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“I was going to say that to you too.”
“I will let you know,” she said. “But I’m more worried about you. I stand by what I said before. You’ve got more insecurities than me. If you can’t accept them and face them, then we aren’t going to get very far.”
“I know,” he said. “I realized a lot of it myself. My mother forced the rest on me.”
“I love your mother,” she said.
“I think she loves you too. The question is if you love me,” he said.
“I told you I did,” she said, smiling. She kissed him. “You’re going to tick me off if you ask me again. You haven’t said it to me though.”
“You haven’t asked if I feel it,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have to ask,” she said. “I told you. You need to tell me how you feel. The bad and the good.”
“The good is that I’ve never felt this way for another woman. Maybe that’s the bad part too. I love you but didn’t know it for what it was. I had to learn to accept it, as you said. I was stupid and an asshole about it and I’ll try to make it up to you for many years to come.”
Ivy hugged him tight. She giggled too. He didn’t deserve her. “You don’t need to do that,” she said. “Just knowing that you love me, that you trust me, and that you’ll be there for me, that is enough.”
“I’ll do all those things. I promise,” he said.
“You don’t make promises,” she said, leaning back to look at him.
“I do when it means something.”
He kissed her on the forehead with those words. He thought she’d come a long way, but maybe it was him that had.
Epilogue
Two Months Later
Ivy wasall but bouncing in the passenger side of Brooks’s truck the Saturday after July Fourth.
“I love fireworks,” she said.
“I know you do,” he said. “You’ve told me a few times.”
“Sorry. It’s just one of those American things I guess. I remember feeling like such an idiot the first year I saw them live. My grandfather took me.”
“You’d just moved to Texas and didn’t know that many people yet,” he said. “I know the story.”
“Sorry,” she said, giggling.
For someone that never liked to talk much, in the past few months Brooks had asked more about her life than anyone else ever had.
He said he wanted to know everything about her.
She said in return, he had to share the same.
They both had some embarrassing stories. But more fun ones in her eyes.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m just glad we could do this.”
“Me too.” He turned his truck into a parking lot. “What are you doing?”
“Getting you ice cream,” he said.
“You’re the sweetest thing,” she said.
