“Don’t you dare say another word.”
He stayed silent, staring down at her, confused, uncertain. Then, she lifted her hands to his chest and pushed him, hard, anger tightening her lips. “I love you and I hate you so much. How can you stand there and say you love me so calmly after this last week and a half? Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed you? Do you have any idea how miserable I’ve been?”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I didn’t come here to say that.”
“Were you ever planning to?”
“No.”
“I can’t deal with you. I thought you came here because you knew what you want –,”
“I do. I want you.”
“Sex?”
“No!” Impatient, he shook his head. “All of you. I woke up tonight and reached for you, like I always do, and I just needed – I wanted to tell you – that you are a part of me. I guess I was hoping I’d work out what came next, once I saw you.”
She nodded slowly. “Well, you’ve got a decision to make.”
He waited, watching her.
“You’ve seen me. What happens now? Do you walk through that door and leave me all over again? Or do you stay and fight for what we have, even though that might be messy at times? Even though it’s not possible to make me smile every day? Even though you might lose me one day, even though our future isn’t written in the stars? Would you rather fight for every day we can have together, or do you want to go back to pretending you don’t feel that simple little emotion known as love?”
He stared at her, looking as though the world was spinning off its axis. “Don’t tempt me.”
It was an attempt at a joke, but neither smiled.
“We can take this one day at a time,” she said quietly, toying with her fingers. “I can’t marry you. Not for the reasons we agreed on before – that’s just not who I am. But we can date. We can spend time together. We can see what happens next.”
He stood straighter, his eyes scanning her face, a frown pulling on his mouth. “Is that what you want?”
Her heart hammered and her throat felt as dry as if every piece of sand in the world had been crammed in there. “I’m prepared to fight for this,” she said after a beat. “Are you?”
He made an impatient noise. “I don’t want to date you.”
Her stomach swooped to her toes.
“Didn’t you hear me? You’re in my blood. I want you in my life, now, every minute of every day. I want you to marry me – not because of Charlotte, as it turns out – but because of you. Because you are a part of me, and you’ve been missing for far too long. I’ve felt your absence every day that we’ve been apart, like I knew intuitively that I had a family out there, and wasn’t with them. For the month we spent together, I felt alive and whole for the first time in my life, and I left you because that sense of completion – and how dependent it was on you – exposed me to the kind of risk I have always sought to avoid. I chose to step into emptiness rather than have it burst upon me at any time.”
She stood perfectly still, her blood pounding like a cascading waterfall through her body, so loud she could hear it washing through her ears.
“I thought I’d get over you, but the truth is, I’ve spent two years going through the motions of life, like I’ve been in some kind of dream-state and this last week and a half I’ve basically pickled my organs in an attempt to get you out of my mind, but you’re still there.”
Her heart dropped. “But Gray, if you want to get me out of your mind, if you want –,”
“I don’t. I just don’t want to miss you anymore. I don’t want to miss you to the point I feel crazy with needing you, with needing to know where and how you are, to see you smile and know that I did that, to hold your hand as we walk down the street. I just want you.”
She sucked in a shaking breath, her pulse all over the place.
“And I didn’t come here with a plan. Obviously, or I’d be a little more eloquent with what I’m suggesting. But the thing is, all of me loves every little bit of you, and I probably have ever since that first night we spent together.” He reached down and laced their fingers together. “I’ve been an absolute asshat. Max told me that. I’m not expecting you to agree to marry me today. I know that relationships require trust and you might need time to build some back in me. So I’ll wait. I’ll be here. Seeing as much of you as you’re happy to share with me. I love you, and I am so sorry that I have behaved in a way that caused you to doubt that. You are my everything, Abigail Brenna, and always, always will be.”
Abby believed him. She believed him completely, she could see the truth in his features and the love in his face, but something strange had happened to Abby when Charlotte had been born. She’d become a mom, and everything that went along with it. “I love you,” she said softly, smiling at him, because her heart felt lighter than a feather and for the first time in years, she was purely, utterly content. “And if this were just about you and me, I would jump into this both feet first.”
“But there’s Charlotte.”
She nodded quickly. “We agreed to get married before because we wanted to provide stability for her. I think if we take it slowly, just for now, it gives us all time to adapt.”
He lifted her hand to his lips. “Is that a ‘yes’ to a second chance?”