Page 82 of The Do-Over Girl
She laughs. “No, I honestly didn’t want to torture my readers with that much realism.” She quiets and we walk. “Nash, are we going to have a happy ending?”
When I see the light in her eyes, the longing and the flat-out love beaming at me so hard I couldn’t miss if it I were a blind person—which I sometimes am, emotionally speaking—I have to believe in it.
“Sure. But I was hoping for a happy middle first.” She snorts a laugh and punches my arm.
“Don’t joke about this. I’m serious.”
We stop at the end of the walkway leading to the Inn and I don’t bother waiting until we get to the front door, or even to the porch.
Taking her by the arms, I pull her against me hard, feeling her softness give against mine, feeling her lean into me, staring into my eyes with startled excitement. I only pause for a breath because I want to give her the kind of kiss that could take a while, a memorable kiss that unloads all my emotions, leaving nothing behind.
When my mouth smashes against hers, she meets my greed for that connection, the kind that starts with our lips and bodies, with our hips grinding together, my hands pressing her ass against me, and goes beyond our flesh right through to our hearts and souls like a buzz saw of unearthly feelings, dizzying and way past my paltry imagination ever went.
A dog barks and some kids from a neighboring house laughs. Kali is the first to break and I reluctantly concede to the need to put the brakes on our PDA, which, admittedly, goes well past acceptable for the middle of Main Street in Andrews Point. The only reason I don’t mind, not really, is that we’re close to home, our haven, our bed—or one of our two beds.
“Nash,” she says, so breathless, that’s all she says as her chest heaves. Her eyes communicate more though, some questions.
Do I have answers? Hell yeah. I go one instinct, letting everything in me to the surface, past the fears and whatever else had me blocked.
“We have something here this time, Kali. Something that’ll last. I think you’re the reason I stayed a bachelor all these years. I couldn’t re-create what we had. Until now.”
“Until now? What is it we have now, Nash. Tell me.”
I look around, wave to the kids because we’re still in the middle of the sidewalk on Main Street, but what the hell. I hold onto her and give her what I have.
”You’re going to make me say it first? Okay, I will.” I take a deep breath like I’m diving off a cliff into the deepest part of the ocean, into the fucking Mariana Trench, and then I let the words spill out that I’ve been saving in my heart for her for the last seventeen tortured years.
“I love you, Kali, more than anything, more than everything. I’m so fucking in love with you that there is no ending to our love story.”
She giggles, of all things, giddy and unapologetic, but she makes it up to me in her next breath.
“I love you too, Nash. It feels like I always have, like I never really stopped.”
I take her by the hand then, because it’s time, and we run up the walk and trip up the stairs and inside the door to the Inn. Now we’re both laughing and I pick her up—to hell with my shoulder—and carry her up to the second floor to my room—our room.
