“I’ve loved you since we were ten,” he said.
“Wait.” She put her fingers on his lips, and he kissed them, distracting her for a moment. “Since we were ten?”
“Give or take a year.” He shrugged like loving someone for twenty years was no biggie.
“I can’t believe you never said anything all these years.” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. She was so grateful and humbled by his devotion.
“You had me squarely pegged as a friend. I didn’t think you could ever see me as anything more.”
“I was too young and foolish to see what I was missing out on.” She ran her hand down his arm with a coy smile, and heat sparked in his eyes. “Now I know better.”
“I’m glad.” A husky note crept into his voice. “I’ve loved you for twenty years, but I truly fell in love with you when you belted out ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ like a warrior that one night.”
“I think I knew then, too.” She laughed as happy tears streamed down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumbs. “When you sang ‘All of Me,’ I so wished you were saying those words to me.”
“I was. I couldn’t hold them inside anymore, so I sang them to you.”
She leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips. “Why did you stay away all these months?”
“I wanted to give you the space to find yourself—to discover what you wanted from your life without interference from me. I just hoped that the life you chose will include me,” he said. “I wasn’t going to say anything today if you’d still been searching… but thank God, you have everything figured out. Because I didn’t know where to find the strength to walk away from you.”
“Oh, Jack,” she said in a choked whisper. Even though it nearly broke her not to see him for so long, she had needed tofigure out what she wanted on her own. And, of course, he had understood that. “Thank you for waiting for me. Through it all, you were the only thing I was certain of. Whatever life I imagined myself in, you were always in it.”
“Good”—he punctuated his simple statement with a kiss on her wrist—“because I have no intention of leaving your side ever again.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest, and she resisted the urge to pinch herself. Was this really happening? She linked her fingers through his, and the gentle pressure of his hand assured her this was real.
“I was going to win you back, you know,” she confessed, looking down at their hands. “I was developing a strategy.”
“A strategy? That sounds serious,” he teased. “Did you make a list?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” She grinned, thinking of the pink journal on her desk at home. “It says,Win Jack back.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day because you can check that right off. You have won me back. But you never lost me in the first place. I came to Hideaway today because I was desperate to feel close to you. Staying away from you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” His hand tightened around hers, and a glimmer of remembered pain flared behind his eyes—pain she understood only too well. To remind him that it was finally behind them—that they were together again—she caught his gaze and held it until a crooked smile tilted his lips. “Just so you know, I could never stop loving you. That’s like telling my heart to stop beating.”
“We can’t have that.” She slowly shook her head, wearing a tremulous smile. “You absolutely must love me forever, then.”
“You say that like I have a choice,” he said, making her heart melt into a puddle. “I love you. I’ve loved you since I was ten, and I’ll love you until I’m one hundred and ten.”
“I better start exercising as much as you do if we’re going to live until we’re a hundred and ten.” Laughter bubbled out of her.
“Jogging buddies forever.”
“Best friends forever,” she said, her eyes roaming over his beautiful face. “I love you, Jack.”
“I need you to say that again.” His voice was so low it was nearly a growl.
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you,” she happily obliged. “I love you so much.”
“I’ve been waiting twenty years to hear you say those words.” He leaned his forehead against hers. “God, I love you, Lizzy.”
“I love you, too,” she said again because he had waited so long—and so patiently—for her.
He sighed as though he was releasing a long-held breath. “Do you think we’ll ever get sick of hearing that?”
