“We’re not pathetic; you’re fucking pathetic,” a voice shouts.
A muscle in West’s jaw works. He sticks a finger between his collar and his neck. “No, I—I didn’t mean—”
I wrap my fingers around the microphone, overlapping with West’s. “We’re done here,” I say quietly.
He grimaces and lets his arm fall. “I can explain, I can say it better, apologize better. I’ll tell them you had nothing to do with it.”
I place my hand on his cheek. “I don’t need you to grovel to anyone but me, and you already did that in the form of a big-ass book.”
His lip twitches. “What if I want to?”
“You’ve apologized multiple times. It’s their choice what they do with your apologies, but I don’t need their approval. We’re done here.”
He hands the microphone to an extremely confused audience member and tips my chin up with his finger. Stunned silence fills the room as he brings his lips to mine. We miss the uproar that follows our kiss as we run out the back of the theater.
“Did Daphne know that you were coming?” I ask as he pulls me down a side hall and presses me up against a wall.
He brushes his nose along my cheek. “Yes. Apparently, she approves.”
“Hmm.” His kiss is soft but insistent, and it’s not long before I’m dizzy and overwhelmed, my hands, lungs, and heartfull of him. I break away with a gasp. “There’s one more thing we need to talk about before we go any further.”
He draws back, curious.
“I love you. I’ve loved you since forever, it feels like. Since our twelve-hour first date, at least. Or maybe it started when you put your arms around me in the snow, or before that, when we laughed about the word ‘heartsick’ in Dr.B’s class, thinking we were too clever to ever need it.”
West kisses me softly and then wipes a tear from my cheek. “For a girl who hates crying in public, you do it a lot.”
“And for a guy who hates PDA, you keep kissing me where people can see.”
He laughs and traces my lips with his thumb. “You made that up. I’ve always told you that I’ll kiss you anywhere you let me, as long as you’ll let me.”
Sothisis what it feels like to get everything you want. Happiness with no strings.
I relax into him as that lovely unspooling happens inside me. “That’s pretty romantic, West Emerson. Should I put it in a book?”
Epilogue
One Year Later
“What if theyrob the bank?”
West barks a loud laugh of surprise from across the small office. He turns to look at me, his fingers poised over the keyboard, his glasses resting on his nose. “Why would they rob the bank?”
“Because it’s fun!” I tilt my head to the side from where I’m stretched out on the couch, legs slung over the armrest. I squint at the paint samples taped to the wall over West’s head, trying to distinguish between the many shades of green. I thought it would be fun to repaint the office now that we spend so much time here. When I picked up a pretty blue paint sample, he suggested something more neutral.
Like pink?I asked, which earned me a wry smile.
Subtle as a brick, this man.
West laughs now and turns back around, fingers flying over the keys, filling the room with the gentle clacking that has become the soundtrack to my life. “ ‘Because it’s fun’ can’t always be character motivation,” he says.
“Agree to disagree.” Fun is the entire reason that West and Iare cowriting this outrageous genre mishmash of a book. It is ridiculous and silly and the most fun I’ve had in years. West isstilltyping. “What are you writing now?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Not another metaphor.”
“No. Still the same metaphor.”
