The Best Next Thing

It had to wait. He refused to touch her until he knew there was a future in it. Because he couldn’t do finite with her anymore.

He needed forever.

“More what?” he prompted impatiently, when it seemed that she wouldn’t continue.

“Miles…” she placed a hand on the counter and slid it across the cold, smooth surface toward one of his. When she covered his flattened hand with her smaller one, he shuddered at the contact. “You know that I love you, right?”

His breath snagged in his chest. Trapped by the weight of his expanding heart. The words, long awaited, much coveted, hit him with the force of a ten-ton truck, and he swayed on his feet as his entire body absorbed the impact.

“I did not know that,” he managed to squeeze the words out despite the expanding heart and trapped breath. They sounded rough, taut…even surly.

“Oh. Well…I do. Love you, I mean. I’ve been in love with you since”—her eyes went hazy with the recollection—“the day we took Stormy to the beach. Somewhere between our first kiss and the chickens at the restaurant, I fell head over heels in love with you. Only I didn’t know it. Because in my mind loving a man meant being weak and helpless. But I didn’t feel weak or helpless around you, so it took me a while to recognize the emotion for what it was. The love I feel for you…” She laughed. It was a sound filled with wonder and awe. “The love I feel for you strengthens me. It makes me a better person. It’s taken a long time for me to like myself again, Miles. But I find that I like myself even more when I’m with you.”

His hand flipped over to take her palm in his. He hoped the gesture would tell her everything he currently could not say.

He swallowed, trying to dislodge the obstructive lump in his throat that prevented him from replying. She had stopped speaking and was staring at him with huge, vulnerable eyes. She had laid herself bare, opened herself up to potential rejection and pain. But trusted that he would not hurt her. Or reject her.

Always so fucking brave.

“Thank God for that then,” he whispered shakily. The words heartfelt and not exactly what he would have planned to say in response to a declaration of love from the woman of his dreams, if he had been thinking clearly.

He rounded the island, not letting go of her hand, and turned her barstool until her back was to the counter, and he was standing between her thighs.

“I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t love me the way I love you. Probably gone back to London brokenhearted…again. Only last time, even though it hurt like hell, I told myself I was doing the right thing. Despite my best intentions, I know I wasn’t always graceful about it—I was in pain—but I understood that letting you go was the only option available to me. Telling you how I felt would have been manipulative. Unfair. I couldn’t do that to you.

“But when you started messaging me, I hoped it meant something. Only you wouldn’t stop talking about Stormy and sending me stupid jokes and dumb videos and asking me impersonal questions about fucking work, and I was so damned confused!”

In his eyes was an echo of the frustration and bewilderment he had felt at her bombardment of silly messages. Charity wrapped her arms around his neck and stroked his nape in apology.

While her heart joyfully soared out of her chest and flitted around the kitchen like a drunken, happy butterfly

He loved her.

Despite her regret at her poor handling of the situation with the texts and impersonal calls and voice notes, she couldn’t stop herself from grinning at his confession.

“You love me,” she murmured.

He was smiling. A beautiful, broad, fully dimpled smile. “You love me.”

“I do,” she confirmed. “So much. But you were right to let me figure it out on my own. I needed the time apart to recognize my feelings for you as deep, genuine, and irrefutable.”

“And apparently you needed to shop around too,” he muttered, eyeing her askance.

She laughed, “I confess, I had to kiss a few toads before I recognized that I’d already found my frog.”

“Waaait a second…” He frowned at the analogy. “That’s not how that goes.”

“No, it is,” she maintained earnestly, before getting up and plastering her chest against his. She hugged him and whispered her next words directly into his ear. “Once upon a time, I had the perfect golden prince, and he was rotten to the core. I don’t need a perfect prince, Miles. I need you. You’re imperfect and you’re beautiful and I love you exactly the way you are.”

He made a choked sound in the back of his throat and turned his head, his hawkish nose bumping hers in his haste to kiss her. She giggled but was abruptly silenced when his lips latched onto hers fiercely. All thought of laughter fled when he swung her into his arms and carried her from the kitchen without releasing her mouth.