Page 90 of The Law of Attraction
There were tears in her eyes. It just went on and on. Hundreds of lines. Hundreds of little things he’d noticed about her. Hundreds of arguments to prove how much he cared.
Hundreds of reasons not to give up on each other.
And he was gone.
He’d told her he wanted her more than his job, handed her the evidence to back it up, and then disappeared on her.
What the fuck?
She had to stop him before he got too far. She ran across the apartment and grabbed her phone off the kitchen counter.
“Hi,” he said when he answered the phone, like he hadn’t just walked out on a conversation seconds ago.
“Come back.” Her voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the ocean. “Please come back.”
“Open the door,” he told her, and when she did he was standing on the other side like he’d never left at all. “Marco.”
“What? How?” All of this was too much. She was experiencing so many emotions at once, she didn’t know what to feel first, and it was impairing her ability to process information at her usual speed. All she knew for sure was that she needed him not to leave again.
“You’re supposed to say Polo.” He gave a sheepish shrug. “I couldn’t make myself walk away. So I just waited, in case you changed your mind.”
“Asshole.” She grabbed his arm and dragged him inside. “Don’t leave like that again.” This time she locked the door, in case he tried to make another escape.
“Okay.” A ghost of a smile drifted across his lips. A shimmer of escaping hope. “Does this mean you’ve changed your mind?”
Instead of answering, she hurled herself into his arms.
Nothing else mattered except how fiercely he held on to her, and the way his chest hitched as she pressed her face into it. His scent enveloped her, that sweet, fresh Adam smell, and it was like coming back home after being away on a trip.
She still clutched the notepad in her hand. It was making it hard to touch him the way she wanted to, but she couldn’t let go of it—not yet—so she held on to it and she held on to him, like they were the two most important things in the world.
“I can’t believe you wrote all that stuff,” she said. “It must have taken you hours.”
“It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Shut up.”
“I was so awful to you before, I just needed you to know how I feel about you now.”
“I do.”
He cradled her face in his big, warm hands. “I see you,” he said, and the way his dark, piercing eyes were looking down at her, she felt the truth of his words like never before—right down to the very bottom of her soul. “Sometimes it feels like I can't see anything but you. I know you feel like people don't see you, Olivia, but I see you. With my whole heart.”
“Goddammit,” she said, blinking furiously. “Stop making me cry.”
He touched a finger to the underside of her chin, tilting her face up. His eyes raked over her like they were drinking her in. She strained toward him, and their lips met in a kiss that turned her inside out, leaving her shaky and defenseless.
But it was okay. She didn’t need her defenses around him anymore. She could lower the drawbridge and let her walls crumble a little. The man at the gate was a friendly.
When they parted, Adam was breathing almost as hard as she was, and he clutched at her like she was the only thing holding him up.
“I see you too,” she said, and felt a tremor run through his body. “I see the real you. The one you try to keep hidden from everyone.” She curled a hand around his neck and tried to bring him back for another kiss, but he evaded her lips.
“I feel like I’ve been in a coma for the last two years. And then you walked in and woke me up.” He leaned away from her so he could untangle himself from his messenger bag.
She tugged him back toward her as soon as he’d lowered his bag to the floor. “By yelling at you?”
He smiled in response, and she laughed. “It felt more like a kick in the head.” He extricated the notepad from her fingers and dropped it on top of his bag.
