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“I think maybe you are it for me. I think …” He stops to lick his lips as he stares down at me. “I think this must be what real love feels like. And I know you probably don’t?—”
“Dammit, Blake. I do love you,” I blurt out. “I triedsohard not to fall for you, I did. But I couldn’t help it, and I want to be angry with you, but I can’t manage that either. Because I’m too far gone, and everything you do and say makes it impossible to feel any other way about you.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me, though he’s smiling. “Reed, did you really just interrupt my heartfelt speech so you could one-up me and say you love me first?”
I bite my lip and shrug shyly. “Maybe. What are you gonna do about it?”
He scoffs. “I’m going to one-up you back,” he declares, “and tell you I love you better.”
My heart and lungs are having to work overtime now. “I’d like to hear you try,” I barely get out.
He leans in for a short kiss. “Loren, it’s been months since I’ve been able to think about anything but you. You’re on my mind all day, and I can’t wait to come home to you every afternoon before I dream about you all night. So, yeah, I’m pretty sure that means I’m in love with you, too.”
“Oh,” I reply. “That’s?—”
He holds a hand up. “I’m not done. Did it sound like I was done?”
I can’t help but smile when he grins at me. “By all means, continue.”
“Thank you. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. I love you for being my best friend,” he starts again, adding another kiss. “I love you because you’re already an amazing mother to our children.” The next kiss is a second longer, and I’m tempted to grab his face and hold him there. “I love you for never backing down from an argument. I love you for teaching me that Idohave the capacity to love someone. I love you for being the sexiest, smartest, funniest woman I’ve ever known.”
I sigh when he pulls away from the kiss that follows, which was much less chaste than the first few.
“But not just because you are all of those things to me, Lo. Mostly, I love you just …because.”
“Wow,” I say through the tears I should have seen coming. “I think you won.”
He laughs softly and brings his hand up to swipe the moisture from my cheek. “I didn’t realize how relieved I’d feel after I finally got that out.”
“You mean you’ve been feeling this way for a while?”
He nods softly. “I’m sorry it took so much time for me to figure it out and to work up the courage to tell you, but I don’t see how I could evernotfeel this way about you.”
“And before, when you said I might beit, you meant …”
“I think you know exactly what I meant,” he replies, his deep voice making me shiver before he closes in the distance again. He kisses me slowly and tenderly for a minute, then pulls away to whisper, “I love you, Agnes.”
“I love you too, Gus-Gus,” I return. “But do we?—”
“We can decide what the rest of our lives will look like later. Let’s just enjoy this for now.”
“Okay,” I agree, sliding my hand down his bare chest. “But I was actually going to ask if we could throw out the ground rules for good, because I’m absolutely dying to make out with you and maybe even grope your spicy abs for a bit.”
He grins so widely that it reaches his eyes this time. “To hell with the ground rules,” he proclaims, pulling me in again.
CHAPTER 35
Blake
THREE YEARS AGO
“Good thingour teachers weren’t this hot back when we were in high school,” I lean in and say over Loren’s shoulder after letting myself into the Camellia High teachers’ lounge. “I’d never have graduated second in the class with a distraction like you. Then again, maybe that’s how you managed to secure that valedictorian spot.”
She whips her head around, curling her upper lip in distaste as soon as she recognizes me. “What areyoudoing here?”
I pull back and cross my arms over my chest. “I work here. Didn’t anyone tell you?”
“Blake Bourgeois, teaching?” she asks, cocking an eyebrow.
