“I was going to call you, but my phone died,” I said, pulling back. “And I left my charger behind.”
“You left a lot of things behind,” Jamie whispered, his hands locked on my waist. “Like me.”
I swallowed. “Did I?”
“You did. So I decided to come to you.”
“You didn’t have to. I told Cal there was a misunderstanding as soon as I got here, and that I’d be back as soon as I could.”
Jamie’s eyes narrowed. “Is that so?” He shook his head once. “Because CalandAsh ledmeto believe you were gone for good.”
“Oh.” I blinked. “And… that’s why you came?”
Jamie nodded. “This was supposed to be my dramatic gesture.”
My stomach swooped, and I was pretty sure I owed Cal a fruit basket. Or a bottle of whiskey. Maybe a car.
Whatwasthe appropriate gift when your friend provoked the love of your life into flying halfway across the country to prove he loved you?
“I’m glad you’re here,” I whispered. “So, so glad.”
“And I’m glad you were coming back,” he said softly. “Even if it does mean that the whole speech I’ve been delivering to that plant over there for the last half hour is useless.” He smiled wryly. “Apparently talking to succulents is kind of my thing now.”
“I know,” I crowed. “And I love you for it. But I definitely want the speech, please and thank you.”
Jamie’s hands tensed on my waist. “Parker Hoffstraeder, I want you to come back to O’Leary with me…” He took a deep breath. “Or not.”
“Wow.” I raised an eyebrow. “That was the speech? Because the beginning was good, but the end could use some—”
Jamie put a hand over my mouth. “In my rehearsals, there were fewer interruptions.”
“Because it’s a plant, Jamie,” I said patiently. “Plants don’t talk back.”
Jamie looked behind me at my mom and dad. I could imagine what he saw: a one-two punch of breathless outrage and stoic skepticism. They were definitely finding no joy in this. But I was.
Oh, Isowas.
Jamie swallowed and squared his shoulders before he continued, “I didn’t want to tie you down, and I still don’t. But I want you. I want to be with you. Forever. Because nothing feels right when you’re not around. And I should’ve learned that lesson eleven years ago, but I didn’t. I can survive without you, but it’s not really living when you’re not there. So…” He swallowed again. “So, I’m here to say… whatever you want, Parks, you can have it. You want O’Leary? We’ll have it. We’ll rebuild your bar. Or build something else. A restaurant. A skyscraper. A botanical garden with thousands of tiny succulents in little colored, labeled pots. O-or if you want something different, something bigger? We’ll make that happen instead. Boston. New York. Or Arizona… I guess.” He looked around at the house, with all its harsh angles and glass, looking sort of bewildered. “Or we could travel like Ethan. Wherever you wanna go, whatever you wanna do, we can do it… I just… would really like… if we could… go… together.”
He sucked in a deep breath, like he’d exhausted all the oxygen in his lungs, and rolled his shoulder to ease the tension there. Then he nodded once, like he was putting the period at the end of a sentence.
Fucking adorable.
Holy shit. How was it possible to love someone this much? How was it possible to go from happy to miserable to worried to annoyed to happy, all in sixteen hours? I’d gone over a decade without feeling half as much as I felt with Jamie every single day.
“Be good if you’d say something right about now, Parks,” Jamie said.
From somewhere behind me, my dad snorted.
“Oh, right,” I muttered. “Well, I don’t have a speech because I’ve been at the hospital watching my dad eat Jell-O and watch the same stories on the news, over and over and over. But… I was gonna come back, Jamie. And Iamgoing to rebuild. Eventually. I already got the number of my dad’s lawyer friend, so I can push my claim with Unity Financial. And I was gonna talk to Dana about renting a place at the Crabapple for a while, in case I needed a place to stay while I convinced you to give us a shot. But I’m not going anywhere. I belong in O’Leary,” I told him. “And with you.”
Jamie sucked in a breath, then wrapped his arms around my waist and huffed in relief a second before his lips hit my forehead. “Okay, then. Okay.”
Behind me, I heard my mother huffunhappily.It wasn’t enough to kill the mood, but she was trying.
I turned within the circle of Jamie’s arms and narrowed my eyes at her. “Enough. This is what I want.”
“I promise, Beatrice, I will do anything to make him happy. You know I love him, and that I always have,” Jamie said over my head.
