He pulls back, this stunned smile on his face, but unlike every smile I’ve seen from him since I fled his room that night, this one reaches his eyes.This one is real.
“I love you too,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine.
I close my eyes, breathe in those words like the first gasp of air I’ve had in so long. Weeks. Years. A lifetime.
But I have to know . . . “Are you sure you’re not just confused?” I look back up at him, his face right there, warm against mine.
“I was never confused,” he says. “Never.”
My bliss burns even brighter. I grin at him and he grins back.
“We should get out of here,” he says. “Before they come after us.”
He’s not wrong; it’s only a matter of time before they get all the footage they need of Madison and Preston furiously making out under the arch, and Levi decides to storm over here and threaten lawsuits. I doubt we’ll make that any worse by running.
“I’m all for that,” I say. “But I’m not sure how we’ll manage to hijack one of the limos.”
“Good point. Do they have Uber here?”
I laugh. “We’re going to call an Uber to carry us off into the sunset? Are we going to stand around here and wait for this Uber?”
He gets a mischievous spark in his eye that makes me weak all over—as if I wasn’t already feeling that way. “Nope.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and hands it to me, then scoops me up again so fast, I let out a surprised squeal. “You’re calling the Uber, and I’m carrying you off into the sunset to wait for it somewhere that is not here.”
I’m not opposed to that. He holds me tight and starts jogging up the stairs out of the amphitheater while I search for the Uber app, bouncing in his arms with every step and giggling like a giddy maniac.
Or maybe just a woman who can’t believe she’s back in the arms of the man she loves.
“Holy god, there are a lot of stairs,” he says about halfway up, starting to get winded. “This will be way less romantic if I have to stop and stretch.”
“You’re a rock climber, man,” I say back, still laughing. “You can manage a few stairs. Just don’t drop me.”
“No way.” He grins at me. “I told you, Becks. I’ve got you.”
And he does. Oh, how he does.
