Page 98 of The Ghost of You

“Anna—”

“Don’t tell me I should have opened up about it. It was already hard enough. It was easier to shut everyone out.”

“I know that more than anyone. I did the same with Claire. I didn’t want people to see our failed marriage.”

“Maybe you were what I needed to let it all go. It took me up until I met you to play music again. God, I wasted seven years. Seven years I should have spent playing music, finding myself. Not being hung up on a man who didn’t love me when he left. A man that didn’t find me worthy enough to love.”

I turn toward her, pulling her chin so she will face me. “Don’t regret that time. Don’t be mad over things you can’t change. Maybe that time was what you needed to be better than you were before. But don’t ever think you aren’t worthy enough to love. You amaze me every day. Your heart is so filled with love. You show it to everyone that is around you. It’s in your music, it’s in your words, it’s in everything you do every day. And I want nothing more than that love for my own.”

Her eyes glisten with tears as she searches my eyes, searches for the deeper meaning behind my words. “Are you in love with me, Noah Taylor?”

Am I in love with her? I know I’m falling, but love?

“You don’t have to say it. Just show it.”

So I do. I press my lips to hers in a kiss that speaks more than words ever could. And as I push into her mouth, kissing her with reverence, I know I am letting her into my heart. A heart I never thought I could let anyone into. Let my fears be damned. Because loving Anna, that is worth every risk.

She crawls on to my lap, deepening the kiss. Showing me that she loves me without having to say it. “You make me want to let go, Noah. You make me want everything I was too scared to admit I wanted,” she says against my lips.

I pull her further into me, needing her to be as close to me as she can get.

We hear the groan of the decrepit bridge we are on a little too late as we both fall into the shallow creek with a laugh.

“I thought you said it would hold.” I laugh as I wrap her in my arms in the cold water.

“I thought it would!”

I stand up, only half wet, and pull Anna up with me. She wraps her arms around my neck, pressing her lips to mine, even as we stand in the cold creek. “I am falling for you, Noah Taylor. You are the song to my soul.”

I can’t answer her. How do you put anything into words after that?

Instead, I kiss her with a fierceness I didn’t know was in me as I lift her into my arms and carry us out of the creek, out of the woods, and out of her past.

23

Noah

“You are smitten.”

I shake my head as Mason tosses me the basketball.

“No, bro, I think that is love. Look at that face,” Carson jokes as he tries to block my shot.

“If you are trying to distract me, it’s not working.” I sink the ball into the net.

Hunter cuts in as he throws the ball to Carson. “We don’t need an answer from him to know he loves the woman.”

For the last two months hanging out with these two has been atrocious. Constantly messing around with me to get me to admit my feelings for Anna. But I haven’t. Because I still haven’t said the words to her. She hasn’t said them to me either but every day I feel like she might. I can see it in her eyes. I know she is in love with me.

And I want to love her but I am keeping one last guard around my heart just in case.

We take a break from our basketball game. We all agreed to come up early for Sunday dinner since the four of us hadn’t hung out since Thanksgiving. Anna got asked to pick up an extra shift at work so she couldn’t make it. And I know that is why my brothers are hounding me now.

Mason sits next to me and chugs his Gatorade. “Anna told me she is finally going to see her family.”

Anna has been hanging out with Mason at least once a week, writing music and learning more about producing in the studio. Mason knows about her strained relationship with her family. I don’t know if she told him or if his friend, Dee, told him. But her sister got engaged on New Year’s and she got invited to the engagement party. She struggled for weeks over it and I finally convinced her I would take her. I told her it was cashing in on the favor from Thanksgiving. She let me know it wasn’t a favor and if she was going to see her family she would want me there for support.

“We are leaving on Friday. The party for her sister is Saturday. But I somehow convinced her she should see her family in private first.”

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