Page 139 of On the Line
Kicking his shoes off, he scooped her up and crawled on to the bed, reclining on the mountain of pillows with her curled up against his chest.
“We’re not the same people we were when we met, Lex,” he said. “Hell, we’re not even the same people we were when I moved back to Detroit. This time apart has been…difficult.”
“You don’t even know the half of it,” she whispered.
He smoothed his hand over her hair, which she’d released from the braided coil on the top of her head sometime during the evening. It now hung down around her shoulders, a little tangled and half-wild.
“I’m afraid, too,” he whispered to her. “But I also know I can’t act like I’m okay living my life without you anymore. You’re everything to me, Lexie. You always have been.”
Saying those words out loud, after holding them in for so long…the weight that had been crushing his chest for so many months lifted. It was almost easier to say these things in the dark, when he couldn’t gauge her reactions, when he didn’t have to look her in the eye as he poured out his heart.
“What do you have to be afraid of?” Lexie asked. “You’ve always been the strong one. For both of us.”
“I’m afraid of you pushing me away again. I only survived last time because I had to move halfway across the country, and even then I missed you like I’d miss a limb. You followed me everywhere. I can’t do that again.”
“I moved for that exact reason,” she said.
Mitch had always wondered why she’d given up a perfectly nice apartment along the river to move further inland.
“I saw you in every inch of my old place. Your ghost…it haunted me. Some days it really did feel as though you had died.”
Mitch’s heart squeezed painfully. “I’m sorry.”
She shifted herself so she could look up at him. “I’m not just afraid, Mitch. I’m terrified. But I need you more than I’m afraid of losing you.”
He planted a soft kiss on her mouth once, twice, before pulling away and wrapping his arms tighter around her.
“So we take it one day at a time,” he said. “No rush, no pressure. I want to make sure it sticks this time, and I think you do, too.”
“I do, more than anything,” she said, eyes glinting as they caught the twinkle lights from outside. “I’m ready to jump back into this with you.”
He planted a kiss on her nose and nestled them deeper into the bed. “All you have to do is fall, baby,” he said quietly. “I promise I’ll catch you.”
Risingtoconsciousnessthenext morning was a disorienting experience for Lexie, who blinked open her eyes to sunlight streaming through the blinds on the window across the room, feeling for all the world as though she’d been here before.
The arm slung across her middle didn’t help matters.
She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and forced herself to remember.
Shehadbeen here before.
A year ago, in this same room, waking up in this same place with a man in bed next to her.
For a brief moment, she wondered if she’d dreamed everything since then. The trips to LA, Boston, Dallas, Seattle, and several other cities across the country. Leaving her full-time, well-paying job as a headhunter to become a full-time influencer. Helping Amelia open her gym, Berkley’s bachelorette party and wedding.
Mitch.
Mitch’s injury, him moving back to Michigan, and her agreeing to give things between them another shot.
The arm around her stomach squeezed tighter and hauled her back into the hard body behind her, and the man said, “Good morning.”
Lexie rolled over so fast to face Mitch that her elbow glanced off his forehead, and he let out a surprised, “Ouch!”
None of it had been a dream. Every single minute of sadness and heartbreak, of love and loss, of compromise and selfishness, had led her right here, to this single perfect morning, waking up next to the love of her life.
“Sorry,” she said when she burrowed into his arms, stretching to kiss the red mark on his forehead. “I woke up this morning and had this moment where I thought everything that happened this last year was a really weird, vivid dream. I was right here a year ago,” she added. “In this bed. With a different guy. And I thought…”
She buried her head in his chest, his voice rumbling through her as he said, “And you thought what?”
