Once we’re in the cool of the lobby, he bursts out laughing. “Boy, what a display!” he says, shaking his head. “I’ll give you two a moment. That was incredible. My God.”
He walks away, hands in his pockets, probably wondering how he lucked into a client like me.
Quinn is still catching her breath, but she instantly reaches for my hand and squeezes it. Her eyes are a mixture of confusion and relief and love and every other possible emotion under the sun.
She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again. Her green eyes narrow.
“I don’t know what to call you, now that—” She gives a little shrug.
I do. I know.
“My name is Elijah Pierce,” I say, releasing her hand, stepping back, and extending my right hand as if we’re just meeting. “It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you.”
Quinn takes my hand with a smile and shakes with the same firm confidence as the first time we shook hands, six weeks and a million years ago in her office. “Quinn Campbell,” she answers. “Your girlfriend. If you’ll have me.”
I pull her into my arms and hug her again, kissing the smooth skin of her cheek, slightly dewy from sprinting up to the building. “I think the better question is, will you have me? I know I’m not the man you thought you knew.”
“Aren’t you?” she says, pulling back and searching my eyes, her gaze intense. “I’m not sure that’s true, Chr—Elijah,” she says, correcting herself at the last moment. “Maybe you played a part sometimes, like when I saw you at the Swan, but I’ve seen the real you, too. Very real, if you know what I mean.” Quinn’s eyes are sparkling, and I get flashes of all the time we’ve spent in bed together. My cock hardens, pressing against my zipper. “You know,” she continues, her voice thoughtful. “There could be a part of you—the real you—who likes to be the center of attention. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”
Quinn’s words hit me like a sucker punch delivered by a choir of angels.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
It’s fucking true.
I can enjoy the company of my friends and close down the Swan and be the kind of guy who wants to settle down with a woman, keeping her close to me for the rest of my life.
Whether my friends will still want to see me is a question that remains to be answered.
I scoop her up into my arms and kiss her on the cheek again, then take her by the shoulders and look deeply into those glinting green eyes. “You’re a wonder, Quinn. A damn wonder.”
She grins up at me. After a moment, though, her face turns serious.
“Eli—can I call you Eli?”
“You can call me whatever you want.”
“Have you talked to your father yet?”
The ride up to my father’s floor seems endless, but Quinn holds my hand tightly in hers all the way up, standing by my side in comfortable silence.
My heart pounds.
My father will have heard the news by now, if he didn’t see it being broadcast live. He and his staff don’t miss much.
So I’m not surprised when his secretary stares up at me from her seat, then inclines her head toward the door.
I take both Quinn’s hands in mine outside the entrance to his office and kiss her gently.
“I’ll wait out here,” she says softly, then gives me an encouraging smile.
As I go into my father’s office, I hear his secretary already remembering her manners. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
Quinn’s reply is cut off as I close the door behind me.
It takes an enormous effort to look up from my shoes and into my father’s eyes.
When I do, I get the shock of a lifetime.
He doesn’t look angry.
In fact, he’s smiling at me, with tears in his eyes.
“Dad?” I say, my voice choked.
He gets up from behind his desk, crosses the space between us, and enfolds me in his arms.
“Eli,” he says softly, and I hug him back. “You’ve returned.”
“What?” I say, pulling back so I can look into his eyes. “You knew it was me all along?”
He laughs, stepping back to put a little breathing room between us. “I was there the moment you were born, Elijah. Did you think I would forget which one of my sons was which?”
I am overwhelmed with confusion. “But why did you—”
“Let this little game of yours go on so long?” He shakes his head. “I never expected it to last a decade, for one. There were many times I thought I might—I thought I might say something, give myself away, but every time, I held back.”
“Why?”
He puts a hand to his mouth and thinks for a moment before he answers. “Losing a child was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” he says, his voice low and soft. “I can’t imagine what it was like to lose an identical twin. Your grief must have been—it must have been overpowering.
“At first I thought it was something you’d snap out of, but as the months went by and became years, it just seemed like something you needed to do.”
My mouth drops open. The lengths my father has gone to to indulge me in this are beyond what anyone could expect from any father.