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“Yeah?” he replies, still studying the grill.
A light mist has started to fall, backlit by the light attached to the rear of my parents’ house. All it illuminates is the patio, the rest of the fenced yard lost in the night. All that’s visible is Aidan, the grill, and the empty pots my mom will replant in the spring.
“I love you.”
Immediately, he tenses. I can see his shoulder muscles contract beneath his sweater.
Aidan turns to face me, the intensity in his expression severe as he studies me.
“You do?” There’s something tentative and hopeful in the question, so unlike his usual confident self.
I nod. I think part of me realized loving him was inevitable from the moment I saw him standing outside my window. Or maybe it was the way my stomach dropped when I saw him sitting in steaming water. How something shifted irrevocably inthat moment to accommodate this overwhelming emotion that’s only expanded.
“Yeah. I do.”
Aidan abandons the smoking grill and walks over to me. He touches me slowly—reverently—his hands landing on my hips before they slide around to my back. And he stares at me, somehow seeing all of me. I feel stripped raw in a safe way, holding his gaze as he justlooksat me. Looks at me like he never wants to focus on anything else. Examine anywhere else.
His right hand lifts, his thumb brushing across my cheek and leaving a tingling trail in its wake before he twirls a piece of my hair around one finger.
“I said it first,” he tells me.
“I know. I heard you that night, in the hotel room. But I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to, and then with all the craziness after the game I just…” I exhale. “Even if you didn’t mean it, or if you’re not ready to say it, I mean it. Whenever you’re—”
Aidan smiles, shaking his head. “I meant it then, and I mean it now. I love you, Rylan Alice Keller, even though you lied about your name the first time we met and had the audacity to insult me the second time.”
I roll my eyes. “Can you please let that go?”
Aidan laughs, then kisses the top of my head. “Never. Both are fond memories I’ll never forget. Now, can you grab the thermometer before I burn the meat I spent the past twenty minutes bragging to your dad I know how to cook perfectly?”
I roll my eyes, then head for the door.
“Rye?”
I glance back. “Yeah?”
“I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. It terrifies the shit out of me, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever experienced. Youmake me want to do better. Be better. So…thank you. For making mewantto change.”
“Thank you for changing,” I tell him. “Because I would have fallen in love with you anyway, and you would’ve broken my heart.”
“It was the pink pom-pom hat that pulled me,” he tells me seriously.
I shake my head. “Should I share that tip with the rest of the girls on campus?”
“Sure. But it wouldn’t have worked with any other girl on campus. Just you.”
EPILOGUE
RYLAN
Ismooth the front of my dress, brush a flake of mascara away from under my eye, and take a deep breath.
“Rye!” Aidan calls. “We’re going to be late.”
Another deep breath, and then I open the bathroom door.
He’s leaning against the opposite wall, looking hot as hell in his custom tux. Jameson asked Aidan to be his best man, which is kind of fucked up if you ask me, but no one did. Aidan said he doesn’t care, that he’s happy to go along with whatever, and he seems to mean it.
Ever since we arrived at the fancy hotel on the Pacific where his brother is getting married, Aidan has been totally relaxed.
