I watched him, hopelessly in love, and he looked back at me, heavy with expectation, and I realized a fundamental truth: in every one of his smiles, I was there.
I was the one who made him smile.
Like a boy who had been fighting monsters for a long time and would continue fighting them, but with me by his side.
I would never understand why fate had thrown us together.
I couldn’t explain why my heart had chosen him of all people.
Neil was the messiest, most flawed person in the world; someone I should have steered clear of, but for some crazy reason, he had me under his spell.
He turned my life upside-down, gave me wings, and showed me how to fly to another land.
Neil and I were the result of a chance meeting, like when the moon first met the darkness.
We were surprising and inexplicable.
A coming together destined to last a lifetime and to astonish anyone who witnessed us.
And that was called love.
Neil and I, we were in love.
The chaos we made together—it waslove.
I had fought for him, and I would do it again a million times over. I had listened to my feelings. Some might say I was too forgiving or too naive, but despite being just a regular girl with her whole life ahead of her and an empty bag waiting to be filled with new experiences, I’d managed to overcome all of my fears, every bit of common sense, and all limitations to capture the heart of a man I’d once thought unobtainable.
I had been strong and tenacious because I had always known that it was deep within those honey-colored eyes that my future lay.
29
“I had my family and a genuine bombshell waiting at home for me.”
Neil
I opened my desk drawer and slid out the pack of Winstons.
I’d made a deal with Babygirl that I’d only smoke three a day, but I was already on my fifth.
I’ve heard it said that men change with time as they grow and mature, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s bullshit. Ten years later, I definitely considered myself a better man—a little bit better—but I wasn’t a different one.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I glared at plans for the theater I was renovating. I was exacting, especially when it came to work, and I was never satisfied until I’d achieved the highest possible level of perfection in anything I designed. “I’m not convinced. I think we need to redo it,” I told my colleague, Sharon Smith. She was about my age, bleach-blond and slender with a pair of absolutely sinful lips. She was the kind of woman I could pick out from a distance: dangerous, seductive, and dead set on getting whatever she wanted.
In the past, I might have tried to get her into bed, but I was working to control my obsession with blond women.
“Right now?” Sharon asked in confusion. She put her hands on her slim hips, which were covered in a knee-length pencil skirt that only highlighted the curve of her ass.
And it was a nice ass, for sure.
Standing between us, however, was my large desk and my even larger loyalty to my woman.
Yes, loyalty.
Despite the fact that she often gave me sly little glances or innuendos, I had never for a second considered fucking Sharon. I had my family and a genuine bombshell waiting at home for me.
My Babygirl was a potent combination of incomparable beauty and intelligence.
Never in a million years could I have replaced her with someone else.
