Six inches between us, he angles his head so our eyes meet. “You think I’ve been happy without you? That every time I wrote one of those postcards I wasn’t hoping you’d do exactly what I was telling you to do? That I didn’t want the reason you never sent the papers to be because you weren’t sure we were done either? Or I didn’t talk myself out of showing up at Old Vines a million times because I didn’t think I’d survive you telling me to leave again?” He pauses, our eyes battling. “That it’s easy forme to stand here and look at you like this and not be allowed to touch you the way that I want?”
“And Emma?” I challenge. “You’re telling me that you’ve just been sitting here and not using those condoms in your nightstand?”
He looks me square in the eyes. “I’m telling you that just because I haven’t spent every night alone doesn’t mean I haven’t been waiting for mywife.”
And just like that, my world flips. He’s given me clues. He’s said it without. But there it is: He’s been waiting. For me. Remy was right, Nash has been writing me postcards for eight years because he loves me.
My “what?” is barely above a whisper.
“You think you come back to me after all these years and I’m not going to do whatever I can to keep you? Think that all of this”—he sweeps his hand through the air, gesturing toward his house—“isn’t for you? Yes, she and I were seeing each other. But she was ready for more, and if you weren’t coming back, I thought it was time to try. That’s why I sent the last postcard.”
He pauses, and we breathe. Inhaling and exhaling every truth shared.
“I heard every word you said and spent the last eight years trying to forget you but doing nothing but waiting for the just-in-case day you did what I wanted, Rue.”
With that confession, and even if we are never more than we were, he owns me. Not only can I not marry Jonathan, I’ll never be able to marry anyone.
“You waited for me.”
I need to hear it again.
“Yes.”
With that yes, my need turns to wants.
I want his body pressed against mine.
I want my fingertips to trace the new scruff-covered lines of his jaw and his to trace the soft lines of my hips.
I want him to suck every finger.
I want to slip his pants down and drop to my knees.
And when we can’t wait any longer, I want him so deep inside me that I scream, while he says everything I haven’t heard him say for the last eight years.
Then I want to disappear into him so I never have to hear him say goodbye again.
Eyes wide open, I can see every second of it. Can feel him everywhere even though he isn’t.
And yet, I am engaged, and all I can say is: “I have a fiancé.”
“I have awife,” he counters.
“I have a fiancé,” I repeat, hoping one of us hears it.
He doesn’t back away or relent. “You have a husband.”
“I. Have. A. Fiancé.”
His jaw clenches. “And what if you didn’t?”
My mouth won’t let me lie, so I say nothing.
“If it was just us, would you want me to touch you?”
I’m a horrible person because I want to say yes.
He intuitively reads my silence, asking, “Where?”
