Page 217 of The Sweetest Return

“If you take it, you’ll be on the road. Busy. Tired. Back in that world.”

“Yes.”

“And Cleo wants me traveling more. After Malibu, she thinks Saint Aurelia needs me in more rooms. New York. L.A. Maybe London. Paris if the partnership works out.”

His expression changed carefully.

“That’s good.”

“It is.”

“You earned that.”

“I know.”

“But it feels familiar,” he said.

I looked at him.

He understood before I had to explain the rest.

His arms tightened around me.

“Come here.”

“I’m already here.”

“Closer.”

I went.

He held me in the middle of that office, his awards around us, his future waiting on the desk, mine hovering somewhere between diamonds and departure gates.

“I’m not twenty-two,” he said near my temple.

“I know.”

“And you’re not either.”

“I know that too.”

“We’re not going to lose each other because our lives got big.”

“I want that to be true.”

“It is.”

“Dre.”

“No. Listen to me.” His hand moved up my back slowly. “We messed up before because we didn’t talk. Because I thought loving you meant letting you go quiet, and you thought choosing yourself meant you had to do it alone. That ain’t this.”

I breathed against his chest.

“It can’t be this,” he said. “You travel, we talk. I travel, we talk. We miss each other, we say that. We get scared, we say that too. We don’t make decisions out of old pain and call it maturity.”

My eyes burned.

“You make it sound simple.”