Page 76 of Wedding Bet

“If you want the honest truth, I left this beach and then came back twice already in the last hour and a half,” he said, his gaze dancing across my face. “I thought I couldn’t do it, Landry.”

I swallowed hard. “Couldn’t do what?”

He shook his head slowly, and I could tell he was holding back an ocean of thought. “Couldn’t let myselftry,” he finally said.

It was as if he’d reached inside my chest and gripped my heart.

“That’s the scariest part, isn’t it?” I said, giving him a sympathetic look. “Letting ourselves try.”

“God, yes.”

A wave crashed up against the nearby rocks, and the breeze blew through Jamie’s hair.

“I want to try with you, Jamie,” I told him. I reached out and grabbed his hand because I couldn’t stand it any longer, couldn’t stand being so close to him and not touching him. “I want to keep trying, every single day, if you’d let me. I don’t want to buy your affection. Hell, I think I could spend an entire year with you just visiting this beach, if that’s what you needed.”

He puffed out a quick laugh, then shook his head as he looked out at the sea. “Is it sad that I haven’t felt alive since the last time I saw you?”

“If it’s sad, then I guess we’re sad together,” I told him. “Because that’s how I’ve felt, too.”

“We’re definitely also crazy together,” he said. “I still have so much to learn about you. What if you collect gerbils? What if you drive like a maniac, or god forbid, you hate peanut butter?”

A fizzy feeling bubbled up in me, almost a laugh. “You’ve been the brightest spot in my life in a very, very long time,” Isaid. “We have a lot to learn. But I want to learn all of it. I feel like we’ve still only seen the tip of the iceberg.”

His eyes sparkled. “I want to make a joke about ‘just the tip’so badly, but I’m not going to.”

I finally laughed out loud, because being around Jamie had that effect on me. He could bring humor to the most emotional moments, in a way I’d only dreamed about in the past.

“See?” I told him, reaching out to hold him by his arms. “That is your magic. Making me laugh when I’m two seconds away from crying like a fucking baby.”

“Well, that makes me feel better, because I cried like a baby earlier today,” he said, exhaling. “Shit’s been less than great for me, since I got back. Landry, I’m so sorry I called off meeting up with you—”

“Forget about it,” I said. “You were doing what felt right.”

He clicked his tongue. “You’re the only thing that’s felt right to me in a long time,” he said, his voice getting a little hoarse.

I pulled him in closer, erasing what little distance we still had between us. I tucked him up against my body, running my fingers through his hair and nuzzling against his head, breathing deep.

He lifted his head a moment later and looked up at me, and the look in his eyes was a question that I desperately needed answered.

He crushed his lips to mine, and there it was.

My answer. Everything I’d been pinning all of my hope on, spinning around in my mind like a tornado for the entire drive down here—and really, since the moment I’d met Jamie.

He kissed me like he wasn’t afraid, and I knew right then that even with the odds stacked against us that we were going totry.

His tongue slid out against mine, a warm rush of heat, and I clutched at the small of his waist, needing him so much closer to me.

Jamie groaned as he broke off, pressing kisses to my jaw and the side of my neck.

“You want to know something?” he asked in between kisses.

“I always do.”

He let out a frustrated sigh. “I knew that I should call you, and that the ball was in my court, and all of that,” he told me, pausing to press a kiss to my collarbone. “But somewhere in the interim, I figured you must have already forgotten about me. I pictured you all busy with work, living your lavish life, visiting old hookups…”

I puffed out a bitter laugh, squeezing Jamie’s hip. “And I pictured you, remembering me as a big mountain of nothing butbaggage,” I told him.

“So, keeping score,” Jamie said, leaning up to look at me, “we’re both sad, we’re both crazy, and we both have too much baggage. Maybe we can be all of that together.”

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