Page 118 of Perfectly Complicated
“I didn’t.” She moves Aria to her other hip. “I knocked on the door of that one first…” She points to the cabin where we stayed last time. “But you weren’t there.”
“Because that cabin was booked. Wait…” I glance around for her car. “How did you get here?”
“I drove. Well, most of the way until my car broke down on the highway.” She stoops to lay a sleepy Aria in her car carrier. “A nice tow truck driver brought us the rest of the way.”
I stare into the dark, the pieces of her story still fuzzy in my head. “Let me get this straight…you tried to drive all the way to Santaville with Aria?”
“Yes.”
“And your car broke down?”
She nods.
“So you took a ride with a stranger?”
“Uh-huh.”
“All to find me?”
She rises, pressing her lips together. “I’d do it again, Rourke. I couldn’t let you spend Christmas alone.”
“Janie, you shouldn’t have. Nick threatened?—”
“Nick changed his mind,” she says quietly. “He doesn’t want custody, Rourke. He just wants control. He saw Iwas moving on and wanted to get back at me. He never actually cared about his daughter.” She pulls an envelope from her pocket and holds it up. “Do you know what I couldn’t stop obsessing over when I read this? That you thought loving us meant you had to leave.”
I rake a hand through my hair. “I was trying to protect you?—”
“From what?” She steps closer, tipping her face to mine. “You taught me what it means to choose love over fear. To accept that sometimes life is complicated—but we can still choose each other.”
She presses the letter against my chest. “You don’t get to make this decision for me, Rourke. You don’t get to decide I’m better off without you.”
“Janie…”
“No.” Her eyes are fire now, tears streaming down her face. “You told me you wanted to spend the rest of your life making me happy. Was that a lie or the truth?”
The accusation in her face guts me. “It was always the truth. Every word.”
“Then stop trying to protect me from the one thing that actually makes me happy—you.” Her fingers tighten around the letter still pressed to my chest. “When my car broke down, I was so frustrated because nothing was going according to plan. The perfect Christmas I’d imagined was falling apart. Then I realized it wasn’t the broken car or the ruined plans that upset me—it was that you weren’t there.” She pauses, pressing her lips together. “I don’t need you to be perfect, Rourke Riley. I don’t need you to love the holidays or have all the answers or be anything other than who you are. I just need you to stay.”
Then she steps back and unzips her coat, and that’s when I see it: underneath, she’s wearing my jersey.
Her eyes lock on mine. “Remember our bet? About me wearing your jersey?”
“I thought the bet was off…”
“We agreed thatwe both won—which means we owe each other something.” She steps closer, near enough that I can see the curl of her lashes. “And I came to collect.”
“Collect what?”
“Everything.” Her palm moves to my chest, right over my heart, where it’s beating wildly. “I want Christmas mornings with you, Rourke, and new memories—messy ones, loud ones. I want to watch you cut our tree every year…then wrap you in lights and kiss you next to it.”
She gives me a smile with tears in her eyes. “I want you to teach me how to skate. And then watch you teach Aria too. To go to all your games and lose my voice because I’m screaming for you.”
Her hand slides up my shoulders to my neck, fingers tangling in my hair. “I want to fight about how many decorations aretoomany and whose turn it is to get up with Aria. I want all of it—the boring, beautiful, ordinary life with you. Because that kind of life…would be the best Christmas gift I could ever imagine.” Her fingers stop moving as her gaze lifts to mine. “I love you, Rourke. I was scared to say it before. But after watching you walk away, I’ve never felt so sure of anything in my life.”
I draw her close, kissing her mouth as fire races down my body.
“Me too, angel,” I whisper, trailing kisses along her cheek, then down her throat, letting my lips memorize what my heart already knows. Between each kiss, I whisper, “I won’t leave you. Not ever again. I’ll always love you, Janie.”
