“I hear you,” he said at last, his voice barely above a whisper. “I won’t pretend I know what that’s like. I don’t. I grew up in a stable house, with two parents who came to every school concert and every spelling bee. I went to college, made a safe choice, then left it all when I realized being happy mattered more than being practical. But you?” He paused, shaking his head like he couldn’t quite believe I was standing in front of him. “You made something out of nothing. You built yourself from scraps and still turned into someone beautiful and strong and wildly good.”
My eyes welled with tears again.
“That’s what I love about you, Brielle,” he said, his voice catching. “Not perfection. Not the strength even. But the way you keep going when it would be so easy to stop. You still want. You still hope.”
I let out a shaky breath.
“That’s what I love about you.”
twenty-nine
“Love?”
He chuckled. “Mmhmm.” He didn’t deny the word. He only continued, “I will do whatever I can to make sure that Gina doesn’t get angry, Brielle. But it sounds to me that you need to make your own choice even if it’s hard. You deserve to have a life that is perfect for you. Even if it makes things hard sometimes."
His soft brown eyes never left mine. “And we need to have fun while making those choices.”
And the last time I’d had fun was with him. On our first not-date. At the gift-wrapping table at the school fundraiser. Watching new television shows. Every time I was with him.
Once, I had been brave and maybe a little stupid to immediately go after what I wanted just a few years ago. Was I going to be brave again?
Brave enough for the both of us?
“Tell me, Brielle. Tell me what we are going to do. Because right now, all I want to do is kiss you and tell you that I love you again because it feels like the best thing I’ve ever said.”
I wanted him to do that too.
Josh went on. “I want to lay you down on this bed and take away any uncertain, scared thoughts you have and tell youeverything is going to be all right. I’m going to make sure of it, and these days, I’ve been keeping my promises. I’m also trying not to live with regrets, and I have a feeling that if you walk away again, Brielle, losing you will be the biggest regret of my life.”
“What if Gina is angry? What if …”
“She’ll get over it,” he said. “Gina says she holds grudges, but really, we both know she has a limited attention span for it.”
She also had a soft heart. I mean, even the fact that we had somehow moved in together, like our plans from when we had been kids, said something, didn’t it? On and off phone calls and checking in over the years, and yet still … here we were. I had to have faith maybe she would understand. Maybe it would all end up okay, and if it didn’t …
I thought losing Josh would be the biggest mistake I’d ever made, and I felt like I had been making a whole lot of those in the past year as I figured my life out on my own. And if this was another one?
So be it.
“I don’t want to lose you either, Josh,” I said. “Do you promise …”
“I promise.”
I sniffed a laugh. “You haven’t even heard what I was going to say.”
“I don’t care. My heart is going to give out at this rate, and I know whatever you say, I’ll want it back tenfold. You want me to promise to take care of you? Done. You want me to promise that this isn’t some phase or fun for me again? Double done. You want me to promise to love you? I have a good feeling that is already ingrained in stone, considering I’ve already been doing that for a long time now. Longer than I want to admit. But it’s time for both of us to do things for us. I promise I’ll help you with that too. Whether it is cooking or writing or whatever. I promise to be there for you. Do you promise not to give up on me?”
I took a deep breath, and it hung between us before I smiled. “I promise.”
Still holding my face, Josh brushed his lips over mine in a breath before they pressed down hard against mine.
Whatever kiss we’d had back at the apartment had nothing on this one. It was pure and strong, and I needed everything it gave me.
Because it made me know one thing.
This was real. And Josh and me?
The way he gripped on to me, hands smoothing down my body, reaching for the bottom of my sweater, told me he was on the exact same page as I was now. There was nothing to hold back. There was no reason to.
