The man who loves the smell of books.
The man who dared to love me.
This is for you to have and to hold.
Willow’s loopingsignature was scrawled across the bottom of the page in permanent marker. I ran my thumb over the pages, making them fan as I inhaled the smell of paper and ink. My thumb caught on the second tab that marked a page toward the end of the story.
I opened the tab and immediately spotted what I was meant to read. A short passage had been highlighted and underlined.
“I dare you to give me your worst. Your hurt. Your hard days and your losses. Your flaws and scars. I dare you to let me love them the way that you have loved mine. I dare you to let me kiss the marks on your heart until you see them as paint strokes that form an unblemished, priceless work of art. I dare you to give me your dying breath, and trust that it will be the comforting whisper that caresses my memory until I am called to join you. So, dare me to love you, because you dared to love me.”
The book fell from my hand, the spine hitting the wood floor with a clatter as the world went silent.
She . . . She dedicated her book to me.
And she wrote . . .
I flopped back against the couch and ran my hand through my hair.Holy shit.
I grabbed the book and read the marked lines again and again and again. I was so engrossed in committing every word to memory that I didn’t notice the non-stop vibrating and dings coming from my phone.
I set the book down and looked at the screen. My social media notifications were out of control. The number kept getting higher and higher by the second.
“What the hell?”
I tapped into the app and immediately saw what had caused the mayhem.
Willow had posted a photo. Of us. Showing our faces. And she tagged me in it.
It was one of the many photos I had kept in my “Future Wife” album that she had asked me to text to her. It was of the two of us under the willow tree at sunset. Oranges and green melted together as the sunset dripped down from the heavens and kissed the earth.
The caption read, “Dare you to love me.”
Before I could make sense of it, a new notification popped up.Willow Winslet tagged you in a video.
I hunched forward on the couch, resting my elbows on my knees as I opened it up and hit play.
“Hi, everyone,” Willow said with a smile as she sat in front of an unidentifiable white wall. “It’s been quite a summer. A lot has changed in my life since I last posted. I know many of you are expecting this to be a book announcement, and it is. We’ll get to that. But first, I want to talk about this.”
She had inserted a clip of the two of us going at each other’s throats at Rom-Con, and I fucking laughed. She looked irate and I was eating it up.
The video cut back to Willow in front of the white wall. “It wasn’t my finest moment.” Her eyes softened as her smile widened. “But that one moment of me making an ass of myself brought me so many incredible moments after. If you’re new here, I’ll recap. Ryan Ford of The Ford Method dared me to date him for three months so he could prove that his method works. If he won and made me fall in love with him, I had to publicly endorse The Ford Method. If I didn’t fall in love with him, he would have to shut down his podcast.”
Willow took a deep breath and looked straight into the camera, staring into my soul. “To clear up speculation, it wasn’t a publicity stunt. We survived a 1,500-mile road trip after knowing each other for only a week and spent the entiresummer together in my hometown. But if there’s anything I learned about Ryan Ford that day at Rom-Con, it’s that he’s a man of his word. He dared me to take a chance, and I did. He said he would make me fall in love with him, and I did. I’m a woman of my word too. So, now you can hear it from me: this is my official endorsement of The Ford Method. But there is a caveat.”
My heart stopped.
“Bothpartners have to be involved for it to work. Love isn’t a one-way street. Being pursued so intentionally taught me a lot about myself. And it taught me how I need to love others.” Her smile widened. “Three months ago, Ryan Ford dared me to take a chance on love. And I’m so glad I did. So much so that I wrote a book inspired by it. So, I’m daring you. Give love a chance. Oh yeah”—she laughed—“and my next book,Dare You To Love Me,is coming out in January. Preorder it now. And Ryan, if you’re watching, I have a few more things I need to say to you.”
The doorbell rang. I bolted so fast I nearly crashed through the front door. An envelope fell as I yanked it open. I snatched it up and tore into it. A hotel key card fell into my hand.
The hotel Willow had been staying at during Rom-Con. The room number scrawled on the paper holder was the same as it had been that fateful week.
My heart beat like a drum as I grabbed only the necessities and bolted.
In general, I hated taking cabs, but the subway wouldn’t be fast enough. The second I was in the backseat, I was furiously trying to text her, but each message kept bouncing back.
Adrenaline rushed through my veins. I couldn’t sit still.
