Page 191 of Just One More Thing

“But I’m saying it now.”

I look him straight in the eyes.

“I love you, Jake Wheeler,” I say, loud and clear.

“I have loved you since I was twelve years old and too stupid to know what it was. I loved you at twenty when I was too scared to say it. I loved you every year after that when I was too ashamed to fix what I broke. And I love you right now, standing here in your jersey, in this stadium, with mascara running down my face and thousands of people probably wondering why there’s a woman having an emotional breakdown in the end zone.”

A laugh catches in his throat.

Jake carries things instead of crying about them.

He carried losing his parents. He carried me leaving. He carried a decade of loving me without once asking anybody to feel sorry for him.

But his eyes are tearing up.

He drops his head and presses his fist hard against his mouth like he needs a second to get himself together before he looks back up at me.

The sight of it knocks the strength clean out of my knees.

When he lifts his head again, I see he’s trying to hold on to the control that has held him together for years.

“Get down here,” he says, voice rough.

“I can’t. There’s a wall.”

“I don’t care about the wall.”

“Jake, I’m not exactly built for scaling stadium infrastructure. Plus, there are cannons. And pirates with swords.”

He reaches up anyway. Both hands open. Reaching for me without hesitation.

Waiting.

I know how many times I’ve been offered something real and precious and stepped back because I didn’t trust myself with it.

Not this time.

I swing one leg over the railing. Then the other.

I lower myself awkwardly, very much not gracefully,

and jump.

His hands are on my waist before I’m even halfway down.

I dangle there for one breathless second before he easily lowers me to the turf.

My feet hit the ground, but he doesn’t let go.

I’m standing in front of him with my hair blown to hell and my face looking like a hot mess.

And he’s looking at me like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Say it again,” he says.

“I love you.”

His hands flex at my waist. “Again.”