“But that’s not the point of me telling you all this. The point is, I met you and you were like this brilliant shooting star burning a path right through my whole life. I loved it—and I love you—but it scared me, too. Just loving you is outside my comfort zone, Shawn. Dealing with all the crazy stunts, too. It just…it’s a lot, you know. I just need some time to wrap my head around it all and then—”
“No, you don’t. I’m giving it up.”
Shock slams through me. “What do you mean, you’re giving it up? You won’t be okay if you can’t jump off cliffs and out of planes—”
“No. I won’t be okay if I lose you,” he tells me, dark eyes shining with so much love and sincerity that I can barely breathe. “Everything else is negotiable.”
“I’d be lying if I said the idea of you stopping all these extreme sports isn’t a relief to me, because it is. But I don’t want to make you change for me. That’s not what a good relationship is all about. And the last thing I want is for you to start to resent me because I forced you into something you weren’t ready for.”
“You’re not forcing me into anything, Sage. I’m figuring out for myself that it’s time to grow up.” He pauses for a second, takes a deep breath like he’s trying to collect his thoughts. Then says, “My mom used to do these things, you know? I mean, nothing as risky as free climbing up the side of a cliff, but she did skydive and mountain climb and a bunch of other things like that.
“She died when I was young and for a long time I thought it was my fault that she and my sister died in that car accident. We were going to one of my games and I was rushing her because we were late and coach was going to be mad. One minute she was telling me to calm down and fiddling with the radio and the next she and my baby sister were dead because some jerk in a huge-ass SUV ran a red light and plowed straight into the side of our car.”
“Oh my God. Oh, Shawn, I didn’t know that. I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” I press kisses to his shoulder, his neck, his cheek—anything I can reach, really.
He shakes his head, his big, calloused hands coming up to gently cradle my cheeks. “I didn’t tell you that because I wanted to make you sad. I’m just trying to explain why I do what I do. I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last couple of days, and the truth is, I’m an idiot who never grew up.”
“That’s not true—”
“But it is. Somehow, as a kid, I convinced myself that I could feel my mom when I was doing the things we used to do together. Mountain climbing, snowboarding, etc. But the longer she was gone, the harder it was to feel her. So I would do riskier and riskier things in the hopes that it would be like it was at the beginning.”
Tears are burning my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. Not now, when Shawn is being so strong and so vulnerable. Not now when he’s meeting me more than halfway in trying to make this thing work between us. No way am I going to make this harder for him by crying, no matter how much my heart hurts for the shattered little boy he was and the strong, still damaged man he has become.
“I’m sorry I punished you for that,” I told him. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand—”
“How could you understand when I barely understood myself?” he asks. “But now that I do, I don’t need it anymore. Or at least, I don’t think I do.”
“You know, this isn’t an either-or situation. I mean, yeah, I’d really prefer if you didn’t free climb up a sheer rock wall, but if you want to mountain climb with ropes and carabiners and all of that, maybe I can join you. Or, free diving for seven minutes is out, but maybe not for three or four? And I’ve always wanted to skydive, as long as I’ve got a backup parachute.”
“Really?” His eyebrows hit his hairline. “You want to skydive?”
“No,” I tell him with a laugh. “I really, really don’t. But I will, for you. Because as long as you’re safe, or at least as safe as you can be, then I say you should go for it.”
“We’ll see,” he says. “Right now, I have more important things to think about than jumping out of a plane.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, arching lightly against him. “What exactly do you want to think about?”
“Not that,” he says, stilling my hips with a hand. “Well, I mean, yes, always that…But we did that first and now I want—”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out two boxes and puts them on the coffee table in front of us. My heart goes nuts.
“What…what are those?”
“One’s a pair of earrings. Tanner seems to think earrings are the best way to grovel, so I took his advice.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not wrong,” I whisper as my voice all but deserts me. “What’s in the other one?”
“What do you want to be in the other one?” Shawn asks, and suddenly he’s whispering, too.
“Shawn—”
“You don’t have to open it. If it’s too soon, I’ll put it back in my pocket and we can forget—”
“What’s in the box, Shawn?” I’ve gone from whispering to screeching in three seconds flat.
He reaches for the smaller of the two boxes and hands it to me, still closed. “I love you, Sage. You’re the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about when I go to sleep. I think about you when I’m climbing mountains and when I’m free diving. I think about you when I’m working out and when I’m reviewing game tape. I think about you when I’m cooking and I dream about you when I’m sleeping. I know it’s too soon, I know we haven’t known each other very long. But I’ve spent most of my life looking for you and now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to wait anymore. I love you so much and I want nothing more than to be able to spend the rest of my life thinking about you every moment of it.”
“Oh my God.” Tears are pouring down my face now, and my hands are shaking so badly I can barely hold the ring box. “Oh my God.”