Page 42

“Like when you’re working on something and you’re feeling really inspired, you chew on your bottom lip.” My fingers fly up to my lip, and I look up at him with wide eyes. “Or that when you wake up in the morning, you have to just sit on the side of the bed for, at least, five minutes before you can get out of bed. And when I kiss you, your entire body goes lax in my arms like you feel safe enough to just let go around me.”

“Trey,” I whisper, tears in my eyes because he really has been paying attention to everything I do. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Sometimes, words aren’t needed.”

He sets the food down and comes over to me. His arms wrap around me, and he pulls me into him again before claiming my lips in a sweet kiss that has me melting in his hold. When he pulls away, he looks over to the coffee table where the food is set up and sighs.

“Come on, let’s eat. I just heard your stomach growl again, and I’m concerned that it’s just gonna start eating itself soon.”

Laughing, I let him lead me over to the couch where he kisses my hand before handing me my favorite plate of comfort food and turns on the TV for a perfect night in.

* * * *

My love,

I have a surprise for you…are you ready?

I was digging through some old boxes in the garage, and I found some notebooks from college. In one of them was the very first letter I ever wrote you and no, it wasn’t the one on our wedding day. The day we met, after we got home from spending all day and night at that 24-hour diner, I sat down at my desk, my head and my heart so full that I knew I just had to get it out and I wrote to you. I can’t remember now if I ever had any intention of giving it to you but I want you to have it now. I want you to hear what I had to say to you after I had just met you. I love you today, tomorrow, and forever.

XOXO

Flipping the page down on the bed, I grab the other piece of paper that was folded up with this letter and open it.

Lizzy,

I know that I just dropped you off at your dorm but there’s just so much swimming in my head, and it’s crazy that I miss you. I’ve only spent twenty-four hours with you but I miss you like crazy as I sit here in my room without you. I’m going to do my best to get this all out but my head is in a million different directions right now so bear with me. Yesterday started out so completely ordinary for me that it seems hard to believe it’s going to be a day that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. But as soon as I tripped over your feet, I knew that’s what would happen. I’ve never felt this way in my entire life, and maybe it should scare me, but it doesn’t. I’m so sure that I’ve met the girl I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

You are the most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met, and I think I could sit and listen to you talk for days. You enthrall me. There is this amazing light that shines out of you and people gravitate toward it. I know that I’m going off track here but I can’t stop it. You’re the type of woman that inspires a man to write sonnets. Okay, that was cheesy, I know, but I could seriously go on for three pages about the way your eyes sparkle or the way your laugh tugs at my heart in the best and strangest way. The first time you looked at me, I felt like I was looking into your soul, and something just clicked into place inside me. It was this calm like I’ve never felt before, and I never want to lose that. Just being around you is addicting.

I need to go get some sleep now but I’ll be seeing you again soon. I’m sure of it. Oh and Lizzy… I think I’m in love with you.

XOXO

I wipe the tears away, a mixture of laughter and sobs spilling out of me as my dad describes everything I’ve been feeling for Trey and wonder what my mom’s reaction would have been to receiving this letter the day my dad wrote it. Smiling, I shake my head because she probably felt exactly the same way. I mean, they got married only thirteen days later. She took a leap, and I know if I ever want a shot at what they had, I need to do the same. I just don’t think I’m ready yet.

* * * *

My knee bounces as I look up at the clock again, counting down the seconds until he’ll be here. We spent the last two days holed up in my apartment together, and neither one of us was real excited when he had to go back into work tonight. It’s absolutely insane how much I’ve missed him in the past eight hours. What’s even more insane is when I gave him my spare key and told him to just let himself in when he got here. It’s the farthest I’ve ever gone in a relationship with a guy, and the fact that I so easily handed my key over to him without any hesitation kind of freaks me out. I’m freaking out because I didn’t freak out. Or maybe I’m just finally losing my mind.

I hear the key in the lock and I jump up, rushing to the door. I reach it just as it swings open and he charges into the apartment, wraps his arms around me, and kicks the door shut with his foot, only releasing me long enough to lock it again before he’s crushing me to him.

“I missed you,” he whispers, his breath fanning across my face as he claims my lips in a kiss that would be more appropriate after six months at sea instead of just eight hours at the bar. But my desperation matches his, feeds off his, and I find that those measly eight hours felt like forever to me, too. God, how do I ever let him leave my bed? He and I could just get lost in our own little world endlessly. Not even forever would be enough.

“You were only gone for a few hours,” I breathe out as his mouth moves down my neck, trying to make sense of just how much I missed him, too.

“Doesn’t matter, baby. The moment I step away from you, I miss you.” He starts walking us down the hallway. I can’t see where we’re going between his assault on my mouth and neck but I don’t need to. I know there’s only one place that he and I want to be right now. When he’s not here, this growing obsession I have for him concerns me a lot but when he’s here, I can’t question it. It feels so right that I have absolutely no argument.

“Crazy,” I whisper against his lips as he lifts me off the floor and my legs wrap around his waist. His long strides eat up the rest of the distance to my bed, and he lays me down gently on my back, still refusing to release me.

“The only crazy here is how crazy I am about you, Ad. I can’t kiss you enough. I can’t touch you enough,” he says, his voice rough with his need as he drags his fingers down my side gently, and I shiver. “I feel like I’m drowning sometimes, and I want to drown in you. I don’t want to come up for air if it means that I have to leave you.”

An intense emotion that I can’t even describe hits me as he repeats some of my same thoughts back to me, and I feel tears sting my eyes. Surely, something that feels this amazing, that takes me to such highs, will kill me sooner rather than later. But do I care right now, in this moment, as Trey sucks and nips a path down my neck? No.

“So, so crazy,” I whisper again, stroking his face, and he smiles softly before leaning in and kissing me again, this time softer, almost reverent. I thread my fingers through his hair as he starts kissing down my neck and bunches my shirt up just underneath my boobs. He moves down, scattering kisses on my stomach before letting out a little growl and biting my hip. I suck in a breath as desire pools between my legs.

“How in the hell did I ever leave you earlier?” he whispers against my skin, and I shiver, wondering how I ever let him leave. I’m desperate to feel him against me, skin on skin, and I wiggle underneath him, letting out a little whimper.

“Take your clothes off, Trey.”