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Someone cleared their throat behind me. I spun around to see Tommy standing there by himself in a pair of jeans and a simple black T-shirt. The dressed-down Tommy was my favorite.
My heart had slowed down to a dangerous rhythm in my chest as I stared at the man that I had fallen in love with. The man that had ripped my heart out and crushed it, shredded it into a million pieces, unable to be repaired.
Or so I thought.
Because the way he was looking at me right then felt like it was slowly mending it back together, piece by piece. It was the same way he had looked at me the first time I had met him.
“Maggie.” My name came out of Tommy’s mouth like a whisper, like he was afraid if he spoke it too loudly, I would break again right in front of him and float off in the breeze.
“What are you doing?” I breathed.
“I need to say something.” He held up a hand to try to silence me, but I was beginning to question if I really did have the strength to stand here and listen to whatever it was that he had to say. What if this was some cruel way of saying goodbye?
“I have work to do though, and I should really go.” At this point I had put the pieces together that I did not in fact have work to do and I really didn’t have anywhere to go. But my heart was now beating at a speed that terrified me, and I thought anywhere but here would be a safer option.
“Maggie, will you shut up for one second?” Tommy raised his voice slightly, silencing me in one fell swoop. Even though the pain inside my heart that had started the night I saw Tommy through the window of his house with Sutton was making it unbearable to stand there in front of him, the look on his face kept me rooted in place. He looked like he was hurting as badly as I was.
“When we first met, I thought you were ridiculous.” Okay, definitely not where I thought this was going. “You were this shy girl, too afraid to put yourself out in the world because you were too frightened the world would hurt you even more than it already had. So you shut yourself off from everyone and refused to show anyone how special you are.”
Okay, this is better.
“But then you, quite frankly, upended my life by ruining everything I thought I had built the night we left that club.”
And back to ground zero.
I started to speak, but he shook his head, taking a step closer to me.
“You’re frustrating, a perfectionist, never on time, and quite particular about your pizza. Your hair is always on everything, and you never seem to go anywhere without your camera. You cackle when you laugh like a crazy person and insist on watching romance movies instead of anything else. But I love you despite all of those things.”
With each word, Tommy took a step closer to me. My heart was beating so fast that I was sure I was going to need the defibrillator in the dugout if he didn’t stop soon. There was a part of me that didn’t want to believe what he was saying or acknowledge the way he was looking at me as my mind replayed the last time I had seen him, hugging Sutton.
“I love the way you eat your pizza because it’s ridiculous. I love watching the way you melt apart at the same movie scene you’ve watched a million times. I love the way your eyes are always dissecting a moment like you are trying to figure out the best way to capture it in a picture. And I love that when anything good happens to me, I look for you, because I want to share all of those moments with you. I love you, Maggie Redford.”
My heart felt like it may very well burst from my chest and land on the ground between us. Love? Did he just say he loved me? I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry, scream, or laugh.
“What about the contract?”
“I will be damned if some contract gets in the way of what I feel for you.”
He took a step closer.
“What about Sutton?”
Realization crossed Tommy’s face as he put the pieces of our timeline together. His grip loosened on my hands. I thought for sure he realized that I had caught him in the act and that none of those things he had said about me would really mean anything, but then I felt his hand slip under my chin and lift my eyes to his.
“She was there to try to win me back.” My heart sank as he confirmed exactly what I hoped wasn’t true. “But I told her she had to leave, Maggie.”
What?
“I told her that the guy she had dated didn’t exist anymore. I’d stopped being that guy over a year ago, but the fact that you and I were all over social media made her think otherwise. I told her that I had met someone that felt like home to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
But part of me did. It was soaring up within me. It was hoping. That feeling felt foreign. I hadn’t hoped for something this much since that night I had hoped Luke wouldn’t leave me. That night, I had learned that hoping was dangerous. But Tommy had taught me that daring to hope was the bravest thing a person could do.
“I’m trying to tell you that I want to take you on a date where there aren’t any cameras unless it’s a camera in your hands. I want to take you on a date and kiss you good night at your door with so much passion that there’s no question about my intentions. And I want to tell you how much I love you every goddamn day until you don’t doubt it.”
“Can I ask you something?” I said after he was silent for a moment.
