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I look back over my shoulder, my breath leaving my lungs.
Maddy’s running.
No, she’s sprinting.
“Logan! Wait! Please!”
My heart stops in the few remaining seconds it takes for her to reach me. She throws herself against me, her arms wrapping around my neck and her legs encircling my waist.
“Don’t go!” she sobs into my neck, her body shaking uncontrollably. “I want the new story too.” Her sobs turn into hiccups as her cries are muffled against my skin. “I wantourstory.”
“Mads.” I hold her to me, dragging in splintered breaths as she falls apart in my arms.
“I’m sorry I put my apartment up for sale and left without saying goodbye. I’m sorry I—”
“You did what? You’re selling it?”
My stomach drops to my feet.
She was never planning on coming back.
“It’s not worth anywhere near what you needed. But I thought if Sterling said no, then at least it would be something.”
“You love that place. That’s your home, Mads.”
She clings to me harder. “I couldn’t be there anymore without seeing you everywhere. Without remembering the way you kissed me there. The way I knew that I’ve fallen in…” She falters. “I’m sorry, Logan. You were meant to hate me. You were meant to hate me and move on.”
“There’s no space in my heart to hate you. Even if I’d believed for one second that your email was real, I still wouldn’t have hated you.”
I ease her back so I can look into her eyes.
“My heart’s too full, Mads,” I confess. “Too fucking full of love for you.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.” I rest my forehead against hers. “You don’t get your own way over this. I read your article,” I say softly. “The real one. Every single word. I read it over and over on the flight here. It’s amazing. You’re so talented.”
“Log—”
“I’m not marrying Gabrielle.”
She tries to protest, but I slide a thumb to her lips to stop her from speaking.
“Would you still want me if I was the kind of husband who always had to borrow a coin to make a wish in fountains?”
“You do that anyway.” Her voice softens but it’s still joined by the line between her brows pulling deep into her skin. “Husband?”
I trace her lower lip with the pad of my thumb.
“If you swear to me you’ll never run from us again, then that’s where it’s headed. I know you love stories, Mads. You love the fairy tale, the happy ending. Things are happening with the business. So much is changing. And I hope it’s enough. But if it isn’t, I need you to know that I’ll fight to get it back. To get it for you. But until then, all I can promise you is the kind of love that makes me want to create our own language. Just for us. So I can write it for you. Whisper it to you. Give you something that no one else can.”
My chest cracks in the center as I wait for her reaction.Don’t push me away, baby. I can’t take it anymore.
She sniffs, gifting me with a small, perfect curl of her lips. “If this is a fairy tale, then are you the prince?”
