Page 124 of Beautiful Forever
I’ve missed you so much. I love you. Please come home.
Another step. “Miserable.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
“You had no idea I was coming for dinner, did you?”
I crumple the paper into a ball and surreptitiously drop it onto the barstool. “I think this is the guys’ way of getting us to talk. I’m thirsty. Are you thirsty?” I grab the bottle of red and yank out the cork.
“You know you should let that breathe?—”
Screw using a glass. I down half of it in three swallows. They call it liquid courage for a reason.
“—or not.”
Hoping for dauntlessness, I push my shoulders back, stand up straight, then ruin the mental pep talk I’m giving myself because I have to tug down the hem of my teeny-tiny dress when I realize it has slipped up to my crotch.
Aleksander gives me that hot look again, the same one he gave me in the living room that made my heart pound and sent my pulse haywire.
“You’re staring.”
Another step. “I can’t help it.”
My hands fidget in front of me. “I’m sorry that the guys ambushed you with this.”
Another step. “I’m not.”
Suddenly feeling like prey being stalked, I dart to the other side of the counter island, using it as a barrier in order to give me time to get my nerves under control.
“Me neither,” I confess, taking a peek under one of the cloches. Hendrix made one of my favorites: homemade breaded fried chicken fingers and hand-cut steak fries. “We should talk. I want to talk. About…and other things…and yeah.”Stop making this weird.I steal two fries and offer him one. “I owe you an apology.”
He leans over to take it. “For what?”
There are pivotal moments where you come to a fork in the road and must make a choice of which path to travel down, not knowing the destination. You have to take that leap of faith and trust your broken compass to guide you.
This is one of those moments. This is when I stop being scared. This is where I choose him. This is where I offer Aleksander Stepanoff my heart and pray that he still wants it.
Deep breath. I can do this.
“For not saying it back.”
His head cocks to the side, and he shoves his hands into the pockets of his dark gray trousers. “Saying what back?”
I don’t remember moving, but somehow in the span of one blink, I’m standing in front of him, my feet perched on the edge of the cliff of no return.
I jump.
“I love you too.”
Fifty
My life has been definedby five things: the brutality of violence, the burn of hatred, and the fire of revenge, insurmountable, soul-destroying loss…and loving her.
I had resigned my heart to love her quietly from a distance, even though it broke every time I saw her and knew she would never be mine. But one thing I’ve learned over and over is that our existence is a fleeting blip. Nothing is certain except the eventuality of death. And I didn’t want to leave this earth without her knowing that even though I would never be her forever—like Tristan, Hendrix, and Constantine were hers—that she would be mine.
And now here she is, looking up at me in a way I had only dreamed about, gifting me with those three words I would have gladly sold my eternity to the devil to hear.
Closing my eyes, I let those words seep into the marrow of my bones.
