"I loved things about you back in school that I never told anyone. I loved how you argued with teachers when you knew you were right. I loved that you'd rather sit alone with a book the size of a toolbox than pretend to be less than you are. I loved the way your lips would sound out the big words to yourself while you read, quite..." He hesitates over it, then lands it. "Quiet. Like you were the only person in the room. I loved how watching your mouth made me want to pull you behind the library stacks and kiss you."
He glances up then, and the first glimmer of the famous Finn Bardot humor sparks in his eyes. "I still want to do that, by the way."
I allow myself the smallest smile, while heat rolls through me, sudden and inappropriate and absolutely real. Wanting him in the middle of all this should feel wrong. It doesn't. Whatever tonight decides, my body already knows its answer, and its answer is him. It has been him for weeks.
"There's still more to go," he says, and his eyes go back down to the page. His fingertip settles beneath the next line and stays there, holding his place while he reads. "I've spent my whole life leaving early. Leaving school, leaving town, leaving every room right before it could decide what I was. Leaving on my terms always felt like winning to me. It wasn't. I wasn't winning anything. I was just gone."
He hits a snag on the next line, gets a word wrong, shakes his head once and takes the whole sentence again from the top.
"I've been everywhere, Darcy. I've stood on mountains most people will only ever see in photographs. And the best part of my life is any day with you in it. I want your mouth opening under mine and the weight of you settling beneath me in the dark, the way I had you last night, back when I was stupid enough to think we had time. I want all my mornings with you. I want your hair on my pillow and your cold feet against my shins and I want your unique ability to call me out on all my bullshit. I want forty years of losing arguments to you and another forty years of just being the man worthy of standing at your side."
He stops reading abruptly and presses the back of his wrist to his mouth. When he reads again his voice has gone rough and quiet.
"I love you, Darcy. I've never said that to another living soul. You're the first. I wanted you to have it in ink, so that no matter what you think you know about me, you can hold the proof inyour hands. I love you, and every version of my life I can picture is smaller without you in it."
The air has gone quiet, unmoving. My lungs can only accept shallow breaths, my heart swelling so intensely there's no room for anything else.
He loves me. I swallow hard, unable to find my voice.
"So, now you know," he reads, slower now, one word at a time. "Whatever happens after you put this letter down, you were never a bet to me. You were never a joke. You are the whole point of everything."
Slowly, he lowers the page. For a moment he just stands there in my lamplight, the letter still open in his hand, and then he raises his eyes to mine.
"Tell me I haven't screwed everything up between us, Darcy. Please."
CHAPTER 37
FINN
Darcy hasn't said a word.
The only sound I can hear is the pounding of my own heartbeat, which is louder than it has any right to be. I stand there with the letter open in my hand and I wait, telling myself I can take a no.
It's the biggest lie I've ever told.
I've waited on big answers before. Field tests. International patents. A billion-dollar project partner deciding whether my dream is worth backing. None of it ever made my hands sweat. My hands are sweating like hell now. The letter is going damp where I'm gripping it, and Darcy is looking at me through tears and saying nothing at all.
"Darce, say something. Please."
If it's no, it doesn't change one damn word I said. I love her. I'll always love her. She can take all the time she needs hating me from across town. I just need her to say something, anything, because the silence is eating me alive one second at a time.
Then she gets up from the table. Wordlessly, she crosses to me, tears still shining on her face, and instead of reaching for my hands or my face, she reaches for the letter. She takes it outof my fingers, and for one bottomless second I think that's my answer. She's taking the evidence and showing me the door.
Instead, she folds it. Carefully, along the creases I already put there, like it's precious. A treasure worth keeping. Then she holds it against her chest with both hands. Her fingers are trembling.
"You haven't screwed anything up, Finn." Her voice is wrecked and certain at the same time. "I love you. So much. I spent all day trying to talk myself out of the feeling and I couldn't do it. I love you."
She said it twice. As though once wasn't going to be enough for either of us.
I thought it would feel warm, hearing her say those words to me. It doesn't feel warm. It feels so much bigger than that. It feels structural. Like something a man could build the rest of his life on.
I have nothing smooth to offer in reply. No quips. No wry comebacks. My eyes burn and I let them.
Then I close the small distance in a single stride and take her face in my hands and kiss her. She makes a sound against my mouth, low and broken and joyful. Her fists close in the fabric of my shirt and she pulls me against her, and the kiss stops being gentle.
One endless day of almost losing her goes into the kiss from my side. I kiss her until there's nothing left in the world but her mouth on mine and her hands and the heat coming off her, until the shake in my chest finally quits.
When we finally break apart, her forehead stays resting against mine. We're both breathing like we finished something hard. Her hands stay fisted in my shirt as if letting go is a next-week problem. I clear the tears from her cheeks with my thumbs, and for a little while the library is just the soft lamplight andthe two of us and nobody keeping score for the first time in seventeen years.
