Page 91 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

He didn’t answer right away.

Instead, he brushed a strand of hair from my cheek, tucking it gently behind my ear. His fingers lingered there, tracing the curve of my face as his eyes searched mine.

“I keep thinking about how close I came to losing this.”

My heart stumbled. “Losing what?”

“You.” His thumb swept softly over my cheekbone. “Maverick. Mornings with you. Nights like this. All the ordinary shit I didn’t know I wanted until it was right in front of me.”

A shiver moved through me that had nothing to do with the cool air against my skin.

“Dean—”

“I convinced myself I could take whatever pieces of your life you were willing to give me.” His gaze held mine. “Stolen moments. Dinner. Breakfast at your kitchen counter. Maverick climbing all over me like I’m playground equipment.” The corner of his mouth lifted, but his whiskey eyes stayed serious. “I told myself it was enough because having some of you was better than having none of you.”

My throat tightened.

His hand slid to the back of my neck, holding me like I was something precious.

“But it’s not enough anymore. I want more.”

“What do you want?” I whispered.

The intensity in his gaze melted into something achingly tender. “Everything.”

My breath caught.

“I don’t want to visit your life anymore, Felicity.” He pulled me closer until there wasn’t an inch of space left between us. “I want all of it. I want the mornings. The bedtime stories. The horses lined up on the windowsill. Your cold feet shoved under my legs because apparently, I’m a human heating pad.”

A laugh escaped me as tears welled up in me.

“I want the mess. The boring days. The hard ones. I want to know where Maverick left his shoes and what you need from the grocery store. I want to be your person.” His forehead touched mine. “I don’t want pieces of your life.”

His lips brushed mine, soft and achingly tender.

“I want all of it.”

My heart squeezed so hard it almost hurt.

“All of it?” I whispered.

“All of it.” His arm tightened around me. “For as long as you can put up with me.”

I smiled. Putting up with him I could do. I could do that forever.

33

SMUG COMES WITH ABS

Felicity

By the time a week had staggered by, I’d become the kind of woman who wore three-day-old eyeliner as a badge of honor and knew the hold time for every department at the county clerk’s office. I’d spent the morning in a gnawing swirl of emails, signatures, and legal-ese so dense I could practically taste its paper-dust aftertaste in my throat.

It was barely noon by the time I sat at my battered, paint-chipped kitchen table, and e-signed the last digital document, and officially became the unlikely co-owner of a multi-million-dollar cattle operation. The email notification chimed its little victory song while Maverick, unbothered, used my off-brand glitter gel pens to draw a chicken riding a horse in a rodeo.

I expected some kind of cinematic rush at the finish line, the cold snap of relief, or at least a mental chorus of “You did it!” Instead, I felt the gentle futility of accomplishment, the world did not pause for my epiphany.

Mav, completely unbothered by the seismic implosion of my entire carefully-constructed future, declared his drawing “complete,” and asked for a snack. I wiped the gel pen gently off my knuckles, thinking of all the women like me—single, tired, determined, and just visible enough to be asked to join the parent-teacher committee but not enough to be invited to the after-party. But this time, for once, I’d gotten to write the ending.