“What if you hate it?”
“I won’t.”
“But what if you do? What if you realize…”
“Leigh.” I stopped dancing, cupping her face in my hands. “I could live anywhere. In a mansion or a shack, in the city or the middle of nowhere. As long as I’m with you, I’m home. That’s what you need to understand. You’re my home. Not a place. You.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too. Forever.”
We started dancing again, and I held her closer this time, feeling the weight of what I was about to do, the magnitude of the change I was making.
But for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid.
I was choosing this. Choosing her. Choosing us.
And that made all the difference.
The song ended, and another one started, something more upbeat.
“Go back to work,” I said, kissing her forehead. “Capture the rest of this night. I’ll still be here when you’re done.”
“Promise?”
“Always.”
She squeezed my hand once more, then grabbed her camera and disappeared into the crowd, back to documenting other people’s love stories.
But tomorrow, we’d start writing our own.
A fresh beginning. Our own happily ever after.
Chapter 31
DEX
The drive to Blue Point Bay took just under four hours.
Four hours of Leigh pointing out landmarks, telling me stories about the area, her excitement building the closer we got. Four hours of holding her hand across the console, feeling the weight of what I was about to see.
Her world. Her life. The place she’d built for herself.
“There,” she said, pointing ahead as we crested a hill. “That’s Blue Point Bay.”
I looked, and my breath caught.
The town spread out below us, nestled against the coast. White buildings with blue shutters, a main street visible from here, and beyond it all—the ocean. Vast and blue and endless.
It was beautiful.
“What do you think?” Leigh asked, her voice nervous.
“I think it’s perfect.”
She smiled, relieved. “Wait until you see the lighthouse.”
We drove down into town, and I took it all in. The cute shops lining Main Street. The coffee shop with outdoor seating. The bookstore with a hand-painted sign. People walking dogs, couples holding hands, kids on bikes.
