I take a deep breath. Even if she doesn’t feel the same way, I am lucky to have the opportunity to say these words to her. I have to tell myself this or else I’ll just close up, and how would that make me any different from my mother?
“Clover. I have spent most of my life loving you. Even when I didn’t know what the feeling was. I don’t know who I am without loving you, and when I said it back to you when we were teenagers, my only regrets were that I didn’t say it first and I didn’t say it as… me.”
Her lips part.
“Wait,” I say. “Just please let me get this out. I need you to hear this and if you still want to say whatever it is you’re about to say afterward, then please do.”
“Okay.” Her eyes are bright and awake now.
“I never thought I would have you back in my life. I never thought I would be so lucky. I didn’t deserve it and I still don’t.”
Her brow furrows and I have to resist the urge to smooth away her worries with my thumb.
“I want this to be the beginning. I want to take you on dates and spoil you and eat grilled cheese with you. I want you to make fun of me and I want to be bad at things with you. I want to go to those stupid painting parties with you. I want to travel with you and watch you see something amazing for the first time. I want to be there when you take over the world by day and then listen to you make those little, sighing giggly noises you make in your sleep by night.”
“I do not make—”
My arched brow silences her and she shrinks back with a coy smile. “I want to wake you up in the filthiest ways you can imagine. I want to be old and horny with you. I want our kids to be so embarrassed by us and then I want their kids to feel the same. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it. But I am greedy and spoiled and I am here begging for something I will never be worthy of: you.”
My chest is heaving after not taking a single breath as I wait for her response. For her to tell me that life isn’t fair and you can’t have everything you want.
“Are you done?” she asks, like I’m a child who’s just thrown a tantrum.
I nod, and she flings herself at me so hard that we nearly break both our noses.
“Shit, that hurt,” I tell her.
She brushes her nose against mine gently this time. “Pain builds character.”
When she tries again, her lips are soft and slow, the perfect antidote to my manic confession. “I love you too.” She presses her forehead to mine. “Sometimes I hate you for making me feel this way.”
“Oh.” The balloon of hope in my chest begins to deflate.
“But I don’t want this to end either.”
She presses a hand to my heart, her palm warm and calming.
It’s all so goddamn poetic. Sharing each other fully, physically and emotionally, in the place where it all began. Our lips join in slow and lazy kisses until we fall asleep wrapped up in the certainty of each other.
When I close my eyes, I go back to the beginning and relive it all over again in my dreams. This time, the painful parts are easier to bear, because now I know that in the end, Clover Rowan Walsh loves me.
CHAPTER 30
Clover
When we wake up in the morning, we christen the kitchen table with my leg slung over Bennett’s shoulder. I feel self-conscious at first with the morning light pouring in, but the way his eyes darken as he watches me helps to push the doubt out of my head.
In a matter of eight hours, we have already had more sex than I had ever had in my life before last night.
The whole drive back to campus, I keep looking at him, like he might disappear or like last night was just my imagination. I’m sore too, but it’s something I feel oddly proud of.
Sydney was in a virtual meeting when we left, and my mom had already gone to work. There was a note for us on the marble table in the foyer, propped up against the arrangement of fresh flowers.
Benny and Clover—
I would like to take you both out on my birthday. More to come.
—Mom/Syd
