“Is that it? That’s what made you look like you were…” I trailed off, replaying the words in my head. “Wait, you love me?”
Narrowing his eyes, he started walking, ordering the two dogs to go to their bed – which they did, surprisingly. I was so dumbfounded by what he’d just said and was still staring at his nose when he started lowering me down, that it was a shock when I realized I was now sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Now,” he drawled, bending down into me and gently pushing me onto my back. “I know, that you know, that I said I love you. So I now know that you know.” With each word his mouth got closer to mine, but I had something to say now so I covered it with my hand.
“Know what I know?” I whispered, waiting for him to shake his head. “I know that I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you, and I’ve never felt more like I belong somewhere in my life. I know that I want to stay here, because I belong here, but I also know that I won’t ever feel like this with anyone but you.” As I finished saying it, I lowered my hand away and kept my focus on his mouth.
What I should have been doing was looking at his eyes which were now back to being narrow slits as he glared at me, but it had to be said that it was done with a good dose of humor, too.
“You know,” he growled, “it took me a long time to figure out how to say those words to you, and you just had to go and beat me, didn’t you?”
And this was why I belonged here. He understood me, he totally got me, and knew that if it had stayed serious I would have been out of my depth. I knew he loved his family, but I didn’t know if he’d ever given a declaration of love to a woman outside of it.
What I did know, as did Levi, was that I’d never told my family that I loved them or heard it back from anyone - this was the first time I’d ever given that to someone - so it would have been easy to become overwhelmed by it. Something like that shouldn’t happen at a moment like this but it could happen, and he was doing his best to help me avoid it. No one deserved to have the memory of a moment like this darkened by something like that, because it was a moment I wanted to look back at for the rest of my life as the best one I’d ever had. Actually, that was a lie – since he’d come into my life and we’d started hanging out, every one of the best moments of my life had involved him, this was just the cherry on top. Something that I decided to tell him.
“I haven’t had a bad life,” I started, shaking my head when I saw him looking like he was going to argue about that with me. “No, Levi, I haven’t. I’ve had an education, I had a good home, I had food, I had almost everything I needed. I just didn’t have the family that a child needs…”
“You were surrounded by people who were manipulating and controlling you, Lottie. That isn’t under the definition of a ‘good life’,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, but I was safe and looked after even with all of that.”
“You call what your parents set up with Eric safe?”
I couldn’t help wincing at that, he had a good point. “Ok, aside from him. He was the exception to the safety aspect.”
“You call parents who didn’t personally involve themselves in your life as safe, too?” he pressed. “Baby, I’m not trying to hurt you by bringing this up, I’m trying to make you see it for what it was.”
Which I could understand, but he needed to understand it too. “I know that, but remove your emotions for now and look at it from my perspective. You saw what Luna went through firsthand,” I reminded him, hating the sadness that the words brought him. “That wasn’t a good life or being safe. Now look at what I had, it’s very different. But I can say for sure that every single one of the best moments of my life have been since I met you, and that they’ve all involved you.”
Pressing down so that I had to widen my legs for him to lie in between, he stroked my cheek with his thumb. “I wasn’t with you while you were riding Night Rider.”
“Yes, you were. You were standing there each time and then you followed on the ATV with Bogey when we went on the long ride.”