Time stops. I blink, not wanting to break this fantasy by saying something. Am I imagining this? Do I want him to love me so badly that my brain conjured up this scene out of desperate hope?
He’s looking at me with such tenderness, such vulnerability. It’s what I’ve always wanted. What I’ve needed from him.
Micah smiles at me, soft and uncertain, and reaches out his hand to cup my cheek. His palm is warm against my skin, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone. “I think I’ve loved you for a long time. I just didn’t know it until someone came along and tried to take you from me.”
My vision blurs as tears flood my eyes. I blink, and they spill down my cheeks in hot tracks. This is a dream. It has to be. He isn’t saying what I think he’s saying. Any second now, I’ll wake up in my bed, alone, and realize this was just another cruel fantasy my heart created.
“Please don’t go. I know I’ve been an idiot. I’ve been so stupid for so long.” His voice cracks slightly, and I can see fear in his gray eyes—fear that I don’t feel the same way, that I’ll leave anyway. “Is it possible that we could try… that we could be more than friends?”
I can’t speak. I can’t even breathe. My lungs have forgotten how to work. Micah really is saying what I’ve longed for him to say all these years. My heart swells so large I think it might burst right out of my chest. “You love me?” I ask, my voice cracking on the words.
Micah catches a tear with his thumb, gently wiping it away. “Yes. I love you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone.”
A shiver runs through me—part cold, part overwhelmingemotion that has nowhere to go but out through my skin. Micah shrugs out of his jacket and places it over my shoulders. The leather still holds his body heat, wrapping me in warmth and his scent. I hadn’t realized how chilly it had become, the sun now halfway gone, the sky deepening to purple and indigo.
I shove my arms through the sleeves and hug it to myself, drowning in the jacket and in the moment.
“I love you too,” I say in a whisper, as if saying it out loud would make this magical moment dissipate like morning mist.
“You do?” His voice is so hopeful it almost makes me laugh.
“Yes. I even wrote my feelings in my story, and you didn’t see it.”
He shakes his head. “What? Your book?”
I laugh—a sound caught between a sob and pure joy—too elated to hold it in any longer. “Yes. I was trying to tell you. But you didn’t get it. I thought you looked at me like a sister.”
“I did. Until that kiss.” Micah scoots nearer to me, pulling me into his warm chest.
I snuggle against him, fitting into the curve of his body like I was made to be there.
“I was so confused when it was the most amazing kiss I’d ever had.” His voice rumbles against my ear. “I thought we were just friends and that I was the worst friend in the world because I was suddenly very attracted to you, and you were dating River.”
I shake my head against his chest. “We’d broken up by then. But River didn’t want me to tell you. He wanted to see if you’d get jealous.”
“Oh, I did.” Micah’s laugh is half embarrassed, half fierce. “I kind of wanted to punch him in the throat every time I saw him put a hand on you.”
I don’t know why, but this makes me even happier. Thethought of Micah jealous, territorial, wanting me for himself, sends a thrill through me. “You did?”
“Heck yeah. He was driving me crazy. I was seriously going nuts. I wanted you for myself so badly.”
“Then his plan worked.”
Micah kisses the top of my head, his lips lingering in my hair. “Yeah. It worked. I fell so hard for you I don’t think there’s any going back.”
I pull back so I can look at him, needing to see his face when I ask this. “What happens if…” The question sticks in my throat, too terrifying to voice.
“If what?” His eyes search mine, gentle and patient.
“If we break up,” I say quietly, the words like stones dropping into still water.
Micah shakes his head firmly. “I don’t know. All I know is I can’t watch you leave without doing everything in my power to get you to stay with me. I need you in my life, Cricket. You’re a part of me, in the most meaningful way possible. And I have a chance at having something most people only dream of—a love so deep and wide that nothing can hold it back. I’m not going to give that up.”
Warmth spreads through me, radiating from my chest to the tips of my fingers and toes as I stare into his beautiful gray eyes. He’s looking at me like I’m his whole world, like I’m the answer to every question he’s ever had.
“Then I won’t give up either,” I whisper.
Micah’s expression shifts to relief and joy and desire all tangled together. He slips his hand around the back of my neck, his fingers threading through my hair, and pulls me to him with exquisite slowness. He’s giving me time to pull away, to change my mind, even though we both know I never will.
