Page 102 of Her Rival

"I know."

"You're going to be okay because I'm going to be okay, and we're going to figure this out, and I'm taking a night because I take nights when things this big happen, and I'm coming back."

"Okay."

"I love you."

I had not said the words yet.

I hadn't even known they were coming out of my mouth until they were out of my mouth.

He froze.

I had to stand there in his kitchen for the rest of the time it took him to take in the words I hadn't realized I was going to say, and we both stood there in the new room of those words for what felt like a long time and was probably four seconds.

"I love you, Hartley," he said.

"I know."

"You knew."

"I knew."

"How long have you known."

"Possibly since the conference room. Definitely since the second interview. Officially since the kitchen on Friday night."

"Officially."

"Officially."

I took my hand off his face. I picked up my bag. I went to the front door.

He did not follow me. He'd figured out, probably four seconds after I'd said Brynn's, that the not-following was the correct version of the leaving, and he did the not-following, and the not-following was, possibly, the second-most loving thing anyone had ever not done for me.

I let myself out. I walked to the SUV. I drove down out of the hills.

The valley came up below me. The city lit up. I drove to my best friend's penthouse with the words I'd just said to a man on a stool in a glass house ringing in the cabin of the SUV around me, and I thought, with a clarity I hadn't previously had, that I'd said the thing because the thing had been ready to be said.

I had not planned to say it.

The body had said it.

The body had been carrying it a while.

I'd spent twenty-six years training my body not to say things it had been carrying, and the body had finally said one, and it had said the right one, on the right night, to the right person, in the right kitchen.

I drove. I did not cry.

I'd told a man I loved him for the first time in my adult life and I was about to spend the night at my best friend's penthouse with a glass of wine, processing the size of the life I was about to walk back into in the morning, and the man I'd said it to was at his kitchen island doing the same thing.

We were going to be okay.

I'd told him we were going to be okay, and I'd said it before I'd said the bigger sentence, and standing in his kitchen with my hand on the side of his face I'd believed both of them all the way down.

I drove.

The city came up to meet me.