“Paige.” I reach out and take her hands in mine. “Slow down. Breathe.”
“Right. Breathing.”
I exaggerate my inhales and exhales, and she follows my rhythm.
“Paige,” I say once she’s got some oxygen in her, “you have to know that was not what you thought it was. I would never do that to you. Ipromise.”
“I know.” She nods and squeezes my hands. “I know that. I just freaked out. I think I’m jet-lagged, and I didn’t even know if I would find you. Nabil said you would be at the hotel, and—”
“You talked to Nabil?”
She shrugs and gives me a little smile. “I had to find you somehow.”
I shake my head. “And here I was thinking he called just to check on me.”
We both laugh, still a little breathless.
“You flew all the way to LA just to see me.”
Even saying it out loud doesn’t make it totally real.
Paige shrugs. “I had to say it in person.”
“Say what?”
She drops my hands and places hers on my shoulders, staring up at me in the semi-darkness. I frame her face with my palms and feel like I’m holding the entire world.
“I love you, Youssef.”
My heart stops. I think I go into full-on cardiac arrest for a moment, and then it restarts and thumps so loud and fast it’s the only thing I can hear.
She loves me.
I’ve waited so many years to hear it, and standing with her now, I realize there could never have been a moment more perfect for it than this.
“I love you, Paige.”
She beams at me, that mega-watt smile of hers so few people have gotten to see, and I can’t wait a second longer.
I kiss her. I pull her to me and kiss her hard until we’re both gasping for breath, until all the fear is replaced with a fire burning hot in my blood, until the past is behind us and the future is ahead.
And then I kiss her again.
