Page 91 of Anywhere with You
“I love you,” Cara said.
In an instant, my eyes were overflowing with tears, and I didn’t try to stop them from falling.
Cara continued, “I’m pretty sure I started falling in love with you the moment you came to my door to apologize for yelling at me in your store.” She gave a little laugh, and I stood there, in awe of the sound.
“It was the pastries,” I whispered through the tightness in my throat. “No one can resist them.”
“It wasn’t the pastries, Honey.” She squeezed my hand. “It was you. It just took me a little while to realize that the remarkably kind and wise woman sitting beside me was more than just my convenient traveling companion. I’ve never met anyone I admired more, and that was just the beginning. I love every beautiful and terrifying and ridiculous moment of our time together. I love every conversation, every argument, every one of your awful jokes. I love how much better both boredom and excitement are when you’re with me. I love the way the world looks through your eyes and how willing you are to share it with me. And that’s all I want. For you to share it with me.”
She was openly crying now, too, tears falling faster than she could wipe them away.
I didn’t leave her waiting. I pulled her close to me and kissed her, her arms wrapping around me, both of us holding on for dear life. I reached my hands into her hair, curls encircling my fingers. Her lips were better than any daydream, and I had daydreamed. Endlessly.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped, stepping back. “I should’ve asked.”
“Don’t stop,” she breathed, pulling me back to her. “Don’t ever stop.”
I kept kissing her, walking with her back into my apartment, closing the door, and reaching the hallway without losing contact.
Outside my bedroom door, my lips found just the right place on her neck, and she made that soft, happy sound that she’d made earlier. “Honey,” she moaned, and the sound of my name in her breathy voice sent my pulse running but somehow also brought me back to the moment, to her, perfect and gasping against the wall.
I took her hand and kissed it, then pulled her into my room.
I closed the door so Badger wouldn’t interrupt us if he woke up.My new bed frame was still in a box, so Cara sat on my mattress on the floor, and I sat next to her.
Her lips were wet and red and entirely distracting. I closed my eyes for a moment, but even the sound of her breathing was erotic.
“I need to know what you’re thinking, Honey.”
I almost told her. She would’ve laughed. Instead, I told her the other things I was thinking, everything I’d been thinking for a while now, and everything I’d just realized. I had felt so bound up, almost mummified, for years, but all that emotion hadn’t evaporated. I still had it all. I’d just needed someone to show me what openness looked like. I’d needed someone who’d listen, whether I was making awful jokes or freaking out in an elevator or lamenting my failures over the edge of the Grand Canyon.
“I can’t believe you were here, all these years, and I never found you,” I whispered to Cara. “I just didn’t see, until everything else in my life fell apart. And there you were, rescuing me, and you didn’t even know it.”
She smiled, and my heart felt full and lighter than air.
“I love you, Cara. I love you so much that I bought a popcorn popper before I bought silverware. I love your meticulous vacation planning, and I love every detour, so long as I’m with you. I love how outrageously sexy you are in red lipstick and with bare lips and first thing in the morning and when you’re exhausted because we stayed up too late. I love how you were brave enough to come into my store that day, brave enough to keep going on our trip after I left, and brave enough to come back tonight. I’m in love with you. If you want to know what I’m thinking, that’s it. I’m in love with you, and I want to spend every day being in love with you, for as long as you’ll have me.”
When she kissed me, I felt all my words echoed back to me. I didn’t need to hear her sayI love youagain. I could tell. I could feel it in the warm tears on her face and the way she pressed her whole body as tightly against mine as she could.
But I also knew that Iwouldhear them, that Cara wouldn’t let a day go by without telling me because that’s how Cara loved: meticulously and bravely and with her whole outrageously sexy self.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Cara and I didn’t get out of bed until she had to go back to work on Monday morning, and even then, there were few things in my life that had ever been as difficult as letting her stand up and leave the room. It was awful. Entirely too far away from me.
I listened to her turn on the shower and called out, “I can help.”
She poked her head around the door, grinning, her hair a gorgeous, tousled mess. “You would be a hindrance, and you know it.”
“Oh, you’ve never been as soapy as I can make you.”
“That’s the cleanest dirty talk I’ve ever heard.”
I laughed and lay back, grateful for these few extra minutes that Cara could spend here instead of driving home to change clothes. All because I’d accidentally packed one of her dresses in my luggage when I left the vacation house to fly home. It was clean and hanging in my closet, and a few minutes later, Cara was out of the shower. I watched her towel-dry her skin and step into the dress, fastening buttons and smoothing her hands down the front.
“I’ve never been so jealous of cotton,” I told her, then remembered watching her touch the towels in the store and felt an extra hint of warmth in my cheeks.
She kissed me, then went to brush her wet hair. “Are you going to work today?”
