Host a rager.
Talk to Ruby.
Another laugh tumbles out of me. “A rager, huh?”
“I was eighteen. I had my priorities straight.”
Still grinning, I ask, “What did you have to tell me?”
“Oh, you know.” Penn lifts a shoulder. “Everything?”
His smile is soft. Mine won’t go away. We hold each other’s stares, and something tender and golden warms me from the inside out.
I take a deep breath, gathering my nerve.
“Penn,” I start. “We’ve been playing games with each other for a long time. Sometimes that was easier for me than facing reality, because the reality is…I’m in love with you.” His breath hitches, and I say it again. It feels so good to say it. “I love you, Penn. For real. It terrifies me to admit that, but it’s much more terrifying to think of a world where I don’t at least try, because I don’t want to be so afraid anymore, or so careful. I don’t want to be so scared of taking risks that I lose out on what really matters to me. Or who.”
Penn nods, his eyes crinkled at the sides, and I can tell he’sseeing it, too: me and him, playing like a movie in his mind. A three-second flash of every us we’ve ever been.
He takes my hands and swallows hard, his voice thick when he says, “You love me, huh? Like, capital-Llove?”
“Eh.” I shrug. “I was thinking more likel-u-v.”
Penn laughs. He brings my hands to the back of his neck and grips my waist, tugging me closer. “Glad we cleared that up,” he says. His eyes dart between mine. “I should’ve told you how I feel about you forever ago. I just wasn’t ready.”
I knit my fingers in his hair, overwhelmed. “Neither was I.”
“I didn’t want you to be my warm-up,” he says. “You were always supposed to be my closer.”
I grin. “Is that a sports metaphor?”
“Maybe. Could be a music one, if you prefer.”
I’ve seen so many of Penn’s smiles, but this one is my favorite: up close, small but brilliant. An entire galaxy, just for me.
His hands move to my face, his thumbs sweeping across my cheekbones as he says, “I’m so in love with you, too, Ruby. Always have been.” He shrugs. “Guess you’re stuck with me.”
“Promise?” I whisper.
Penn smirks before he leans in and kisses me, our smiles pressed together. Sparklers go off in my chest, a kaleidoscopic whirl of color splashing across my mind while I stand here, in this moment, with Penn. Happy and imperfect and hopeful and afraid and as sure as I’ve ever been about anything.
When we pull apart, he rests his forehead against mine and asks, “Did you practice that speech?”
“Parts of it,” I admit. “But I didn’t account for the freezing temperatures. The weather was a real liability.”
“Yeah, well. So am I.”
“You are,” I agree. “But I’m willing to take a risk on you.”
