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No, I didn’t.
I turned up the radio and grinned at the song playing. He smirked when I held up a fist microphone and began to sing "Respect Yourself” by The Staple Singers at the top of my lungs.
He stuck his finger in his ear. “Silence. I’ll take the silence.”
I pretended to whack him over the head with my microphone, but kept right on singing.
The person in a car we passed looked at me like I was crazy, but I didn’t care. As I belted out the words, the truth hit me.
I wasn’t going back to London.
Even if the unthinkable happened.
I’d miss my friends there, but that’s what planes were for. I’d miss my colleagues. I’d miss seeing what I’d built.
I devoted a lot of years to those things, and they’d always be part of me. But it was time to be selfish. To focus on what I truly wanted. Not my father. Not my brothers. Not those I felt obligated to.
A page had turned in my life.
I needed the people here for this chapter.
Abruptly, I stopped singing.
“Garrett?”
“I owe you a better honeymoon than a diner.” He wheeled into the parking lot of the Bronx Zoo. “Do you want to start with camels or ice cream?”
I clutched my mother’s chain. She had to have sent this man to me. There was no other explanation.
My nose got tingly and my eyes stung. “Ice cream. Then camels. Then bears. Then more ice cream.” My voice was scratchy with emotion.
“I’m not getting in the bear exhibit.”
I giggled. “Good. I’d hate to have to call your mother.”
He shuddered before he jumped out of the truck and opened my door.
I grabbed his big hand and dragged him toward the entrance. “No one’s ever had a better honeymoon.”
“We haven’t even seen the camels yet.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Garrett listened to me. There was nothing he did that didn’t have my happiness in mind. And I prayed I could do the same for him.
Just before we reached the ticket office, I stopped.
“I’m paying,” he said gruffly.
I threw my arms around him and smashed my lips to his. Fire blazed through me at the feeling of his mouth on mine. This. His lips. His kiss. It was what I’d missed probably more than anything else. The connection I’d only ever known through kissing this man. He was the only person I’d ever kissed. The only one who made me feel so much it was too much and not enough at the same time. And I wanted him to know all of that in this kiss. That he was and would always be the one I wanted. Just him.
Startled, it took him a second to catch up, but when he did, his return kiss was starved. Garrett had held the pieces of my heart this entire time and hadn’t even realized it. He wrapped his arms around my back and held me like he’d never let me go.
He kissed me as if he’d never get enough.
Everything disappeared but him.
I’d spent so much time hating him. I’d stolen from us too. Because if I’d have let it go, we could’ve had this.
