Page 341 of Playing With Fire

Then he looks up. “Is this…?”

I nod, even though my pulse is doing its best impression of a breakaway in overtime.

“I wrote it.”

His eyes move from the title to my name. Then back again. “You wrote a book?”

“A romance novel.”

He looks at me. Really looks at me. And I realize this is the part I've been afraid of—not the pages, not the ending, but the moment the person who knows me best discovers there's a whole world inside my head I've never shown him.

“How long?” he asks.

“I've been writing stories for years. This one? A while.” I swallow. “Avery knows. A few people at work. Beau Montgomery knows I've been working on a manuscript.”

“Beau Montgomery knows before I do?”

I wince. “When you say it like that…”

“Becks.” He sets the pages on the bed, careful not to bend a corner. “I'm not mad.”

“You look a little mad.”

“I'm trying to figure out how the woman who tells me when I've loaded the dishwasher wrong managed to keep an entire novel a secret.”

“It's not because I don't trust you.”

His expression changes. “I know.”

“Writing was mine before Chicago. Before Wilder House. Before us. It's where I put the things I didn't know how to say out loud.” I glance at the manuscript. “And some of those things are about you.”

He goes very still.

“About me?”

“Not literally. Don't get excited. My hero can actually cook.”

He laughs, but his eyes don't leave mine.

“Delaney, you finished a whole book.”

I nod. “Fourth draft. But yes.”

His smile spreads slowly, like the news is just now settling into his bones. “Baby, that's fucking incredible.”

My eyes sting. “You haven't even read it.”

“I don't have to read it to know what it took for you to finish.” He lifts the manuscript again. “But I want to. If you'll let me.”

“I was hoping you would.”

He draws me against him, the pages held safely out of the way and presses a kiss to my forehead.

“I'm proud of you, Becks.”

Four words. No spotlight. No cameras. No crowd. And somehow they hit harder than every grand romantic speech I've ever written.

“This is the best Valentine's present I've ever gotten,” he says.