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“Emily, I don’t regret having married you. I just regret our divorce.”
“Me, too.”
“Which brings me to why I’m here. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you, cherishing you and making up to you every stupid and wrong thing I ever did.”
“No.” She shook her head.
“No?”
“I don’t want you trying to make up for the past. The past is done, over.” Her heart ached. “I won’t have you with me out of guilt.”
“Woman.” He pulled her to him on the sofa. “How many times do I have to say I love you before you’ll understand?”
“Understand what?”
“I’m not here out of guilt. I’m here out of love. Out of a need to spend my life with the woman I want to be with above all others. The woman who I want to give everything I am to now and for forever.”
He sounded like a marriage vow. The thought pinched her heart, because she knew that wasn’t the case.
Could she do it?
Could she have an affair with Lucas until he tired of her and walked away?
Would he walk away?
Staring into his eyes, she wasn’t so sure he would. But she didn’t want just an affair. She wanted everything. She wanted to believe in fairy tales and dreams come true.
She wanted to believe in Lucas.
“I’m here to beg you to consider spending your life with me, Emily.”
* * *
Was she going to refuse him? Lucas held Emily’s hand within his, held his breath, prayed she felt the way he believed she felt, that too much negative hadn’t happened between them to drown out all th
e good.
So many emotions danced across her face that he couldn’t read her thoughts.
“What are you saying, Lucas?” she asked. “That you want to have an affair with me?”
An affair. He’d poured his heart out to her and she thought he was asking for sex still?
“If that’s all you’re willing to give me, then, yes, I’ll take an affair. A lifelong one.”
She stared at him, caution and the beginnings of hope in her eyes. Hope he planned to nurture for the rest of her life.
“What is it you want me to give?”
Her question was an easy one for him to answer. One he could answer with all certainty and the knowledge that Emily was his soul mate, the other half of him, the woman he wanted to wake up next to and go to sleep next to, to have her belly swollen with his children, to grow old next to, to look back on their life together and know that each step along the way had served a purpose, to teach them what was important, what was worth fighting for, what they should hold on to with all their might and hearts.
“You,” he answered with his heart shining in his eyes. “Forever.”
“I already did that,” she reminded him, causing his heart to skip a beat. “You’ve always had me, Lucas. My heart, my body, all of me.”
“Emily...”
“I love you, Lucas. I never stopped.”
