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When she turned to face the ocean again, it was with a little spark of happiness glowing in her chest. His hand rested on her knee, his chest brushed her back, his breath moved over the back of her head.
It felt right. Sean felt right. If she could only remember that and not focus on spiky, overcomplicated reality, they might be okay.
“I’m guh-going to m-move back to C-camelot.”
“What about your job?”
“I resigned.”
“Oh, no.” She turned around all the way, an awkward job that required her to get up on her knees and scoot in the sand until she could grab his shoulders. “Don’t do that for me. Don’t give up what matters to you. We can’t be that way, with me sacrificing for you or you sacrificing for me—we’ll just end up unhappy, and then …”
She trailed off.
Sean’s expression shifted, the tightening of his lips and the hardening of his jawline telling her he understood what she had been about to say, and it pained him. “And then I’ll leave you?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
He rose to his knees and rested his hands gently on her shoulders, so they were locked together, kneeling face to face in the sand. “How about this, K-katie?” His voice was calm and gentle with understanding. ?
??How about yuh-you don’t write the end for us yet, when we’re just getting sstarted?”
“But—”
“No, wuh-wait. Listen. I didn’t give up the c-company for you. I wuh-would, if I had to, but I d-didn’t. I gave it up because it wasn’t right. I wasn’t running it for me, I was d-doing it for my muh-mother, and my muh-mother is dead. I c-can’t be who she wanted me to b-be anymore. Or, no, that’s not even it. I won’t. I have to ffigure out my own life. I have to b-be my own man.”
She searched his face, looking for regret or resentment, any hint that he didn’t mean what he was saying. But he did mean it. “Who do you want to be?”
“I want to b-be whoever I am with you.”
It hurt to hear him say that, but it was the happy kind of hurt. An empathetic pain, a recognition that maybe she and Sean hadn’t been flirting with disaster since the moment they got together. Perhaps every moment of their relationship had not, in fact, been a quick slide toward catastrophe.
Maybe they’d both been reaching for something without understanding how badly they needed it. She could call it “hope,” or “change,” but the best name for it was probably “love.”
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed,” Katie said, giving him a smile as twisted up and bliss-deranged as her heart felt, “but who you are with me is kind of a mess.”
Sean nodded, smiling back. “A sstuttering mess.”
“And a geek, too.”
“A hacker.”
“You say potato …” She smiled again and let go of his shoulders to wrap her arms around his torso. The relief of closing that small gap between them swamped her.
God, the relief.
“I love you, K-katie C-clark,” he whispered in her ear. “And I’m guh-going to move back to C-camelot with you, and I’m going to stay with you, and sooner or later I’m going to m-marry you, and we’re going to be happy.”
“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves,” she said. But she nuzzled her face into his neck, smelling his skin, hoping he was right. Willing him to be right.
“It’s all g-going to work out. I p-promise.”
“You can’t promise something like that.”
The world didn’t work that way, and it was okay. Love was a leap of faith. Maybe she’d fall again and break her heart. Maybe Sean would catch her. Either way, she wanted to try. She wouldn’t waste what she had with him—what they could have together—by turning away from the risk. She wouldn’t write “the end” anymore when it was still only the beginning.
“I c-can promise it,” he said. “It’s what I d-do, remember? I m-make magic happen.”
Katie smiled. “That’s not magic. That’s orgasms.”
