Just Around the Corner

And today.

It wasn’t ever going to happen again.

He didn’t wait around for whatever was going to happen next.

He’d already seen too much.

“MATT, WAIT!”

Phyllis was running after him, but Matt couldn’t stop. Get to the Blazer. Start the engine. Return to the reality he knew.

“Matt, I’m begging you!” She was crying as she chased him out to his truck. Crying and apparently determined. When he started the engine, she grabbed the door handle.

“Matt, don’t do this!” Her voice was muffled through the closed door, but not muffled enough. He could still hear the pain.

A pain that echoed low in his gut and throughout the rest of him. Alone was so much better than this.

But he couldn’t drive away with her hanging on to the car door.

“I love you, you idiot! Please listen to me.”

The pain. The anger. The despair. It all just stopped. He was numb. Matt rolled down the window.

“What did you say?” He was staring straight ahead.

“I said I love you, and if you think for one second that I was doubting you back there, you’d better have a damn good apology for me. I’d suspected it was you she loved, but when she was so certain that the man loved her back, I’d dismissed my suspicion. Too quickly. And the only excuse I have is that I was too personally involved to be objective.”

Matt had a feeling this wasn’t a good time to smile. But he couldn’t help it. The grin spread right across his face.

“You’ve never told me you loved me.”

“You’ve never told me, either.”

“Well, I do.”

“I do, too.”

He turned then, searching those beautiful green eyes for the truth he needed to find there. “You really do?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“I love you, Phyllis,” he said, grabbing her hand through the window to hold on to her while he slowly eased open the car door and pulled her onto his lap. “I think I have since that first day in the sound booth. I’ve never made love to a woman like that in my life.”

“I never knew sex could be that…everything.”

Matt absorbed her honesty—with gratitude and with anticipation. “You know what? Neither did I.”

“Does this mean you’re ready to trust me?”

“I already trusted you, I just didn’t know it yet.”

Her gaze was sweet and honest and direct, holding nothing back. “I trusted you, too,” she whispered.

Matt took a deep breath, pondering the words he had to say next. “Enough to marry me?”

If she said no, life—as he wanted to believe it could be—was over before it could even begin.

“I thought you’d never ask.”