Page 133 of Call You Mine
The words “I love you” materialize on my lips, begging me not to hold onto them any longer.
There have been so many moments like this, small and quiet, where the words have risen up, right to the back of my throat.
I’ve almost said them a dozen times by now—in the middle of the night, in passing, in the spaces where it would’ve been easy to let them slip out and pretend I didn’t mean everything they carry.
But something always stopped me.
Timing, maybe.
Fear, definitely.
The weight of saying them would make everything real in a way I couldn’t take back.
But right now, sitting here with nothing extraordinary happening, I don’t feel that hesitation. Just a steady, certain kind of knowing that doesn’t ask permission first.
I always thought this moment would feel bigger.
Not the moment itself—there’s nothing cinematic about sitting in a parked car with the AC rattling and the distant sound of kids yelling over melted ice cream—but the words.
I love you
They’re supposed to arrive with certainty, with stillness, with something that marks it as different from everything that came before.
Something you could point to and say,'Thatwas the moment everything changed.'
But nothing about us has ever been like that.
Not the rushed vows that weren’t supposed to mean anything.
Not the two pink lines that turned everything upside down.
Not the slow, quiet way, somewhere along the chaos, I stopped pretending.
Maybe this—this in-between, ordinary, overheated, completely unremarkable moment—is exactly right for us.
Anderson reaches over, brushing his thumb across my damp cheek, like it’s second nature now, like he’s done it a hundred times.
And it’s so simple, so thoughtless, that it catches in my chest before I can overthink it.
“I love you,” I blurt out, the words tumbling into one another—something that felt so impossible now feeling so effortless.
The words don’t echo. They don’t demand attention. They just settle in the air, soft and certain.
Right where they belong.
For a second, he doesn’t say anything. Not in a bad way—not like he didn’t hear me—but like the words landed somewhere deeper than either of us expected.
His hand stills against my face, his eyes searching mine like he’s trying to understand how we got here, howsomething that started so temporary turned into something that feels anything but.
And then I see it—the shift. Like something in him finally settles into place.
“You don’t get to just say that so casually,” he murmurs, but there’s no real protest in it, only something softer, almost disbelieving. His thumb brushes my cheek again, slower this time, like he’s grounding himself in the moment.
Groundingmein the moment.
“I didn’t mean for it to sound casual,” I admit quietly. “I just?—”
“—meant it,” he finishes for me.
