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Oh, God. What the hell did I just do?
Giving in to my feelings, I come out of my room, running down the stairs. My parents are standing in front of the door with quizzical looks on their faces. I ignore them because I can’t end the discussion like this. I can’t let him go after telling him that I love him. I open the front door, ready to run behind him when I crash against his chest.
I stagger back, processing the fact that he didn’t leave.
He’s here.
“Seriously, Bree?” Stanley asks, extending his hands like he can’t believe that I slammed the door in his face after I dropped the L-word on him. “You can’t just drop a bomb like that and run away!”
I scratch the back of my neck.
“I know, I panicked,” I mumble as I feel my face burning with embarrassment.
Stanley lets out a sigh mixed with a husky laugh. The tension between us seems to ease, and I should be able to breathe, but I can’t. I’m so scared now. I just bared my soul to him, gave him my heart, and he laughed.
“Did you mean it?”
“That you’re a dumb insensitive asshole? Obviously,” I bite out.
This time, he smiles brightly. I can swear that it’s illuminating the whole street.
“No—well, yeah, that too, but it’s the other part that has my interest.”
At least he’s able to acknowledge the flaws of his radiant personality.
“Do I look like the kind of person that goes around telling people that I love them?” I quip, arching a brow as I cross my arms.
Stanley tilts his head.
“Only when you’re drunk.”
I tense, knowing that my parents are listening to this conversation.
“Well, I haven’t tasted a drop of alcohol in—”
The sentence gets cut off because Stanley’s lips shut me up. He cups my face as his mouth moves over mine. Even when I’m mad at him, I kiss him back because my system goes into a short-circuit when I’m around him, and I can’t think straight. I welcome his cold lips that contrast against my warm ones. The kiss is tender, almost like a peck. It’s sweet and soft, exactly like I feel when I’m with him.
“I’m still mad at you,” he says, tearing his mouth from mine.
“That makes two of us because I’m more than angry at you,” I tell him in a sigh.
He pecks my lips and backs away a couple of inches. His thumb fondly caresses my chin.
“But I love you, Bree,” he whispers in a genuine and heartwarming tone. “I’m mad at you because it’s your future, your life.”
I put a hand on his chest, feeling the dampness of his coat. The cold anchors me to our reality, to the discussion we’re having now that we’ve let out our tensions. My heart wants to jump out of my chest at the fact that he loves me too, but I need to let this out. I need to make him understand things from my perspective.
“I have options, Stan. Lots of options, more than I can count. Options that you didn’t have, so I decided to give up one of mine, to give you one,” I explain, holding his glance. “I couldn’t have lived with myself, knowing that your future was affected when I could’ve done something about it.”
Stanley closes his eyes, sighing, and wraps me with his arms, hugging me tightly.
I do my best to ignore his wet clothes because Stan holding me in his arms, knowing that he loves me, that my risk worked, and that I’m not going to lose him is more important than any shivers that may run through my body. His mere presence is enough to make me warm.
That’s when I know that we’re not a match that burned too fast. No, the warmth that I feel when I’m with him doesn’t come from the tiny flame of a match. Together, he and I are the sun. We may go through eclipses, but we’re always going to shine again.
“I don’t know what I would do without you,” he says in my ear.
“Even when I screw up and do impulsive things?”
