He leans in and leaves a searing kiss on my lips, one that makes my toes curl, a kiss that threatens to drown me in the most beautiful way.
I am so lost to this man.
“I am so in love with you,” I say.
And then I realize I was only supposed to think it.
Not say it.
My eyes go wide, mortified, and my mouth clamps shut, and shit, shit, shit, I just fucking ruined everything, didn’t I?
I just told Harrison I’m in love with him.
“I’m sorry,” I squeak, attempting to turn away from him, but he grips my shoulders and holds me in place.
“What did you say?” he asks, his voice broken, the line between his brows deep. “Piper.”
“Nothing, I said nothing,” I say, and attempt to turn around again, but he won’t let me.
I close my eyes and lie back, wishing I could just disappear.
“You just told me you loved me,” he says.
“I didn’t.”
“You bloody well did.”
I open one eye to look at him. “Technically I said ‘I am so in love with you.’?”
“And there’s a difference.”
“Well, yes. One is I love you and the other is I am in love with you.”
“I think they’re both the same.”
I close my eye again. “They’re not.”
“You’re in love with me. That’s the one that I want.” I feel his lips against mine. “Piper,” he whispers roughly against them. “Piper, look at me.”
Hesitantly I open my eyes.
I’m immediately lost in the burning intensity of his.
“Piper, I love you, and I’m in love with you too,” he murmurs.
He can’t really mean that.
He’s only saying it.
“I’m not saying it because you did,” he goes on. “You just beat me to it. I am madly, aggravatingly, desperately in love with you. It’s been frustrating to try to negotiate an emotion I’ve never felt before, but there’s no mistaking it and no hiding from it. I’m not hiding from anything when it comes to you and how I feel about you.” He runs his thumb over my lips. “You’re it, Piper. You’re everything. And so when I say that I’m going to make this work for us, I’m going to make it work.”
Effervescent.
That’s what this feeling is.
It’s like that giddiness combined with clouds and rainbows and fizzing champagne bubbles that lift you higher and higher and . . .
Hell. Maybe this is just love.
“You love me,” I whisper against his thumb.
“I love you,” he says again, and I could literally hear him say it all day to the end of time. I know I’ll probably replay it over in my head for years to come.
He loves me.
How the hell did I get so lucky?
I grin up at him, unable to stop from smiling, the joy radiating outward until it feels like it’s swallowing us whole.
I pull him onto me, giggling, kissing, a mess of limbs and tangled hair.
A meeting of the hearts.
Twenty-Two
Three months later
“Miss Evans, I think I’m going to be sick.”
I look up from my desk to see Cinder Graves approaching my desk, a hand at her mouth.
Yes, her name is Cinder. Short for Cinderella.
Yes, her older brother is my student from last year, Nicky Graves.
Yes, she’s about to hurl. It runs in the family.
I quickly kick the wastebasket over to her and look away just before she vomits. It’s gross, all right, but my handbag is safely tucked away (and actually it’s a hand-me-down from Monica. Since she’s moving away in a couple of days, she’s been unloading a lot of her designer stuff on me. I promised myself I would keep them safe and not bring them to school, but this one is Gucci with butterflies on it, and it makes me happy).
When Cinder is done, I send her to the nurse’s office, knowing she’ll be back here in an hour, ready to learn. Some kids are allergic to school, I swear.
Me, though, I’m enjoying it more than ever. Not that I didn’t before, but after this summer, I feel like I’m really hitting my stride. I’m bonding more with the students and their parents, trying to give them more individualized attention. Plus, I’ve been a lot more social. Oh, I’m still a hermit most evenings, just cuddling up with Harrison on the couch (you can still hermit with someone else, right?), but I’ve been spending a lot more time with both Cynthia and Georgia and become friends with some of their crew as well. As much as I complained about the lack of community and being an outsider, I knew that unless I was putting myself out there one hundred percent, I wasn’t one to talk.
After the bell rings, I head over to Cynthia’s classroom to say goodbye, making a date to have a girls’ night at her house over the weekend, then I head across the school parking lot to where Harrison is just pulling in with the SUV.