I have the love I deserve.
Will I find love?
I have the love I deserve.
It had been here all this time. He had been there all that time. She had been too broken to see it. She had been casting love spells and asking for what had already been delivered to her.
Sam.
She had thought she was running toward love all her life, but she had been running from it. From something that felt too big, too risky, too dangerous. From something that felt dangerous in ways she hadn’t been able to face.
Because the truth was, she had chosen Ben because she knew she could survive this.
She’d run from Sam because she’d known that if she ever lost him, she would have to make serious changes. She would have to remake herself.
He had forced her to do that.
Maybe the magic had forced him to do that.
She had thought it was karma, but it was love all along.
The only way she could get that love, the only way she could have it, was by dismantling every barrier she had ever put in place.
“Sam,” she whispered against his mouth.
“Tell me this has nothing to do with him,” he said.
“It has nothing to do with him.” She touched his face, looked into his eyes. “Nothing. I told him I wanted a divorce days ago. I made that choice. I ... I can live without him. I can’t live without you.”
“Is this pity? Is this what you’re doing to keep me?”
“No. No. It’s not. I swear to God, Sam, I ... It’s not.”
Then they were kissing again, and she was sure his face was wet, but she didn’t stop kissing him, because then he would look and see that so was hers. That she was right there with him. Dissolving as they finally, finally tore this mint-condition relationship all to hell.
This was risky. This was a change.
But it was either be burned alive in this house on fire or take a risk and jump.
She was a whole goddamn burning house. That was the problem.
She had to jump outside herself, outside all these issues, in order to have a hope of being saved.
She just wanted some hope.
She just wanted him.
She’d kissed her share of men. She’d been so convinced that the reason it had never lit her on fire in the way she fantasized it might when she’d been a teenage girl was because fantasy was always going to be more potent than reality. But it clicked now, this obvious truth. The fantasy had always been Sam. No one had ever been him, so the others had fallen short of all she had ever wanted.
Of all she ever needed.
It was Sam.
She just needed him.
“I need to see you,” she said. “Naked. I need ... Oh God. Oh, Sam ...” She thought she was on the verge of having a panic attack, or maybe a heart attack. Maybe both.
“We can slow it down.” His words saidslow down, but his voice sounded like it was pained.
