She put her hand to his chest and backed him against the shelf. “You hurt me.”
“I’m so fucking sorry.” He flattened his hands on the books, tried to absorb their insight. “I was freaked out and you deserve better from me. What do I need to do to convince you I won’t ever doubt you again?”
She leaned into him, walked her fingers up his chest and neck to rest them on his face. There were stars in her eyes and they shone on him. “You’ll have to put up with me constantly saying I love you. You’ll have to cope with thousands of kisses and millions of caresses and a semitrailer-load full of toe-curling sex. I’m not sure you can take it.”
He almost passed out when she took her hands away. “Did I curl your toes?”
“You know you did.”
“I wasn’t at my best. I was under the influence of evil substances.”
“I gave you a discount for that.”
He laughed, shifting his weight so it wasn’t only other happy-ever-afters holding him upright. “You’re speaking like a shop owner already.”
She looked around. “This place makes me happy. The work we do makes me happy. Our family make me happy.” Then her gaze came back to him. “You make me happy.” Hands to her hips. “Cult busts do not make me happy.”
“Coming in loud and clear.”
“There’s more. I don’t want to be the good-time best friend. I don’t want to be someone you borrow from time to time. I don’t want the comfort of having you always at my back if I can’t also have you in my arms. If I have to say this every day I will. Give me everything you’ve got, Zeke Valentin Naasir Judd Sherwood. Everything you held back. Every piece of anger you thought I wouldn’t like. Every moment of jealousy I made you feel. Every affectionate moment you denied us. I want you when you’re tired and grumpy. I want you when you’re bored and lazy. I want you when you’re confused and distracted. When you hide away, I want to be who you call to hide with you. When you shout at the world, I want my voice alongside yours. I want all the moods and parts of who you are that you never let me see because you were busy trying not to be what I need.”
For Rory, he could do that.
“I want you to be what I need, and I want you to need me back,” she said.
Learn to do it better every day. “You got it.”
“Are we still at an impasse?”
He looked at her tapping foot, followed that steady beat all the way to her gift of a smile. “How do the characters in your favorite books solve seemingly insurmountable differences? Because there aren’t enough words for me to apologize.”
“Is that your sneaky way of asking if I’m ready to give you a second chance?”
“Yeah.” He took a step towards her and she didn’t back off. “Will it work?”
She sighed. All his expectations of joy and safety and comfort and searing hot sex, and maybe one day a family of their own, were in that exhalation.
“Do I have to do all the heavy lifting?” she said, flirtation on her lips.
He took another step towards her and they were toe to toe, like they were meant to be—no more mysteries or doubts, finally, nothing held back—friends, partners, lovers.
“Fully prepared to contribute physical and emotional labor till the day I die. I love you, with everything I’ve got, Aurora Rae.”
“Big talker.”
She licked those smiling lips. Ah, no fair. “Tease.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
Pray his forty-five minutes of privacy weren’t up. Take advantage of knowing exactly where the security cameras were. Show her what she’d always meant to him, aside from one near-fatal wobble that just proved they knew the risks, understood the truth, and weren’t living in a fictional story. Take her in his arms and plant the future in their sugar sweet addictive kiss and then set the bookshelves to blushing while he made good on that promise to curl her toes.
And do that, create their own new world of abundance, every day for the rest of their natural lives or until the world burned up in a fiery cataclysm. Whichever happened first, because there was no better way to go out than loving Aurora Rae Archer Sherwood and there was no pretending or overthinking that.
o0o-
I hope you enjoyed The Mysterious Stranger.
If you want more of the Confidence Game read on for