“Yes. I reversed it. Well, Colt did, but if he still wants it, it’s his. They’ll take him next semester. I’m working on yours next.”
“Don’t bother,” she mutters. “I’m not going to Northwestern.”
Blood
rushes in my ears and I focus on not crushing the daisies in my fist. “Are you going to leave?”
“Someday soon. Not by myself anymore, I hope.”
“No.”
It’s out before I can hold it back. Because I don’t want her to see the Pacific ocean again for the first time without me being there to watch her face as she takes it in.
“No?” She tilts her head and narrows her eyes. “What makes you think you can control what I want?”
“I know I can’t. But I hate the thought of you with anyone else.”
Just thinking about it makes me want to wrap my fingers around the neck of whoever would dare touch her and squeeze. A flash of possessive anger spears me as I take in the muscle tank hanging off her body and I hate that it’s not one of my shirts. She laughs, breaking me out of the dark, murderous vision.
“Good thing I wasn’t planning on that then.”
The words that failed me before burst out of me in one breath. “I love you.”
“You do?”
Maisy’s throat works and I hold her gaze.
Nodding, I say it again. “I loved you back then and I love you now. It never went away, even when I believed you lied. Even when I thought I hated you, the whole time I was in love with you.”
Taking another step, I close the distance between us, bending close enough to graze my lips over her temple. I touch the stones I gave her on the bracelet, a piece of me that she carries with her everywhere. She tilts her face up and all I want to do is wrap her in my arms and never let her go. I hold up the fistful of wildflowers between and offer my heart to her.
“You’re my daisy,” I rasp. “It’s always been you.”
Thirty-Four
Maisy
Hearing him say those words starts a riot inside me. My heart skips a beat, tripping over itself like it wants to burst from my chest into his arms, where it belongs. Where I belong.
I draw in a shaking breath.
The second he walked in here I wanted to go to him, but I had to wait out the urge just to see what he would do. Since I left and talked it out with Thea, I knew what he meant to me.
Holding myself back from touching him, hugging him, kissing him was a sweet form of torture building the anticipation until I can’t take it anymore. Now I can give in.
There are smudges beneath his eyes and stubble shadowing his jaw. He hasn’t been sleeping.
Oh, Fox. I hope his nightmares haven’t returned.
The daisies are choked in his desperate grip, some wilting and a little sad. But they’re the same color as the one he gave me all those years ago when he promised I was his daisy and that he’d marry me someday.
I’m still his daisy.
Warmth blooms like the flowers he brought me, unfurling in my chest bringing a sense that feels a lot like happiness.
“I’ll walk away from everything if it means you’ll forgive me. I choose you, Maisy. I know how much you want to see the ocean. I know because the ocean is in my soul, too. We’ll go together. I’ll take you to California.” He puts a hand over his heart where the ocean is inked into his skin. “I just needed you to know all this. I’ll wait for as long as you need, forever if I have to. You and me, remember?”
My heart turns over and before he can say more, I press up on my toes, fisting his shirt before I kiss him. People around us cheer, but all I’m focused on is the slide of his lips against mine, the scrape of his stubble on my jaw, the soft relieved groan he pushes into my mouth when he wraps his arms around me.