Act Like You Love Me (Jessica) novel Chapter 51

Chapter 51

Chapter 51

Jessica’s POV

He slowly raised his eyes to look at me, the journal still open in his hands, pages fluttering slightly in the sea breeze sneaking through the cracked balcony door.

The room felt smaller, the ship’s gentle rock suddenly more pronounced, like the world was tilting under us.

I felt frozen. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even reach out to snatch the journal away.

“You really love me, Jess.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a discovery-a quiet, devastating realization that hung between us in the dim light of the cabin.

Shame flooded me, hot and prickly, starting at my neck and rushing up to my cheeks. I looked down at my lap, unable to meet his eyes.

What was he thinking? Pity? Amusement? God, I wanted to sink through the deck and into the ocean below.

I felt exposed, as if he’d just peeled back my skin to look at the raw nerves underneath.

All those nights I’d spent carefully constructing a wall of sarcasm and indifference between us had just been leveled by a single leather-bound book.

“You… you weren’t supposed to see that,” I muttered, my voice thick and uneven. I tried to pull the journal away, but my hands were shaking.

“It’s an invasion of privacy, Aaron. You can’t just… you can’t just read someone’s soul without permission.” I whispered, and looked away from him.

He didn’t answer. The silence stretched out, long and suffocating, until I convinced myself he’d walked away.

I thought maybe he was disgusted, or worse, that he was going to laugh. But when I finally risked a glance upward, he wasn’t

gone.

He was dangerously close.

He had moved with the silent grace of a predator, kneeling on the edge of the mattress so he was looming over me.

The scent of him clouded my senses-a sophisticated bite of pineapple and bergamot grounded by a smoky, expensive trail of oakmoss and birch.

It smelled of power and cold nights, the kind of fragrance that lingered on his skin long after he’d stepped off the ice. It felt intoxicating, and right now, completely overwhelming.

“Aaron…” I started, but his thumb brushed across my lower lip, effectively stealing the air from my lungs. My voice died in my throat.

“Why, Jess?” he asked, his voice a low, gravelly vibration. “I was never a good person to you.”

The question made my head spin. I’d spent so long fighting the feeling that I’d never actually sat down to analyze the why of

Why did my heart beat faster when he entered a room? Why did my world seem to tilt on its axis every time he looked at me? Why, after everything, was he the only person who made me feel truly seen?

I wanted to lie. I wanted to throw a barbed comment at him and run to the balcony. But there was no point. He had read the

13:16 Mon, Jan 12

Chapter 51

ink.

He had seen the truth I’d hidden even from myself.

“I don’t know,” I whispered, the words tumbling out before I could filter them. “I have no idea, Aaron. I just do. I just love you. My heart beats for you-just you. It’s annoying and it’s exhausting and I’ve tried to make it stop, but it won’t

As the confession left my lips, the wild thrumming in my chest reached a fever pitch. But for the first time, the fear started to recede.

I was tired of being a coward. I was tired of pretending that I wasn’t completely and utterly his. It wasn’t like it was a secret,

anyway.

I was pretty sure my eyes had been screaming it for years, even when my mouth was saying something else.

“I was cruel,” he mumbled. He leaned in until our foreheads were resting against each other, his breath warm against my

skin.

“I know,” I breathed back.

“I hurt you,” he continued, his voice dropping an octave as he leaned further, his weight pressing me back into the pillows until I was lying flat on the bed and he was hovering above me.

“I know.”

“Jess,” he breathed, my name sounding like a prayer and a confession all at once. I didn’t answer.

I just stared into those beautiful, dark brown eyes. In the shadows of the room, they flashed with something raw-a mix of guilt and a regret so deep it made my heart ache for him..

“I don’t deserve you.”

His voice was heavy with it. He looked like a man standing at the edge of a cliff, realizing exactly what he had to lose.

Technically, he was correct. Objectively speaking, Aaron Tyrone was an arrogant, brooding, sometimes-selfish man who had put me through the wringer.

He didn’t deserve my loyalty, and he certainly didn’t deserve my heart. But my crazy, stubborn heart didn’t care about “deserving.”

“You don’t, asshole,” I mumbled, a slight frown tugging at my mouth. “But here we are.”

A small, genuine chuckle broke through the tension in his chest. It was a beautiful sound.

Then, the humor faded, replaced by a deep, heavy silence. We just stared at each other, our souls bared in that soulful

moment.

His

eyes

held mine, speaking volumes without words: regret for the past, hope for whatever came next, a depth of feeling that mirrored my own.

Time stretched, the ship’s hum fading, the world outside irrelevant. It was just us, connected in a way that felt timeless, inevitable.

Then he leaned in and kissed me.

It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was raw and desperate, the kind of kiss that felt like it had been years in the making. It tasted of salt and longing, of all the things we hadn’t said and all the ways we’d broken each other.

My hands found their way into his hair, pulling him closer, needing to feel the weight of him against me to know this was

13:16 Mon, Jan 12.

Chapter 51

real.

His hands were everywhere-tracing the curve of my waist, the line of my throat-as he began to slowly, methodically undress me.

The air of the room felt cold against my skin, but where he touched me, I was on fire.

He moved with a quiet intensity, his eyes never leaving mine for more than a second, as if he were afraid I’d vanish if he blinked.

59

When his fingers reached the hem of my pajama pants, a small, involuntary whimper escaped my throat. It wasn’t a protest -it was the sound of a woman who was finally, completely overwhelmed.

He stopped. Just a fraction of an inch. His hands stilled, and he looked up at me, his eyes searching mine for any sign of doubt.

“Jess?”

The way he said my name-with such careful, fragile hesitation-hurt more than his cruelty ever had.

He was giving me the power to stop him. He was waiting for me to tell him if this was what I wanted.

My heart raced, but so did my mind-was I ready? For this, for him, for everything it meant?

I reached up, my fingers brushing the hair back from his forehead, and pulled his face back down to mine..

“Don’t you dare stop,” I whispered against his lips.

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13:16 Mon, Jan 12