Page 269 of Saving Forever with the Hockey Captain

"I'm sorry," I say quietly.

She looks up. "For what?"

"For making you figure it out by yourself."

A tear slips down her cheek.

"No."

She gives her head a tiny shake. "I'm the one who kept stepping backward every time you stepped closer."

"You thought you were helping."

"I thought loving you meant letting you go."

My chest tightens. "It doesn't, Annette."

"I know that now."

The evening breeze stirs gently around us. Somewhere across the lake, a loon calls its familiar cry.

Everything else fades into the background.

Annette lifts her free hand and rests it lightly against my cheek.

"You really fell in love with me over terrible coffee?"

"It wasn't the coffee."

"No?"

"It was the woman who somehow made terrible coffee taste worth drinking."

She smiles in that wonderfully unguarded way I've missed for weeks.

"I can't believe that line actually worked."

"I can't believe I finally said it."

Neither of us moves, we simply stand there looking at one another.

It feels strangely familiar.

Like all the conversations we've had after therapy when neither of us was quite ready to say goodbye.

Only this time...there isn't a goodbye waiting for us.

Annette draws a slow breath.

"I love you."

The words are almost whispered. Almost. But they reach me with perfect clarity. And she repeats, "I think I've loved you for a long time."

For a heartbeat I can't answer.

Not because I don't know what to say, but because hearing the words somehow means more than I imagined they would.

I rest my forehead gently against hers.