“Actually,” Grant says, plucking pieces of the bushes off his button-down. “Agent Lamott and I are working on having it all transferred into your new legal name. Mom was managing your family wealth for years via a trust. You are the O’Connell heir,Clover. We’re already working with our family attorneys. Who are also your family attorneys.”
“Family attorneys,” I mumble. “That’s…”
“Freaking amazing,” Madi laughs. “Clover! That means you don’t have to write what your editor wants anymore. You can write for you, what you love.”
My head swims with all these new details that look like dollar signs.
“Too much all at once?” Valen asks with an easy smile.
I nod and feel the pressure in my head easing.
“These are just details, Honeybee. We have a lifetime to sort them out.”
“That means you’re really doing it?” I ask, hating that I still need confirmation, but also accepting that this is who I am. “You’re moving here? To Happiness? And all my mismatched furniture, throw pillows, and collection of snow globes won’t bother you?”
“If you’ll have me. But that reminds me. Wait here—just one second.”
I laugh with my whole body as he runs toward his SUV. “Valen, I’ve been waiting for you for fourteen years. I think I can wait one more second.”
He’s back before I finish speaking with a plastic bag in his hands. When he’s in front of me, he reaches into the bag and pulls out a…snow globe.
“I saw it on our road trip,” he says sheepishly. “I never got the chance to give it to you.”
“At the bookstore.” My voice is breathy and full of wonder.
He bought me a snow globe.
Valen presses a button on the bottom of it, and the sparkly glitter swirls to life around a stack of books.
It’s perfect.
“You won’t mind having a roommate who never turns the lights off, fills every inch of the bathroom counter with stuff, and sometimes shakes all her snow globes just to see them all sparkle?”
“That all sounds perfect to me, except for one thing. A roommate, Clover? Really?”
“Roommate,” I laugh. “Partner. Person I yell at when he leaves the toilet seat up.” I press to my toes and kiss him just because I can. “The only man I love?—”
He catches my face in his hands and holds me there, staring at me as though I’m the only person who matters.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for the years I’ve missed,” he says. “I’ll be here for every nightmare, every panic attack, every moment you need someone to hold your hand. I’ll learn how to be still. How to stay. How to be the kind of man who deserves you.”
“You already are, Valen,” I whisper. “You always were. You just forgot for a little while.”
His eyes soften, like a door that’s been locked for twenty years finally cracking open. I watch the moment he decides to believe in himself, in us, and the guilt he’s been carrying no longer defines him.
The sky opens around us, the rain coming down in thick sheets that send our friends and family running for cover.
“We have one more thing to check off your list, Honeybee.”
I frown in confusion as my friends cheer behind him on the porch.
“It’s raining,” he says.
I blink up at him.
“Dancing in the rain,” he whispers, before taking my hand and guiding me down the steps. “It’s on your list, so we have to do it.” His words are so soft, so gentle, I can’t get a hold of my emotions.
The rain soaks us instantly. It’s cold. Shocking. Perfect.
