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Claire and I spend the entire following day together, starting with breakfast at one of her favorite little diners and ending with another moonlit walk down by the water. Every minute that I spend with her only reaffirms my feelings about her.
I’m in love with this woman.
Utterly fucking in love.
And I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make it possible for us to be together.
After our walk, we head back to my rental car and I drive her back to her apartment. When we get there, I kill the engine and tell her I’ll walk her up to her door. These are going to be the last moments that I get to be with Claire in person for a while, and I want to stay with her for as long as I can.
When we reach the door, she turns and smiles at me.
“I wish this weekend was a whole lot longer,” she says.
“Maybe I can make a few calls and make that happen,” I joke.
She laughs. “Yeah? You’re going to convince both our school districts to make tomorrow a holiday?”
“I mean, who’s going to turn down a long weekend?”
She laughs again, then sighs. “You said your flight’s at ten tonight?”
I nod.
“All right,” she says. “Well…before you go…I want you to know that I’ve thought a lot about what you said, and I want to give us a chance, too. I think I closed my mind off to that possibility before because I didn’t want to get my hopes up and then get hurt if it wasn’t what you wanted. But now that I know that you want a relationship, and now that we’ve spent more time together…I mean, I’m nervous about the whole long-distance thing. But I want to try.”
I reach out for her hand. Lift it to my lips. Kiss her palm.
“We’ll make it work, Claire,” I say. “I’ll come down every weekend, if that’s what it takes.”
“Oh, Jack. I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Then I’ll move down. Make things simple.”
Claire laughs. “Ireallycouldn’t ask you to do that.”
“You don’t have to ask. I want to.” I let her hand gently drop and move toward her, taking her chin in my hands as I lean down to kiss her sweet lips. “I’m in love with you, Claire.”
She draws in a breath. “You are?”
“Mmhmm.” I kiss her again. “Completely.”
A shaky breath escapes her lips this time. “I’m in love with you, too.”
Our next kiss is deeper. Longer. More needful. When Claire pulls away, she threads her fingers through mine.
“Do you have time to come upstairs?” she says.
“I always have time for you.”
“I’m serious, Jack. I don’t want you to miss your flight.”
I use my free hand to dig my phone out of my pocket, then pull up the alarm app and set one for an hour from now.
“When this goes off, I need to leave,” I say, sliding the phone back into my pocket. “Until then, I’m not going anywhere.”
“A whole hour, huh?” Claire gives me a sexy little smile. “You better make good use of it.”
“You,” I say, “better get upstairs and get those panties off.”
