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“It was the one piece of you I had left to hang onto. I never wanted to let you go. You’ve always been it for me.”
Standing on my tippy toes, I climb up to reach Zayn’s ear and whisper, “I love you, Zayn Mitchell. Always have and always will.”
He kisses me on the forehead and tells me, “I love you too, Autumn Parker.”
* * *
The next dayZayn shows up at my door with pizza and a bottle of champagne.
My left eyebrow raises with curiosity. “Oh, are we celebrating something?” I ask.
He chuckles to himself. “Yeah, you finally not hating my guts.”
“I neverhatedyou, just greatly disliked you.” My hand falls to my hip. “I mean, come on, you’d have felt the same if you were practically ghosted by your first love, too.” We make our way into the kitchen, and he sets the pizza and bottle down on the counter.
Zayn shrugs. “I mean, I didn’t go without suffering either.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says. His voice grows low when he asks, “Are you happy?”
“Yes, very much so, why?” My eyebrows fold in confusion.
“Like you followed your heart happy?”
I pause for a moment, smirking to myself. “Yeah, I’d say that.”
He pulls out the WOLO list from his pocket and grabs the closest pen off the counter and hands it to me. “You should have the honors of your final check.”
Grabbing the pen and WOLO list, I exhale and add a final check to Summer’s addition.
“How good does that feel, Miss Parker? You got through the entire WOLO list.”
I smile. “Definitely couldn’t have done it without you,” I say before allowing my eyes to fall on his tantalizing lips.
He nods his head and his lips part for a moment, but he doesn’t say a word. He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear before bending down to whisper, “My love for you has never faded, not even once. And when I saw you again here at Meet the Teacher Night, I knew I couldn’t stand to let you go again.”
I start to melt at his words. He kisses me hard, and I sink into my heels. When he pulls away, I lean into his chest, embracing the man I’ve been too afraid to admit I love. My hands fall to his, which interlock with mine before he brings one up, kissing the back of it softly.
“Ready to eat?” he asks.
I tug his hand, leading us toward the bedroom. My head turns back as I flash him a flirtatious smile. “You up for one more adventure first?”
Zayn grins from ear to ear. “WOLO.”
***ONE YEAR LATER***
“Babe!” I yell out to Zayn after watching him grab some other girl’s butt through my goggles under the water. Swimming next to the girl, he looks at her, then at me, and then back to the girl whose ass he just grabbed.
“Oh shit, my bad. I am so so sorry. I thought you were . . .” He starts to nervously make his way back to me.
When he gets close enough, I wallop the back of his head with my hand. The hand that wears the diamond ring he used to propose to me with last night. We’ve been here for a few days now, celebrating both my birthday and our one-year anniversary in the Grand Cayman Islands—where we’re both swimming with sea turtles and he’s apparently grabbing random girls’ butts.
“Hey!” he says as he moves his goggles up to the top of his head. He looks at me and smiles, holding up both hands above the water. “Okay, fair enough. I deserve that shit. But you have to know, it really was an accident.”
“Mhmm,” I say playfully.Her suit does look almost identical to mine, but I won’t admit that to him.
He moves my goggles to the top of my head so he can see my eyes. “I promise to make it up to you the minute we get back to the hotel room.” He winks at me.
