, it should probably be her instead of me, since she appears to be under the impression that you were officially seeing each other."

Eli flinched so hard at her words that his fingers twitched.

"Whatever it is between you two, I trust you to figure it out, and you don’t owe me any explanations. At least not at this point." She squeezed his hand. "Which leads to the second and more important point I need to make — I want to drop those rules we set at the beginning. All of them. I want to try something different ... something new."

... She was serious about this, then. Did she realize the gravity of what she was saying?

And did this mean that she ... actually shared the same kind of feelings for him as he had for her?

Out of all the possible outcomes Eli had imagined for this conversation, this wasn’t one of them. And surprisingly, after weeks of fantasizing such a moment, ecstatic excitement was not on the forefront of his mind either. Instead, he felt a foreign mix of emotions swelling inside him. It was surreal to believe that this was even happening. Humbling, to see that anyone could still have so much faith and trust in him despite all the shitshow he made for himself in the past few days. And ... terrifying, to think about the weight of that misplaced trust.

He stared at her, dazed, just as she looked back at him and silently waited for his answer. The slanted light from the setting sun fell softly over her slender figure, casting a golden halo over her wet hair and bare shoulders. She looked like an angel, one who gave him so much blessing that he didn’t deserve.

It was a long moment before Eli finally managed to pull his thoughts together. "Do you know what you’re asking for, Harper?" He reminded himself one more time of the right thing to say, even though it wasn’t what he wanted. "I can’t make any promises ... And you shouldn’t believe me even if I do. Someday, you might just turn out to be the next person to want to slap me in the face in front of a whole stadium audience."

He meant that as a genuine warning. But instead, it put a smile on Harper’s face. "I was hoping that I come off a bit more civilized than that," she chuckled. "But either way ... Do tell me about these other women who wanted to slap you in the face in front of a whole stadium audience. Did you warn them over and over again at the very beginning that you’re not the husband material they’re looking for? Were you so worried about hurting their feelings that you kept pushing them away, to the point that you were even afraid to talk to them?"

"..."

When he failed to come up with a counter argument, she smiled again. "I’m not going to be the next one of them, because you care about me."

... Talk about the weight of that misplaced trust. "Of course I care about you." The words came out almost reflectively. "You are family to me, a thousand times more so than my real one."

That was precisely the reason why he had torn himself to pieces over the past weeks. That was precisely the reason why he kept denying all those signs telling him he was messing this up. He couldn’t risk it — even if he could somehow pull off a relationship miracle for once, it wouldn’t be long before she realized that he was far from the family guy she truly wanted. What then, when they inevitably break up in the end? Would she disappear from his life again just like those past four years when he was on the west coast?

Maybe she understood his fear, because her gaze softened at his admittance. The hand that was holding his let go, landing gently on his forearm. "I’m thankful for that," she said. "But would it sound greedy if I say I want to be more?"

The lingering caress of her hand and the longing in her voice almost did him in. A rush of warmth flooded his body, coursing through all the places it shouldn’t be going. Oh how tempting it was to give her exactly what she wanted right then. How tempting it was to just stop this stupid conversation right there, to crush his lips onto hers instead and—

She was the one who did it for him. A slide of her hand, bringing the warmth of her palm to the back of his nape. A quiet stir of the water against his feet as she shifted, leaning into him. A soft press of her lips onto his, light and almost careful, a silent question that didn’t need to be put into words.

It wasn’t a sensual kiss like the ones they typically shared. More like a shy first kiss that a high school teenager would blush for. But at that moment, Eli felt like a high school teenager. The bare brush of lips sent his heart slamming to a stop, and his mind went blank with nothing except one thought left:

Today wasn’t Saturday. This was not one of their usual "practice sessions", not anymore.

"Eli," she breathed, the words a fluttering tickle against his mouth. "Take a leap of faith with me."