It’s been a long day. Maybe the longest in the history of the world. I don’t know why it feels that way, but it does.

It’s not like anything earthshattering happened. Nothing particularly good or bad. It just seems that every day I’m in a battle, a fight to the death. The death of my feelings. Every day, I have to fight a little harder to stay bitter and angry with Nixon. Every day, I have to fight a little harder to keep the love and regret and heartbreak at bay. And every day, it wears me down a little more.

I put on some soft moleskin pants and a thick cable knit sweater; I wind my hair into a twist and go straight to the liquor cabinet for a glass of wine. As I uncork the bottle, my eyes fall on the bottle of tequila on the top shelf. Impulsively, almost rebelliously, I replace the wine and reach for the Patrón instead. My mouth waters as I pour. Not in response to the tequila, but to the memory it evokes. There was a time, just a few months ago, that it would’ve reminded me of entirely different events, or maybe even of no events at all, but that’s no longer the case. Now, all I can think of is Nixon. He fills my mind, tantalizes my senses, tortures my heart.

I take a sip and a mixture of love and hate, desire and aversion, fury and agony ripple through me. My fingers tighten on the delicate tumbler, and I resist the urge to throw the whole thing into the flames licking the logs in my fireplace. Instead, I carry it to the sofa. I set the tequila on the table as I ease onto the cushion and drop my face into my hands. I let the tears come. I’m so tired of feeling their wetness, but I’m also tired of trying to hold them inside. They’re always there, lurking around the perimeter of my emotions, like shadows threatening to pull me under their dark, tragic spell.

The doorbell rings and startles me where I sit in my misery. I wipe my face and fan my cheeks before I get up and head across the living room. I take a cursory glance into the peephole, fully expecting to see Janice or a delivery person. I’ve done a lot of online shopping lately. Retail therapy is retail therapy whether you leave your house or not.

I nearly fall into the door when I see half of a darkly familiar face staring back at me. He’s peering into my eyes as though he can see me looking out. I don’t know why I’m surprised. It was always like he could see right through me. Or maybe right into me.

Nixon.

My heart thuds heavily in my chest, and my fingers tremble when I drop my hands to my sides. I close my eyes, but on the backs of my lids, I can still see in perfect detail his face as though I’m staring at him. His left side is illuminated by the streetlight next door, casting the right side into a thick shadow. He’s never appeared more dangerous, more enigmatic, or a more welcome sight, which is terrifying to my heart.

Questions race through my mind. Why is he here? How did he find me? What am I supposed to say to him?

I feel myself falling down the emotional rabbit hole of Nixon, so I mentally flick through all the reasons I hate him. It’s getting harder and harder to do that because I don’t hate him. I want to. But I don’t. Not even close. I try desperately to drum up a flare of anger, a flash of bitterness, a dash of disdain, but all that responds to my call is a wave of relief.

He’s here.

He came for me.

“I know you’re in there, Haley. I came all this way just to talk to you. Please open the door.” His voice is as soft as a snowdrift, as velvety as the night. It sends a shiver down my spine, a remembrance of that voice cooing to me as he drove my body mad.

Oh Jesus, help!

I brush my hair back and reach for the knob. My hand stills on it, and I make one last attempt to dredge up my fury. The most I conjure is a spark of irritation for him showing up without warning and interrupting my crying jag. Because if I’m being honest, my heart is melting just knowing he’s on the other side of the door.

I swing open the only physical separation between us. “Nixon,” I say with as much composure and neutrality as I can muster. “I don’t know how you found me, but you need to leave.”

“Give me five minutes. That’s all I ask.”

“Five minutes won’t matter. I don’t—”

“Five minutes and I’ll leave you alone forever. If that’s what you want. I promise.”

“Nixon, I—”

“Please, Haley. Please.” His tone is as dire and sincere as his expression.

I exhale, a breath I feel like I’ve been holding for eons. “Five minutes. No more.”

“Thank you.”

When he doesn’t speak right away, I ask, “So? What are you doing here?”

“I…” Whatever he’d been about to say, he changes his mind. “I came to finish our game.”

Surely I didn’t hear him right. “You came to…”

“Finish our game.”

“Our game? You think this is a game?”

I move to slam the door, outrage blossoming within the bottom of my gut. Before I can shut it in his face, however, his hand juts out and stops it dead.

His eyes meet mine through the sliver-like opening. “Never have I ever tried a McRib.”

It takes a few seconds for his words and their intent to penetrate my emotion-clouded brain. This game. This is the game he was referring to.

When I realize that he’s extending an olive branch, a peace offering in the form of something that’s sort of taken on an intimate quality between us, my knees get weak, and my arms turn to jelly. But it’s my heart that softens immeasurably.

I can’t stop myself from replying in kind. “Never have I ever believed they were actual pork.”

One side of his mouth tips up at the corner. Relief is written all over his gorgeous face. “Never have I ever watched Casablanca.”

“Never have I ever liked Humphrey Bogart.”

