Chapter 20: The Forty-Eight Hours

They stood there.

Foreheads pressed together. Tears mixing. The Eiffel Tower glittering behind them like a benediction.

Paris spread below them, indifferent to the drama of two people trying to navigate the distance between love and pride.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” Martina said finally, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Five years is a long time to be invisible.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t know if I can trust that this isn’t just you being competitive with Marcus. That you won’t wake up in a month and realize you were just caught up in the chase.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t know if I’m strong enough to risk my heart again when you’ve already broken it so completely without even knowing you were doing it.”

“I know,” Jordan said.

He kissed her forehead. Her cheeks. Her trembling lips.

“I know all of that.”

“And I’m not asking you to decide tonight. I’m just asking you to let me try.”

“Let me spend the next thirty-six hours showing you what five years should have looked like. Let me ask you about books and dreams and hopes.”

“Let me see you. Really see you. The way I should have been seeing you all along.”

Martina pulled back slightly, searching his face.

“And if I still choose Marcus on Sunday?”

Jordan forced himself to meet her eyes.

Even though the question felt like a knife to the chest.

“Then I’ll let you go. I’ll write you the best reference letter anyone has ever written. I’ll tell Marcus Ashford he’s the luckiest man alive.”

“And I’ll spend the rest of my life knowing I had everything I ever wanted and was too stupid to appreciate it.”

She studied him for a long moment.

Then nodded slowly.

“Thirty-six hours.”

“And Jordan?”

“Yes?”

“Ask me something. Something real. Something you should have asked five years ago.”

Jordan thought about all the questions he’d never asked.

All the moments he’d missed.

All the ways he’d failed her.

“What do you dream about?” he asked finally.

“Not career dreams. Personal dreams. The kind you think about at 3:00 AM when you can’t sleep. What does Martina Hayes want out of life?”

She smiled.

Sad and soft and devastating.

“I dream about being someone’s first choice.”

“Not their convenient choice or their practical choice or their competitive choice. Their first choice.”

“The person they think about when they wake up. The person they rush home to at night. The person whose happiness matters more than their pride.”

“I want to be that person for you,” Jordan said.

“I want to be worthy of being that person for you.”

“Then prove it,” Martina whispered.

“You have thirty-six hours.”

And there, on a balcony overlooking Paris, with the taste of her tears still on his lips and the weight of five wasted years heavy on his shoulders, Jordan Blackwell made a silent promise.

He would prove it.

Or he would let her go.

Because loving Martina Hayes meant finally learning that some things were more important than winning.

Even if it killed him.

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