Page 90 of When the Walls Come Down
I slipped my key into the door and was first met by sounds of Chris Cornell blaring outside on my balcony across the other side of my apartment. I passed my dining area, noticing plates with metal lids covering them. I didn’t have to lift them to know what was underneath. The scent alone told me it was steak.
Through the glass, my terrace flickered, illuminated with candles that looked suspiciously familiar to the ones I’d ordered her during my sensual Amazon assault.
To hell with my fear of heights.
I opened the door, spun around, and searched, but Maggie wasn’t out there.
“Hello,” I said into the chilly air. The sun was sinking behind the buildings, and she’d been right. The sweater was needed. “Maggie?” I called, still holding the flowers I’d gotten for her.
My heart sank. Obviously, she’d been the one to set all of this up, but had she changed her mind?
“Peach!” I shouted toward the wall we shared.
Just as the song changed to “The Dance,” I saw it: a small, white flag waving from her side of the brick wall that read: I love you, Shane.
My breath caught in my throat, and I pressed the side of my fist to my mouth. And in the only way I knew how, I made probably one of the biggest moments of my life awkward.
“I swear to God that better be you, Maggie.”
I heard a faint laugh, and then her sweet fucking voice said, “It’s me.”
That was it. I couldn’t take one more second of not being with her. I chucked the whole damn bouquet of flowers over the top of the brick divider.
“Ah! What the hell? Shane?” She laughed again.
I dragged the chair from the small table set I never used over to the wall. “Back up! I’m coming over this motherfucker.” Then I bound onto the chair and leapt over the wall. It wasn’t until I was about halfway over when I realized I was scaling a wall on the side of a building sixteen stories up.
In hindsight, it wasn’t my most thought-out or brightest idea, but remarkably, I didn’t die. And on the other side was a beautiful blonde holding a flag that said she loved me.
Though she swatted me with it and the bouquet the second my feet hit her floor.
“What—in—the—hell—were—you—thinking?! Shane, you could have killed yourself.”
“Wasn’t thinking,” I panted, the moment hitting me all at once. “I just had to get to you and that was the fastest way.”
She could yell at me all she wanted later. Right then, I just wanted her in my arms. Once I’d wrapped myself around her, she tightly embraced me back and we rocked side to side as I planted hundreds of kisses to her face and her neck—and her shoulder.
Finally, we loosened our holds on one another, and I cupped her face and stared down into her sparkling, blue eyes. “I thought I lost you there, Peach. Fuck the height out here. Not having you in my life was goddamned terrifying.”
Blinking up at me, she said, “I cannot believe you just did that. Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
She didn’t have to worry about that. I was ready to hang up my Duke Longfellow antics for good as long as it meant one thing.
“Fine. Just kiss me.”
She gave me a smile that would be seared in my mind until I was literally old and gray.
How had this woman blown into my world and made it a life?
Her eyes fluttered shut, and she lifted up onto her toes to pair her lips with mine. The kiss tasted like hope and the unknown, and fights and making up, and like a fantasy and real life all at once.
Maggie’s tongue swept over mine, and I deepened the kiss, knowing that, no matter what the future held, it would be okay as long as I had her in it.
When the kiss slowed, I pulled back and gazed down at her. “So you obviously didn’t plan for this whole seduction scene to play out like this. What was the plan?”
She bit at the corner of her lip, her head shaking slightly side to side as she looked over my head as if I’d busted her. “Well, there was the cardigan…” she began.
“Thank you for that by the way. A man can never have enough practical light-to-medium outerwear.”
She chuckled as she took a step back and reached for me with her free hand. The other still held tight to the flag and her flowers. “And the Tic Tacs.”
“The most thoughtful mess I’ve ever seen.”
“And I had Blake make us our favorites from Two Ships, bring them, and let me in so I could set up.”
“The murder candles were a nice touch,” I admitted. “I might just make a romantic out of you yet.”
“Thank you. Come on. There’s more.” She led me through her apartment by my fingers and back into mine. After setting the flag—which she was never fucking getting back by the way—and her flowers on the island, she bounced around the end of it and lifted another package.
