Page 109 of Up To No Good

My attention?

A startled laugh burst out of me.“This was a successful way to do it.”

“Go big or go home,” he drawled.

This made it so easy to forget the reason I’d left.All of it.I wanted to throw myself in his arms and not let go.But I looked back at Calvin.I couldn’t say what I was thinking in front of all these people.

“I get why he did it,” Calvin said.“It’s, uh”—he glanced around—“not normal, but it was because he loves you to a level … well, I hope I love someone like that one day, just maybe a little less intense.”

He loved me.He’d said it, but until Calvin repeated it, that hadn’t sunk in.

Forge was watching me.The desperate pleading in his eyes was impossible to ignore.

“Are you sure?”I asked him, afraid to believe something that might crush me to a point I couldn’t come back from.

Forge reached out and took my hand, tugging me to him.“I’ve never been so fucking positive about anything in my life.You came into my world and changed everything.All for the better.You’re my light, my source of air, and I will do whatever you ask of me if you will just come back home.”

Home.A place I’d lost.That had been ripped from me.

My eyes stung as emotion clogged my throat.I had a new home now.I’d always mourn the one I’d lost, but there was happiness in the one I’d found.Peace and safety.Also more excitement and thrill than I’d ever considered.But I wanted it.I wanted him.

“I’m not leaving without you, Pickles.I’ll sleep outside your door, follow you, haunt you, whatever I gotta do.”

“He’s not lying.He slept outside the apartment door the past two nights,” Calvin said.

“You did?”I asked.

He nodded.“Calvin wasn’t ready to listen to me just yet.Took some convincing.”

A giggle slipped past my lips, followed by a sob.My emotions were all over the place.

“Let’s go home.”I whispered words I’d never expected to say again and mean them the way I did right now.

My feet left the ground as Forge picked me up and covered my mouth with his.I heard the cheers and clapping around us, but none of that mattered.Not when my soul felt whole and my heart was beating once again.