AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And you just thought you would tell me you loved me and I would come running back to you?” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me.
“No, of course not,” I quickly replied. “I never would have expected anything from you after what I did. I was coming back to apologize to you and try to get your forgiveness, and to tell you that I was here for you and the baby in any capacity you wanted or needed me. I wasn’t going to ask you to take me back unless you absolutely wanted it, and if that’s not what you wanted, then I was going to figure out how we were going to parent the child together. I wasn’t going to walk out on you and the baby again. I just wasn’t.”
“Except,” Laurel said, “there is no baby.”
“Right, there is no baby,” I agreed. “Which is a massive relief, but my apology is still necessary, and I want you to know that if that did happen, I would be right there with you to help you take care of the child and everything. I would never walk out on you for being pregnant, and instead of being the child and blaming myself for you being late for work, I should have stepped it up and made sure you were up in time.”
“I can’t blame you for that,” she said. “I know I thought it was drastic for you to pull out of my life and make me handle it on my own, but I guess that was a good thing. I mean, you didn’t have to break my heart over it, but the fact that you were more caring about my job than you were about getting laid told me that you really did care about me. It wasn’t just what we were doing, but you really wanted what was best for me.”
“I know you understand that now, but I really think that there were better ways for me to go about doing it than to leave you like that. You aren’t a child. It’s not like you had some toy that you weren’t able to focus on so I had to take it away. I really should have taken the time to stop and talk with you about what your needs and wants were,” I said.
“Okay, how about we both admit that we both fucked up in our own ways, and we can move on?” she asked.
“You mean that?” I replied. “Because I want you to know that I broke my own heart when I broke up with you, and I hated myself every second of the day after I walked out of this room. I didn’t know how I made it back to my own room without breaking down in tears in the middle of the hallway, let alone how I was able to fly across the country and leave you here.”
“Pain does weird things sometimes,” she told me. “But you know, I don’t want to sit and dwell on the pain or the past. We both fucked up, and we both have come back to each other. I want you, Greyson. I know that we started this off with fun and that’s how we were meaning to keep things, but when it comes down to it, I want you more than anything. Even more than this job.”
“And I want you the same. But I want you to keep your career, too,” I said with a wink.
She got up and walked over to me, wrapping her arms around me and looking up into my face.
“Well, I guess I better tell you that I’m done with the hotel now, and you can have me all to yourself for the rest of the day,” she said.
“You mean it? You’re done with the project?” I asked.
“I have to go back in the morning and make sure that the last of the project is signed off, and then I’m home free,” she told me with a grin. “No more worrying about getting up on time or if I was able to take the time off to spend with you. I’m free as a bird to do what I want for the rest of today, and all I have to do tomorrow is going to take a grand total of twenty minutes, if that.”
“I’m proud of you,” I told her. “I knew you’d be able to do it.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “I guess I should be proud of myself for doing it all by myself, like a big girl.”
I laughed. I knew she was teasing me, but I was okay with that. I deserved her giving me a hard time for what I had done to her, and I was glad she was forgiving enough to take me back after everything. It told me she had a heart of gold, and that’s what I wanted.
And I was glad she saw me for what I had done, and not that I was some jerk who had left her because she could be having a kid. That was never my intention, and I wanted her to know that it would never happen that way. Even if I was scared of something, I would face it head on with her by my side. I wasn’t a runner, I was a warrior.
“I love you,” I said, looking down into her beautiful eyes, cupping my hands around her face as I spoke.
“I love you, too,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
My heart swelled with happiness as I heard her say those words, and I leaned forward, pressing my lips to hers with passion. I hadn’t realized exactly how much I had missed her until our lips met, and I felt whole again. The missing piece of my heart was filled once more, and I knew I had done the right thing with coming back.
I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been to break up with her at the time, and I was even more shocked with how much gratefulness I felt toward her for forgiving me and taking me back now. I knew I had no right to expect it from her, and she had every right to kick me to the curb for being a dirtbag.
But, Laurel wasn’t like that. She was the kind of woman who knew that good things took work, and she wanted to put the work in for us just as much as I did. She understood that people made mistakes, and that I was going to make more in the future, just like I knew she would make mistakes that would hurt me, too.
It wasn’t the mistakes that mattered, it was how we came back from them.
It was how we dealt with them and how we moved on from them that mattered. When it came down to it, what mattered was the way we treated each other, and right now, I knew without a doubt in my mind that this was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
I knew we would have plenty of ups and downs in the future, but that wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I was doing now.
I thought my life was worth living when I found my passion as a pilot. But now, I had found something that mattered to me even more than being up in the air. I found someone who made me feel like I was on cloud nine even while my feet were planted safely on the ground.
Laurel was my soulmate. She was the love of my life, and I loved her most of all.
It didn’t matter what the future held as long as we were together.
We had each other.
