Page 113 of Dancing in the Dark

Say it. Say it. Say it, dammit!

“I feel like a fraud. Like I have no right to say so with any semblance of confidence.”

“Sera—”

“But I love you.” Moisture makes her eyes glitter. “It feels good when I’m with you, even when, sometimes, we say douchey things. I question everything we are, every step we take toward a relationship, because loving you is not the same as loving Mia. It’s easy to know how I feel about her. How I would protect her for the rest of her life, and how I feel sick thinking about you taking her away from me.”

“I wouldn⁠—”

She lays her hand over my mouth, silencing me.

“It’s love, Charlie. Pure and protective and forever, which makes it really easy to grab onto and feel fully. But it’s different from how I feel about you, so then I doubt myself. Like maybe I’m doing it wrong.”

“You’re not doing it wrong,” I mumble beneath her palm. “Except maybe you could do it a little louder?”

Teary-eyed, she giggles. “I love you as best I know how. As fully as I can manage. I doubt myself sometimes, about a lot of things,” she sighs. “But when I think of a world where I don’t get to keep you, that same sick feeling fills my stomach. When you’re sad, I want to protect you. And the other night? At the club, when you said you would’ve married me if we met twenty years ago?” She takes a small sip of her wine, then leaning to my left, she sets the glass on the small side table. “I think that if we’d met twenty years ago, and if we’d married and made a life together…”

“What?” My heart skitters wildly out of control for every second she doesn’t finish her thought. “Sera?” Put me out of my misery, I’m begging you.

“I think we’d both still be here, happy as hell with the choices we made. That’s how I know.”

“That you love me?”

She drops her gaze, a smug smile teasing the corners of her lips. “I imagined it,” she murmurs. “I played the last two decades through my mind, but I changed every memory and made you mine.” Peeking up at me from beneath her lashes, she grins. “I couldn’t find a single moment in this imaginary existence where choosing you was wrong. Where it brought me anything but happiness. So… ya know…” She inches closer and feathers her lips over mine. “I love you.”

“Fuck.” I whip us to the side and slam my lips over hers, swallowing her squeal of delight and crawling between her legs. “I love you, too.” I palm her delectable thigh and grind against her fiery core. “I love you so fucking much. Flaws and all.”

Her eyes flash with insecurity. “My flaws?”

“No.” I reach between her legs and touch. Test. Pleasure. “My flaws.” I bury my fingers to the knuckles and inhale her sigh of ecstasy. “Your all.”

43

SERAPHINA

Anderson’s name flashes on my screen for the third time in an hour, his demands for attention both irritating and unwelcome. Even if his attempts took place between the hours of nine and five, I’d still be inclined to ignore him. But it’s almost dinnertime, the sun is almost touching the horizon, and Mia is, according to Cato’s most recent text, on the way, which means Anderson is shit out of luck.

The only phone calls I intend to accept tonight will be from Charlie himself, or from Justin.

Minka, too, probably, since she so rarely calls. And Cato, since he’s currently holding the key to my heart.

Anderson is not one of those people, so I send him to voicemail, then I go back to pacing in front of my television as nerves and exhilaration and a million other emotions sizzle within my veins.

Where is she?

How much longer do I have to wait?

And why, as a familiar voice drones on the television behind me, do I let Miranda London and her shitty smile encroach inside my living room when there are other, better, journalists with more integrity so easily accessible?

I exhale a frustrated grunt and search for the remote, lifting a couch cushion and finding it exactly where I always find it. How does it constantly end up under the cushions? Spinning again, I channel-surf and search until I find Tiffany Hewitt’s kinder, softer face instead.

Just like it did behind Miranda, a screen plays in the background of her segment, and on that screen are the faces of two exceptionally grumpy homicide detectives, Anderson and his I-practiced-this-in-a-mirror expression, and then… me, on the steps of City Hall.

In the foreground, reporters shout their questions.

Will the woman who washed up at the bay impede Mayor Lawrence’s dealings with the Chinese diplomats?

Has her death jeopardized Copeland’s business ventures with the foreign nationals?