“Stay, please.” The words come out as a desperate gasp, like they’ve been clawing their way out of my chest for weeks. “I—” I swallow my nerves, hold his gaze. “I love you too. I don’t want you to leave me. I’m scared I won’t be enough for you, that you’ll regret staying because of me. But I’m more scared of what will happen if you leave. So don’t. Don’t leave, please.”
Everything comes out in shaky spurts, and I watch as his face transforms with each one. I feel as his thumb traces my pulsecomfortingly, as if he’s trying to tell me he’s here, he’s listening, he’s holding me up in the only way he knows how.
When I finish, he shakes his head, his eyes never leaving mine. “I fear you’ve wasted a trip.”
My heart plummets, sinking down into my feet and taking all my blood with it. I’m unsteady, knees buckling. He must see, because his arms tighten around me, his expression cast in worry.
“Fin, no.” He shakes his head again, seeming frustrated with himself. “I just meant that you didn’t need to come all this way to ask me. I was always coming home to you.”
The way my body reacts so swiftly is disorienting. The relief is flooding.
“Grey,” I sigh, my voice almost a laugh, and his lips quirk, his smile stunning.
“That was my bad,” he responds with a rueful grin.
“You think?”
He looks stunning in this light, with the sun setting behind him, haloing him in gold, lighting his hair in shades of pink and purple and orange. If I was an artist, I’d want to paint him just like this.
Then, as if he’s just remembered something, he says, “You love me.”
“I’m rethinking that.”
He shakes his head, tousled hair catching in the briny wind. “No, you’re not.”
“No,” I repeat. “I’m not.”
I feel his lips against my ear, and I shiver against the unexpected warmth of his breath. “I love you too.”
He’s said it plenty over the last two weeks, but it feels different now. Less a declaration and more of an exchange. Of pieces of ourselves that we’ve reserved before, held back from others, protected with armor built around our hearts.
This time feels like a promise.
“You really weren’t going to go?” I breathe it into his skin, the space between his neck and shoulder that always smells the most like him, like cheap soap and laundry detergent that somehow smells expensive on him.
I can’t look at him as I ask. I’m still vulnerable, tender in all the places I’ve exposed.
But Grey doesn’t let me hide away. He pulls back, gaze fixed on mine, expression unreadable. “Finley, I know you don’t believe this yet, but I think you’re worth staying for.”
His words lodge in an aching spot in my heart, one that’s held hurt for far too long.
He sighs. “I considered the job at first. I thought about leaving, about starting over. But it never felt right. I thought it would be easier to leave you behind if things between us stayed the same, if you never wanted me like I wanted you. And maybe it would have been, but that’s not what happened. I can’t leave Fontana Ridge, Fin. Not if it’s where you are.”
I want him to say he’s staying for Holden and Wren and June and my mom. I want him to say he considered all of them, and his job and his home. He probably did. But that’s not what he’s saying now. He’s saying he can’t leave Fontana Ridge because he can’t bear to leaveme. And that’sterrifying.
“Say something else,” I plead.
He only shakes his head. “No.”
“I don’t want to argue with you.” I sound desperate, on the verge of breaking down.
His mouth tips into a small smile. His eyes are so, so soft, the petals of a poppy blooming in the sun. “Yes, you do. You love to argue with me.”
“No, I don’t,” I can’t help saying, and it only makes his smile broaden.
“Quit arguing, Fin.”
“What if you regret it?”
