Page 128 of Irresistibly Us
“Why is my front door purple?” Sophie asks as I park at the curb outside her house.
I lift her hand, kissing the back of it. “Because you told me you wanted a purple door,” is all I say before I open the door and hop out, walking around to open hers. Leaning in, I unbuckle her seatbelt and tug her out of the car.
“When did I say that?” she asks, looking back at the door.
Grinning, I step forward and kiss her. “The night of our sixteenth birthday.”
Her expression turns confused, which makes me grin even wider as I grab her hand, leading her up the front walk. Taking a key from my pocket, I unlock the door and push it open, stepping back so she can walk in ahead of me.
The second we’re inside, Sophie freezes, her eyes roving the newly renovated space, cataloguing, I’m sure, the light green walls and the big squashy furniture. The gleaming wood floors and the colorful area rugs and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with DVDs of our favorite movies and books we both love and little mementos of our friendship and our life together. The big wooden coffee table perfect for holding snacks and the giant dining room table big enough to hold all the people we love.
“Oh my god,” she says in awe, walking over to one of the living room walls covered in picture frames of all shapes, sizes, and colors, hung in a cheerful sort of chaos. In each frame is a birthday night picture from over the years, all eighteen of them no longer water damaged and broken, plus one empty space for the one from yesterday, right at its center. “You fixed them all.”
I shrug, coming up behind her and wrapping my arms around her waist. “I found a guy who could restore water damaged pictures. I could have just had them reprinted, but I liked the idea of you having the original ones I gave you. I hope you don’t mind that I hung them here instead of in the bedroom. It felt right to have them downstairs where everyone could see.”
Sophie leans her head back against my shoulder. “I always wanted them to be downstairs, but that felt weird since Sarah was living here with me. It’s nice to see them in their rightful place. And I like that you didn’t line them all up like soldiers and put them in matching frames.”
I kiss the side of her head. “Nothing about you says matching frames and a symmetrical gallery wall. You are color and light and chaotic frame-to-wall placement.”
She laughs, turning her head to kiss my jaw. “You know me so well.”
“I do,” I murmur, lips grazing her temple, wondering if my heart will just give out from the amount of love it holds for her. “I really, really do.”
We stand there together for a few minutes, eyes trained on the pictures, before Sophie starts studying the rest of the room. I can tell the second she sees the fireplace because her breath catches, her hand coming up to press against her chest as she turns in my arms. “Holy fucking shit, Tyler.”
Smiling, I flick her bracelets and link my finger with hers. “You like it?” I ask.
She turns to study it, taking in the soaring stone, the carved wooden mantle littered with picture frames and a vase of riotous blooms. And she laughs. “Yeah, Tyler, I like it. How did you know I would?”
I scoff, squeezing my finger with hers. “First of all, I know every damn thing about you, Sophie Sullivan, and don’t you ever forget it. Second of all, the night we turned sixteen, we had a very serious conversation about our dream houses. You said home stuff bored you—nothing new under the sun,” I say with agrin, because the fact that I’ve known her through all her ages and stages, and the things about her that have never, ever changed, settles me right down to my soul. She is part of me. Every complex, brilliant, beautiful inch of her. “But you also told me there were a few things you thought would make the perfect house. A purple door. A big stone fireplace with a carved wooden mantle. Furniture comfortable enough to sink into for days and color literally everywhere. An office where you could do all your genius work. A closet…”
“The size of a bedroom,” she finishes with a grin. “With a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and pink carpet on the floor. Are you telling me somewhere in this house is a closet the size of a bedroom?”
I grin, closing the rest of the distance between us and sliding my free arm around her waist, dropping a kiss on her nose. “With a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and a pink carpet on the floor.”
“Okay,” she says, looking around the room. “So, when you said you were going to take charge of my renovations because I didn’t want to deal with it, what you really meant was…”
She trails off, and I finish the sentence for her. “I was going to make us a home we could live in together with all the things you wanted most.”
“Things I told you I wanted approximately eleven years ago and then never mentioned again.”
I tug her closer to me, laying my lips on hers. “Eleven years or eleven thousand years, I never would have forgotten. I remember everything you’ve ever told me. Everything about you. You’ve been my best friend for my entire life, Soph. My favorite person in the world. Every detail of you is burned into my brain, and all I’ve ever wanted is to make you happy. To give you all the things you want most. To know you—your mind and your heart and all the amazing things that make you, you. That was true before I fell in love with you, it’s even more true today, and it will be true as long as my heart is beating in my chest and thereis air in my lungs. I wanted to handle your house because it was something I could do for you. Then I realized I was in love with you—the deep, always, forever kind of love—and it became something I could do for us.”
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a key, pressing it into her palm and closing her fingers around it, keeping her hand in mine. “I changed the locks and made us each a key. My house belonged to me, and before the flood, this house was yours. I thought I could make your post-flood house into something that could be ours. Live here with me, Soph. Or in my house if you hate everything I did here, or on the dark side of the damn moon. I don’t care where I live, as long as I get to be there with you. The only home I want is the one I get to have with you.”
“Goddammit,” she mutters, pressing her forehead to mine. “Why are you perfect?”
I bring my hands up to cup her face. “I honestly don’t know, but I really am quite something.”
She bursts out laughing, her arms wrapping around my waist and her head resting on my chest. “So, I get the gallery wall and the fireplace I love and the office and closet I’ve always wanted. What do you get?”
Holding her tightly to me, I kiss the top of her head, her hair tickling my chin. “I get you.”
She steps back, her eyes sayingYou are so full of shit right now.
Grinning, I shrug. “There’s a kickass gym in the basement, and I had a soda fountain installed in the kitchen just like my dad, although I added Dr Pepper to it, so that’s kind of for you too. I put a sixty-inch range with ten burners in the kitchen so I can cook a million things at once, and I had four showerheads and a giant shower bench installed in the primary bathroom. Although, that’s also kind of for you,” I say with a lascivious wink that makes her laugh, but I’m not laughing because I’ve imagined fucking her in that shower approximately eight hundred times since the shower heads went in, and I wouldreally like to make that a reality as soon as humanly possible. “So, what do you say, Soph? Wanna live here with me?”
She studies me, adorable glint in her eye. “What about Sarah? She lives here too.”
