I shrug, feeling embarrassed. “I told you I was your biggest fan.” I set our glasses onto the table and round the couch to stand beside him.
He thumbs through the book in his hands and then goes back to the title page… like he’s looking for something.
“None of them are signed,” I say, answering the question I can feel coming. “I didn’t want it if it wasn’t there specifically for me.”
I hang my head.God, that sounded stupid.
His fingers find my chin and tip it up, forcing me to hold his gaze—to get lost in it like I used to.
“Do you want them signed?”
My eyes fill with tears and I nod. The next thing I know, he’s crushing me to him in a fierce embrace, his lips finding mine for a kiss that makes my entire body blaze to life in a way I haven’t felt in averylong time.
He finally slows the kiss and pulls back to kiss my forehead. “Sorry, I… I had no idea that you having my books would…” His words taper off with a low laugh and he rests his mouth at my temple. “Do you have a Sharpie?”
“I can grab one. And you can just sign these three,” I murmur as I reach for the shelf and grab my well-read copies of his other two books—Expedition to ElsewhereandBeyond Elsewhere—and place them in his arms with the first. Then I blush furiously and walk away in search of the Sharpie.
When I come back, he’s sitting on the couch again, the books stacked on the table, while he flips through a photo album I had on the coffee table. It’s the one from our summer vacation to Ireland last year.
You’d think it held the answers to world hunger, the cure to cancer, and the ability to broker world peace with the way he’s looking through it. His eyes move voraciously over each page—taking in every last detail—while his fingers linger over different images before flipping to the next so he can do it all over again.
“If you like that, I think you’ll really like this,” I say, nudging a box that’s also sitting on the table a little closer. I set the marker beside his books, but his focus is on the box.
“What is it?” he asks with boyish excitement.
“Open it up and see.” I try to hide my nerves behind a smile, but he must see them because instead of opening the box he takes my hand in one of his and lifts it to brush against his lips.
When he returns his attention to the box, I release the breath from my lungs. The flaps open and he pulls it closer, his legs splayingopen on either side so he can get a better look. On top is Lennox’s baby book and underneath are photos, albums, keepsakes from those early years with him.
“You can take it with you, if you’d rather look through it on your own. I just thought—”
He interrupts me with another kiss that steals my breath and shoots a zing of desire down my spine. It’s a heated kiss, but the underlying meaning is clear. It’s a thank-you.
He leans back and settles into the couch, his hands moving to the baby book on top, and I can see a tremble in them. He places it on his lap. “Will you look at it with me? You can tell me everything.”
“Everything?”
He smiles. “Everything.”
“I’d love to,” I say, and for the next several hours, I do just that. I tell him everything.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Jamie – Now
Avi and I are dating.
And it’s exhilarating.
Since my schedule’s flexible compared to hers, we fit our dates in whenever she doesn’t have to work… which hasn’t been often. She still feels guilty for the amount of time she’s taken away from the kitchen since she arrived, even if no one else is holding it against her.
If she can escape for a morning hike, we do that and talk about her pregnancy and those early years with Nox. If she has the afternoon off, we grab the ferry and go to lunch at The Bakehouse like we did when we were teenagers—then we kiss on the top deck like we still are. If she only gets a short break, we sit on the swing under the sunshine and I tell her about college, about my parents and how excited they are—now that they’ve gotten over theshock—to meet Nox. We eat dinner with Gran and Grandad each night—or I do. And on nights when Avi can join us, they watch us, sitting close on our side of the booth, with stars in their eyes.
The almost two weeks since our first date have been a blur of writing for me, cooking for Avi, and stolen kisses for us both. After eleven years of not kissing her, of telling myself I never would again, of filling my life with women and kisses that didn’t compare in the slightest, I want to get lost in the feel of her skin and the taste of her lips.
Tonight is her first full night off since Soul Mio and she’s cooking me dinner—not from the T&T kitchen but from her own, and there’s something infinitely more intimate about that.
I press a shaky finger to the doorbell outside her cottage then swipe my palms down my thighs.
