Page 52 of Keeping Mr. Sweet

“I am.” She tries to smile. “I’m here.”

“Is there anything I can say that will change your mind?” I ask, staring up at her. God help me, I want her to say no. I want her to fight for our love the way I’ve always fought for her. I want her to say it and mean it the way I’m starting to believe she does.

“No,” she says. “Nothing. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“I love you, you know.” She smiles as tears tremble on her lashes. “Always have. I was just so scared that you would regret loving me, and that I would hurt you irreparably. I couldn’t do that to you. All those years ago when you asked your dad for your grandmother’s ring, I overheard him tell you that you wouldn’t understand love until you found the woman you couldn’t live without.”

“Ash.” I shake my head sadly. “You should have talked to me.”

“I saw what that kind of love did to people, Sam. I saw what losing my mother did to my father. I lived with it. That devastating kind of love that can’t be recovered from. I felt it, and I couldn’t be that for you. I couldn’t. Not if I could help it. I couldn’t be the love that destroyed you. Not willingly. I just couldn’t.”

“You already were.” I catch her around the waist, and she tumbles onto my lap with a yelp. Securing her there with both arms, I press my forehead to hers. “Didn’t you know that? Didn’t you feel that? I tried to protect us both from getting too deep. I tried to tell us both we were wrong for each other, but we weren’t. I told him that too.”

“You did?” She stares at me and there are so many tears now. They tumble unhindered down her face, but they aren’t all sad. There’s hope there too in the light of her eyes. There’s love. There’s a quiet sort of faith I feel from her that makes me believe we can figure it out. “And you didn’t regret it?”

“I couldn’t.” I smile at her gently, shake my head.

“Not even a little bit.” She peers at me as though she expects a different answer.

“Not even when you left me each time. I was hurt. I was angry. I made promises I knew I could never keep. I told myself I was right every time I told you that you were too young for what we wanted. But it didn’t change the fact that you were everything to me. Our time together was everything. I tried to move on. I couldn’t. I tried to let you go. I failed.”

“You didn’t ask me to stay. You didn’t tell me.” She grips my shoulders and shakes me, collapses against my chest. “You never told me. I thought it was better to hurt you a little than cause you that kind of pain. I didn’t know I was anyway.”

“I told you when I let you back into my life, and I’m telling you now,” I stroke her hair back from her face with both hands and cradle her head between my palms. “I won’t do without you again. Do you hear me? If you’re here, Ash, then you’re all the way here. There are no more secrets, and no more running, and no more trying to protect me from the bogeyman. It isn’t your fault your mother died, and that your father couldn’t get past it. It isn’t fair, but it’s not your fault either. And that isn’t our story.”

“What is our story?”

“It’s this right here.” I brush my mouth against hers, taste the salt on her skin. “It’s letting me love you even when you don’t feel like you deserve it. It’s staying even when you think it’ll hurt me. It’s us, not hiding from our feelings, but sharing them. It’s living and breathing, love. You and me. Together. One day at a time. Do you think you can handle that?”

“I’m here,” she whispers. “I belong here with you. Always have. But this time I’m not fighting love, I’m fighting for it. I’m not going anywhere.”

I crush my mouth to hers in a kiss that jumpstarts my heart and seals our souls to each other. Our tongues skid against one another as our bodies meld together. There’s possessiveness in her kiss, and in mine. Love and hope too. And understanding that neither of us will let the other go without a fight ever again. It’s in the urgency with which we deepen the kiss. It’s in the way her hands roam my chest and cling to my shirt while I grip her hips so tightly I leave marks. And when we pull apart it’s in the way she looks at me and asks me to let her take me home now. Our home. Together.

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