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By the time we step inside, I’m still turning over a dozen different ways to answer her, and every one of them feels either too careful or too dangerous.
I let her go in first.
The moment the door clicks shut, she spins toward me like holding her thoughts in any longer might kill her.
“Before you say anything, I know how this might sound,” she says quickly. “And maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, only I’m tired of pretendin’ I don’t know what’s happening right in front of me. I know I laugh things off, Alex. I know I make light of things. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel ‘em.”
I open my mouth, but she’s already going again.
“I’m not some silly girl who can be smiled at and patted on the head and expected to be grateful for the notice. And I’m sure as hell not some breed mare to be looked at one way one minute and spoken to another the next. I’m too good for that, and I know it.”
“Róisín—”
“And I care about our friendship,” she rushes on, words tumbling faster now. “More than I probably ought to, especially if you’re leavin’, which is exactly why I should maybe have kept my mouth shut. But I won’t pretend what happened in my room did not mean everything—”
She breaks off to drag in a breath, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed deeper now.
“So if I’ve made a holy show of myself, there it is. But I’d rather do that than have you think I’m the sort of woman who’d be content with being made a convenience of. I’m not. I won’t be. And I won’t sit here, waitin’ for a man who won’t wait for me.”
Then she stops, finally, her chest rising and falling too fast, her eyes locked on mine like she’s bracing for me to laugh, or let her down gently, or say something that makes her wish she’d never opened her mouth.
I stare at her, momentarily speechless.
Because for all the panic in her voice, for all the indignation and nerves and pride, all I can think is that I’ve wanted no one more than I want her right now.
So I step as close as she’ll allow.
“Friendship with you is fine,” I say quietly. “Acceptable. Safe, even—easy laughs, good company. It would keep me in your life.”
My hand finds her waist. I feel the tremor that runs through her.
“But I’d be lying to myself every single day if I didn’t tell you that accepting you as a friend would mean I was settling. What I want is to be yours, Rosie.”
Her breath catches, eyes widening. “Yours?”
“Mine,” I add. “I want you to be all mine. I want to be the man you come to. The man you choose. The man you think of before all others.”
“What if I said I wanted the same?” she whispers. “For the rest of my life… what if I said that this is all I’d ever want?”
I do the one thing that feels truest in that moment.
I go down on my knees in front of her.
Her eyes widen at once. “Alex—”
“No. Let me have this.”
I take her hands before I lose the nerve to say any of it right. My thumbs brush over her knuckles.
“As you know, I had something else in mind for us,” I tell her. “For today. For you.”
A faint crease touches her brow, but her mouth still curves.
“I had words for it. Better ones than these, probably. I had a plan.”
“I don’t know,” she says, her voice warm. “Ye’re usually quick-witted. This may well be better than whatever ye’d planned.”
Under any other circumstance, I’d say something clever back.
