“I’m glad you had that. Back to Jordan.”
“I’m glad I did too. One day, a woman I worked with wanted to start an office weight loss group. Just felt if she weren’t doing it alone she’d stick to it. I thought, why not? It’d be nice to be a part of a group and if I could lose a few pounds maybe it’d kick-start something. So we were a support for each other, we walked on our lunches to start. Chatted about healthier food. In two weeks I’d dropped six pounds and thought, holy cow, I can do this, it wasn’t hard.”
“Jordan didn’t like you doing that?”
“He didn’t care. It’s not that it interfered with our lives. Not at first. I got up in the morning and walked, then it turned to running. My food choices were getting better. We’d still go out, but I’d get something healthier than before. I don’t think I changed that much, but Jordan said I was. That I wasn’t the woman he’d been dating for years.”
He noticed the guy said nothing about love. “How so?”
“I don’t know. I still can’t really pinpoint anything other than I was more confident in the way I carried myself. I took more notice of my appearance. I was happier. It’s hard not to be when you like what you see in the mirror. He wanted me to decide. Him or continuing on my journey. I’d only lost like fifteen pounds and it’d slowed after four months. I knew I had more in me, and I said anyone who told me I had to choose between health and me bettering myself or them... well, you can see what I decided.”
“Good for you,” he said. Made him want to track this dick down and tell him how to treat a lady.
But if the guy had treated Nora well, she’d still be in Vermont and not half lying across his chest on the couch. Where he wanted her to stay... indefinitely.
“He was hurt. I was hurt. But I know it was the right decision. I told myself I was coming first. I deserved that in my life. Slowly I lost the rest of my weight by buckling down. I wasn’t looking at the scale, but rather how I felt and fit in my clothes. It didn’t happen overnight, but one day I was out and someone I hadn’t seen since high school was stunned at my transformation. They’d said it wasn’t just physical either, it was the way I was smiling and standing up straighter. Lots of things. I’d changed jobs again, and my father was beating me down on that like he always did.”
“Stop,” he said. “No more talk about you being beat down. I mean it. Sounds to me as if you’ve conquered so much. Be proud. I know I am of you.”
She turned her head, her lips in an adorable pout that he had to lean down and kiss. “Awww, that’s the sweetest thing.”
“I’m being sincere.”
“I know. It just hurt when Jordan told me it wasn’t just my body changing but me as a person. I don’t think I changed who Iwas at the core, but I found an inner strength I never knew I had. Has it gotten me in trouble? Considering I had a one-night stand being someone I’m not normally, that could be a yes.”
“There was no trouble there,” he said. “You heard my mother. It’s fate. If you didn’t try to be someone you weren’t, I wouldn’t have noticed you in the bar. And I’m not talking about your looks because you’ve brought it up before. I’m talking about how you carry yourself. That is more attractive to me than your ass. Though, I’m not complaining about that either.”
“You’re being silly,” she said, laughing.
“And serious. I’ll be honest and say I wouldn’t have gotten to know the old you. But I don’t think the new you has lost the old you. It’s still there. It’s who you are, but you’ve honed in on so much more that your core is shining.”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of it that way. No one has said it.”
“I’m saying it. It’s there. For me to see, you to see. Your core was bright that night. If I got up and walked away, you would have shrugged it off and gone on with your night.”
“And you’re not used to that,” she said, pinching his arm.
“I’m not, but it’s happened. I’ve become very selective in my life with women. For several reasons.”
“And you’re going to share that with me?”
“I am,” he said. Because he knew the woman on his couch was the one he was in love with. They’d get no further if he couldn’t convince her he was all in.
She said she was strong, and maybe she believed it most days, but he knew better. Beneath that quiet confidence lived the same doubts she tried so hard to bury.
If she was ever going to believe in them, inthis, it had to start with him.
The problem was, he’d never been the first to say it before. Words like that had always been a reaction. An echo, not a confession.
But this was different.Shewas different.
What he felt for Nora wasn’t habit or comfort. It was the breath that woke him every morning and the thought that lingered when he closed his eyes at night.
The thing he didn’t just want to say, it was the thing heneededto say.
28
PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE
