I pressed on. “‘I would not wish any companion in the world but you.’”
“William Shakespeare,The Tempest. Wait…”She leaned to the side and glanced over at me. “Why are these all romantic? Are you…” Her eyes turned solemn, almost scared. But then something more burned through. Desire? Hope? Determination? “Keep going.”
I nodded. “‘They would sit for hours, reading aloud to each other, lost in the timeless world of the written word.’”
“Charlotte Brontë,Villette.” Her gaze skittered over my face, searching. “Is that what it would be like? For real? We’d read together?”
I looked into her beautiful, nervous eyes and said very seriously, “I’m just your professor, reciting literature quotes. But hypothetically, yes, whoever I end up with, we are definitely reading together. We’ll have our very own two-person book club.” I smiled. “Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head. “No. Don’t stop.”
I hoped this next one wouldn’t overwhelm her. “‘I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.’”
She bit her bottom lip, her cheeks flushing pink. “Henry Ward Beecher,Life Thoughts.”
This next quote was even riskier. It said everything I felt. But it had stuck with me ever since the first time I’d met her. It described that moment in my parents’ kitchen nine years ago perfectly.
My gaze anchored to hers. “‘In that single moment, the course of my life was altered forever. I would never be the same, for she had claimed my soul.’”
Her eyes were more serious than I’d ever seen them. “Ash,” she whispered as she ducked under the bill of my cap and pulled my forehead to rest against hers.
“Tally,” I whispered, my voice almost inaudible.
“Oscar Wilde,” she said, her words a mere tiptoe, her breath puffing against my lips. “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
We stayed that way, forehead to forehead, breathing together. I sure hoped Maisy could do this without me guiding her because I wasn’t going to move a muscle.
After a minute, Tally sat up and I thought the moment had passed. But then she swung her leg over the saddle horn so that she was riding side-saddle, her torso turning to me. Sheflipped my cap backward. Then her hands hooked around my neck and her nose pressed into my cheek.
I chuckled, my insides going haywire. But, for the first time ever when it came to her, I was feeling a bit brave. “I think she likes me,” I murmured.
She nodded, her nose still smashed into my dimple. “She does. A lot. More than she’s ever liked anyone.” Her words caressed my cheek. “And it scares her.”
The relief of hearing her finally say it hit me like a tsunami. I took a deep, full breath as if it were the first of my existence. Without a doubt, it was the biggest breath I’d taken since the day we met.
We stayed right there, frozen, her nose nuzzled in my cheek, Maisy moving beneath us.
Tally’s thumb traced along my jaw.“Are you always going to ask permission before you touch me?”
“Yes, if that’s what you want.” I glanced up only long enough to notice that we were entering the field where the little house was.
Tally’s fingernails scraped softly against my scalp, giving me a massage at the nape of my neck. “Even if it’s for the rest of my life?”
That sounded like commitment. Big commitment. I leaned into her nose, fighting off a full-toothed grin. “Yeah. Even if it’s for the rest of your life.”
“And if I wanted you to go to therapy with me, would you?”
“Yes.”
Her fingers trailed along the sides of my neck. “Even if it meant you heard things you didn’t want to hear and learned things that made you uncomfortable?”
“Yes,” I said around the softball in my throat. “I want to know everything. Even the hard stuff. Whatever you want me to know. It’s not going tochange how I feel.”
She mulled that over. “And if I struggle and sometimes push you away, you’ll be patient and help me remember you’re a good guy?”
“Yes.”
She leaned back to look me in the eye. “Promise?”
