I shook my head.
He was crushed.
“I think that maybe we need to accept that we were impactful people in each other’s lives and move on,” I told him, trying to keep my voice steady.
“I can’t,” he sobbed. He fell to his knees in front of me. “Lexi, I can’t.”
“Sometimes self-care is saying no,” I said gently. “We can still be friends.”
“Lexi,” he said simply as the rain drenched him. “I don’t want to be your friend. I want to wake up next to you every morning. I want to bring you coffee in that eyesore of a mug you like. I want to tell you every day that I love you. I want you to know that you’re the most important person in my life. I want to adopt a plant with you or a puppy or have a baby with you. I want to marry you. I want you to be mine for the rest of my life.”
He grabbed my hands.
“People like to say that they are willing to die for the person they love, but dying’s easy. I will live for you, really live. I’ll shop for furniture and memorize all the songs you love and surprise you with weekends in Florida to visit your parents. I’ll write youlove notes and leave them in your underwear drawer, and yeah, occasionally they’ll be snarky and they’ll probably be written in black ink, but sometimes to surprise you I’ll steal one of your pink gel pens and write you a love poem.”
He kissed my hand.
“Lexi, I love you, not just for what you’ve done for me—expanding my world, giving me my family, my friends, enriching my life—but for who you are. Your crazy red hair that I love, the way you laugh when you find something utterly delightful, the way you prop your sunglasses on your nose, the way you flop on a towel on the beach like you’re in heaven.”
Gosh, I was still so in love with this man.
“You want us to move on, taking the knowledge that we’ve impacted the other with us into the future. But I can’t. Sure, I might continue to exist, perhaps be happy eventually, but I won’t be whole, not like I am with you. You fit perfectly in my heart. But if you really want me to go,” he said, standing up, “I will. I don’t want to be like my father, ruining your life with my obsession.”
Green eyes bored into mine.
“Know this. I will always love you. I will always wait for you—ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, when we’re old and gray and you decide you want to give me another shot, I’ll be waiting there for you. I’ll always wait for you. Even though you deserve better. Maybe you’ll find someone who loves you more than me. But I’ll never find anyone I love more than you. I’ll always love you, Lexi.” He reached out to stroke my face gently, his fingers trailing through the rain droplets.
I was crying now, my hands over my face. Did I really want to walk away from Grayson? I wondered what my life would be like. Would I meet someone else? Maybe, or maybe not. Would I be happy? Sure. I could find happiness anywhere. But I didn’t think I’d ever find what I had with Grayson. I imagined him waiting,waiting, for years, decades, like he’d done for his mom. I knew he meant it: He would wait for me forever.
And now I was full on, snot running down my face, sobbing.
“You know,” I said, reaching in my pocket for a soggy tissue. “Someone once told me to stop being so naïve.”
“He might have been incorrect,” Grayson said softly.
“I think he was,” I told him. “Because I believe in fairy tales and handsome heroes with tragic backstories and happily ever afters. I believe in love, and I believe that we can become better people.”
“Lexi, I want to be your happily ever after,” Grayson said, resting his hands on my shoulders.
“I also believe I love you, and I believe that you make me happy,” I said, smiling up at him. “I want a happily ever after, but more importantly, I want it with you.”
He gathered me against him, tipped my head back, and kissed me, softly at first then harder like he never wanted to let me go, like he was finally home.
“I love you,” he breathed. “You are my bliss.”
“And you’re my happy ending.”
Grayson kissed me again, swinging me around.
And sure, it wasn’t warm romance-movie rain—it was an unseasonably cold torrential downpour—but a moment, a person, didn’t need to be perfect to be wonderful.
Grayson set me down.
“Your poor suit. The dry cleaners are going to be annoyed,” I said, trying to brush the mud off.
He kissed me again.
“Don’t worry about that. You’re not my assistant anymore. You’re my girlfriend, and I want to make you happy and give you anything your heart desires.”
