Page 24

There was just no way.

But somehow, the fact that she said those things, with that same directness and confounding honesty that had poleaxed him from the start, seemed to rearrange things inside of him. And she hadn’t asked him if he thought she deserved him.

What she’d said was that she loved him, was in love with him, and was staying.

Noah reached over and fit his hand to her face.

“Surely, you deserve something—someone—who isn’t this broken,” he made himself say, because he was a hideously selfish man and he wanted to take her at face value. How deeply he wanted that, how desperately, should probably have scared him.

The very least he could do was make sure she knew that he was aware of how little he was bringing to the table.

But instead of rethinking things, she gave him her full smile. The warmth of it, the sweet sunshine.

“Haven’t you been listening to anything I say?” she asked, but she was looking at him as if he made her unbearably fond. As if she could barely contain it. “We’re all broken, Noah.”

“There’s regular broken and then⁠—”

Raemy rolled her eyes, but it was a gentle thing. “I’ve had to accept that there will always be these pieces. There will always be a moment I’m not expecting that will make me cry or a memory that seems to sideswipe me out of nowhere. That’s never going to change.” She looped her arms around his neck. “I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t grieved, or that the grief of losing him just goes away, because I have and it won’t.”

He wanted to retort, but suspected that she would cut him off again. So he let that go too, and figured it was probably time to let go of all those kneejerk responses.

Like she could read his mind, she nodded approvingly. “But in the meantime, I have to remember that I’m alive,” she said, sounding bright and fierce at once. “I’m alive, and the world is big and complex and so overwhelming, and astonishingly beautiful, and I don’t want to miss any part of it. And I think that you should try living, too.”

He searched her face. “I can promise you, I’m alive.”

“I know you are.” And her smile took on that glint that he particularly liked, because it usually ended up with both of them naked. “But you can decide to really live, Noah. Here and now. It doesn’t diminish what you went through, or who you lost. Don’t you think they all would do the same if they could?”

That went through him like a shot. Like a long, deep blade, straight through to the other side. A kind of clarity, as shocking as it was necessary.

As if everything inside him, locked boxes and painful memories, was suddenly on fire. As if something in him finally…woke up.

He felt himself shake with it and then he was kissing her, again and again, like he couldn’t get enough. Like he could never get enough.

“I love you, Raemy,” he said against her mouth. “And I feel sorry for you, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t let go of anything. Ever.”

“I’m counting on it,” she replied.

And he could feel her smile against his mouth as he kissed her. He could feel hope, because that was what it had to be. That bright, fizzy thing that moved inside him, and made him feel hopeful. And like he could be bright too.

It made him wonder.

If he really could have the life that she made seem so simple. If he really could have her.

If he could move forward, never forgetting, and never pretending that he hadn’t lost people, or that he wouldn’t make different calls with the benefit of hindsight, but still.

Moving. Breathing. Living.

Figuring out a way to bask in that sunshine she’d given him and taught him to crave.

Where, maybe, with her help, he might find a way to make his life worthy of all of those he’d lost. All those he missed.

But the first thing was that he loved her, it was like an avalanche he’d been trying to hold back with his hands, and he told her so.

Again and again.

It crossed his mind that maybe, deep down inside of him and kiss by kiss, she was teaching him how to believe that he deserved this life. His life.

And better still, the one he intended to build with her.