"I love her."
"Really?"
"Yes!" Hugging the bear to my chest, I said, "Does she have a name?"
"Mrs. Bear." He laughed at the same time I did. "And her first name is Treya."
"Do you think Mr. and Mrs. Bear will be happy together?"
"I hope so," he said.
Perfect.
This was so perfect, I couldn't even find the words.
"Thank you, Tolliver," I said.
"You're welcome."
He held out his hand.
"Freya, will you dance with me?"
"You know I will."
After placing my bear in a safe place (i.e. Tolliver's discarded suit jacket pocket), Tolliver smiled as he led me out to the center of the floor. He placed one of my hands on his shoulder and held the other up to his chest. His left hand curled around my waist, and I took an unsteady inhale.
My mom, who was sitting at the main table chatting with her new husband Eric (aka Stacia's dad and my new stepfather), smiled and waved to me. Dad was around here somewhere too. I scanned the room and spotted him talking to a woman I'd never seen before. She was pretty, and she laughed at something hesaid, which made him grin. I caught his gaze, waggled my brows, and Dad merely rolled his eyes.
Several couples danced beside us, and maybe it was a trick of the light, some kind of wedding haze, but every face I saw looked happy.
"There's so much love in this room," I said.
"Yeah," Tolliver replied. "There is."
The tone of his voice made me look up.
His eyes were already on me.
"Freya, I need to say something."
I nodded for him to go on.
"I know a part of you still thinks that what I said to you in my room was because I was sick or out of it from the medicine," he said. "But that's not true."
"I don't think that."
Tolliver arched a disbelieving brow, and okay. Maybe a teeny, tiny part of me thought that. But it was only because he hadn't said those three little words to me again. Not in all the time we spent together in the weeks leading up to the wedding.
I hadn't wanted to bring it up.
Was content to simply be with him. To know I had said my piece.
But here was Tolliver, staring down at me with so much genuine affection. I could do nothing but listen and wait.
"You are beautiful," he said, "so beautiful, sometimes it steals my breath."
I couldn't have interrupted even if I wanted to. What he said and how he said it stole the air from my lungs.
