“I don’t have to take it.” His hands freeze on my hips. “I could find something here.”
“No,” he commands, hands cradling my face to pull my eyes to his. “You’re going.”
“But what happens to us?”
“I love you too much to let you give this up.”
I grab his forearms and hold his stare like a magnifying glass held up to the sun. Embers of fire blaze to life in his blue eyes right before he tilts my entire existence on its axis with his words.
“I don’t know when I fell in love with you, Fish. I’ve tried and tried to figure it out, but I can’t. I don’t think youcanfall in love with someone when they already have your heart. The love is just…there.” His thumb sweeps across my cheek. “I think I’ve always loved you. It looked different when we were kids and it didn’t mean the same then as it does now, but it was there. It’s like one day I looked up and there you were—my favorite person. Somewhere along the way my heart became so tethered to yours I’m not sure it beats apart from you anymore.
“It’s why, from the moment you messaged me four years ago, I lost interest in anybody else. It’s why, when I saw you at Drew’s rehearsal dinner, I knew you were it for me. It’s why, when I saw you at that restaurant two months ago, I knew I would never get over you and to even attempt to love another woman would be unfair to them, because I could never possibly love anyone as deeply, as wholly, as I love you.
“I loved you long before I kissed you and every day since. All the days I wasn’t supposed to, all the days I shouldn’t have—I’ve loved you anyway.”
I kiss him until I can’t breathe, squeezing him so tight I want to fold myself into his skin.
“New York is where you want to be. I know it is. It’s where you need to be.”
I choke back the emotion rising in my chest, my breaths choppy and muffled against his shoulder.
“I’m not going to let you change your plans for me,” he adds.
A sob breaks free before I can stop it.
“I would do anything for you, Gretch. Buy you every collector’s copy ofLittle WomenI can find.” I smile through a very unattractive sniff against his neck that I’m sure he felt down to his toes. “Take you to see the wild horses.” His hands run up my spine and my body melts under his touch. “Hold you when you cry.” My breathing steadies. “Move to New York to be with you.”
I jolt back. “Wait, what?”
“I wanna move to New York.”
My brain cannot compute these words. “But why?”
He rolls his lips and I swear there’s a concealed smile there. “Because I want to be where you are.”
I scan his face. “Why?” I ask like a total ignoramus because words are hard right now.
A quizzical smirk hitches up one side of his mouth before he says with a question inflection that is all tease, “For all the reasons I just said?”
Look alive, Gretchen.
I shake my head in an attempt to reorganize my jumbled thoughts before dropping my face into my palms. “Right.”
Gently, Connor lowers my hands and folds them in his. “I know it’s a lot. You’re allowed to ask me to stay if you think it’s too fast. We can do long-distance until you’re ready, but I need you to understand that I don’t want to be apart from you. I can be a graphic designer anywhere, Gretch. Please,” he kisses me, “let me do this for you. For us.”
“But your whole life is here.”
“No, it’s not. It’s wherever you are.”
On a normal day, you could drop a camera into my brain and all you’d find is mushy, muddled, conflicting-thought soup—a slew of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs strewn together, none of which I can parse into a single eloquent thought.
But right now, my brain is clear, like a windowpane buffed tosuch perfection you can’t discern inside from outside. Only one thought floats through my head, free and unencumbered, at odds with nothing. BecauseConnoris where my head and my heart have always aligned.
“You don’t have to decide right now. If you need time to?—”
“No,” I say over him in a rush. “I mean, yes!”Stop. Breathe.I suck in a big gulp of air and order my brain to speak in coherent sentences. “What I mean is…I love you and I don’t want to be apart from you either.”
He smiles. “I love you, too.”
