“Oh my god, you crazy man, I love you too,” I whisper back.
This is real.
He’s here.
Squeezing me tighter while his breath whooshes out of him. “You don’t have to say it just because I did. You don’t have to love me back. But I had to tell you. You deserve to know.”
My heart nearly bursts.
Of all the tossing and turning I’ve done at night this past month, telling myself not to drift into fantasies of him coming to tell me he loves me, never—never—did those dreams I wished I didn’t have include him telling me I didn’t have to love him back.
That he loved me no matter how I felt about him.
I pepper his face with kisses. “Fletcher. I love your heart and I love your determination and I love the way you love your dog and I love the way you see things when no one thinks you’re watching, andI love you. I loveyou.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I?—”
Thisman.
He’s making me be highly unprofessional.
But when a man’s being aman, there’s only one thing to do.
And that’s kiss him the way I’ve wanted to kiss him for weeks.
And shudder in absolute relief that he’shere, that he would come all this way to apologize, that he’s kissing me back and holding me like nothing else in the world will ever matter to him the way that I do.
I don’t need to be someone’s world to live a happy life.
But the utter joy that’s blossoming in my soul at Fletcher being here is undeniable.
I don’tneedthis. But I will absolutely bask in it.
“I brought you a dozen cookies,” he says between kisses.
“You didn’t have to bring me anything but you.”
“Have we met?”
I laugh and kiss him again.
Fletcher’s here.MyFletcher. Smart-ass Fletcher. Vulnerable Fletcher. Determined Fletcher.
He came all the way here for me.
Forus.
And it’s not until the auditorium has somehow emptied itself and we’re alone that I realize what I’ve missed.
The ’stache is back.
And even with that monstrosity on his upper lip, he’s never been more attractive than he is right now.
42
