Page 129 of Impossible Love

“Not a damn thing,” he says. “Just wanted to see you.” He slips his arm around my waist and brings me in tight. Our footsteps are in sync.

“That’s awfully sweet. Where are we going?”

“Nowhere.”

I laugh. I love how Cal’s hard edges have smoothed lately. He tells me that I’m responsible for how he’s mellowed. I tell him that he’s responsible for how I’ve slowed down enough to let his love heal me.

We agree it’s a fair deal.

Ripley and Sarah Connor run off ahead of us, jumping and spinning, happy to be alive as they bound up the ridge behind our house. Cal catches me watching them.

“Do you remember how they scared you at first?”

“Of course. I didn’t know what to expect from big dogs.”

“You came to the right place, then.”

“Ha! No kidding! This ranch is wall-to-wall big—”

He pulls me under the branches of a towering pine tree, then leads me down a needle-strewn path. “Where are you taking me?”

“Right here will do.”

Cal presses my back to a thick tree trunk, then raises both hands to cup my face. His serious violet-blue gaze locks with mine. He’s about to tell me something, but he stops, then drops his gaze to my lips. He lowers his mouth to mine.

It’s a deep kiss, but gentle. Sometimes I think these kisses are to remind me that I am his person, and he is mine. When he ends the kiss, he brings one hand under my chin. I turn my cheek into his touch.

“Is everything okay, Cal?”

He chuckles. “Yeah. I just wanted you to know how much I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“It’s… well… I just finished up a video conference with a supplier, where they said our timetable was impossible.”

“Oh.”

“And I told him that nothing was impossible, that we never really know what life holds for us around the next corner.”

“That’s pretty deep for a supplier call.”

He laughs, then kisses me again. “Do you know why I said that?”

“No. Tell me.”

“Because when I fell in love with you, I told myself it was impossible. That nothing could ever come of it. That you were an enemy and I was a ridiculous fool for thinking we had a chance.”

I rest my palm on his shirt, feeling his heartbeat under my touch. I fiddle with one of the buttons, then look up. “What made you change your mind, Cal?”

He tilts his head, pausing for a moment. “I saw that I had it all backward—that it would be impossible to live without you.”

The End

Continue to read the first two chapters in Finn’s story Love Walks In!

Love Walks In Excerpt

Chapter 1

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