“Haley, I…” He trails off. With his gaze centered on mine, I can almost see him grasping. Grasping for what I don’t know. He leans in and rests his forehead on the door. I almost don’t hear his next words. Almost. “Never have I ever wanted to chase a woman more than I’ve wanted to chase you.”

My ribs expand like my heart might burst through them at any moment. My mind spins and whirls, scrambling for what to do, what to say. “Nixon, I—”

“Never have I ever expected to feel the way I feel about you.”

“But that doesn’t change—”

“Never have I ever expected to meet someone I couldn’t shake.”

“That’s not—”

“Never have I ever expected to fall, unless it was off a horse.”

That stops me.

Fall? Does he mean…?

My breaths pick up, coming faster and faster.

He finally raises his head, his eyes colliding with mine. “Never have I ever expected you.”

“I… I…”

“The night we made love, I knew it then. I knew when I couldn’t let you go, when I didn’t want to, that this was different. I just didn’t know how different.”

I take a step back. He takes a step forward.

My mind is reeling.

“I didn’t know what this was. But now I do. I know what it is, Haley.”

His words steal the breath from my lungs. I’m left gasping, straining. Everything is racing—my blood, my mind, my emotions.

I wait for him to say more, to give me the words I need, but he remains silent. Seconds tick by into minutes, and just when the tension reaches the point of being unbearable, Nixon’s lips twist into a rueful grin. “Never have I ever made someone stand outside my door, in the Colorado cold, while pouring her heart out to me.”

I stare at him until his meaning sinks in. I shake my head, trying to snap out of the shock of this moment. “Oh. Oh, God. I’m sorry. Come in. Please.”

I stand aside, and Nixon moves past me, pausing when his chest is at its closest to mine. He doesn’t retreat, doesn’t give me space. He holds his ground and stares down into my eyes like he’s trying to memorize them. It reminds me of the night I spent wrapped in his arms.

Chills tumble down my back.

“Thank you,” he whispers. And I know he’s thanking me for so much more than letting him in out of the cold.

When he clears the door, I close it and turn to face him. He’s standing less than a foot away, so tall, so big. Larger than life. He seems to fill my apartment, which isn’t small to begin with. He brings something wild and alive into the space. He breathes life into what has felt increasingly dead these last few weeks.

We watch each other for the longest time. I could watch him for days and days and never get tired. This last month, I’ve managed to convince myself that he wasn’t that good-looking, he wasn’t that charming. That I didn’t love him that much.

But I was wrong. Oh, so wrong.

He’s devastating. His face and his body, but also his charm, his humor, the way he eats me up with his eyes like a starving man staring at food. He tries to consume me and doesn’t bother apologizing for it. And the thing is, I don’t want him to apologize, and I don’t want him to stop. I want to be consumed. But I can’t trust him not to consume me and leave me a shell of the woman I was before I met him.

“I came here to tell you I’m sorry. I know I said it before, but I don’t think I really knew at the time how sorry I was. How sorry I am.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, shrugging his wide shoulders inside his thick canvas jacket. “I didn’t think keeping that from you was a big deal, but now I see that it was. And I’m not defending my actions at all when I say this, but at the time, I didn’t realize how much I cared about you.” He stops to run a hand through his dark hair, leaving it sticking up in jagged spikes all over his head. If anything, it only makes him sexier. “I made a mistake, Haley. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t. I wish I could go back and do it differently, show you right from the beginning that I’m nothing like him, but…I can’t.”

“What’s done is done, Nixon.”

“But I hurt you. You trusted me, and I had no idea how valuable that was until I lost it. I’d give anything for another chance.” He takes a small step toward me, closing the gap. “Let me make it up to you.”

“How, Nixon? You can’t make up for broken trust.”

“Maybe not, but won’t you at least let me try?” When I don’t respond, he continues in a rush. “If you could see inside me, you wouldn’t question me. I promise you wouldn’t. If you could see what it took for me to even try to let you g—”

“But if this is how you felt, then why did you? Why did you let me go?”

“I knew you needed to go. And, at first, I tried to let you, but…”

“But?”

He doesn’t answer at first, and when he does, it isn’t what I expected.

“You asked if I’d ever been in love.” I nod. “I can tell you that, without a doubt, I hadn’t.”

My pulse thunders through my veins. “Hadn’t?” Past tense.

He shakes his head. “Hadn’t. Not at that time.”

“B-but now?”

“I can’t say that anymore. I can only say I’ve never been in love until you. Not until you.”

A shard of panic pierces my heart like shrapnel. What if this is just a jilted man talking? What if he still doesn’t know what love is? He could hurt me even worse. “How can you be sure it’s love you feel?”

He comes all the way to me, gently wrapping his hands around my upper arms. “Haley, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my whole life. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. I’ve tried everything to get you off my mind, out of my heart, but nothing works. I tried ignoring this. I tried drowning this. Hell, I even tried another woman, but—”

“What do you mean you tried another woman?”

“Not what you think, obviously,” he explains. “I met my brother at the same bar I met you in. We had some drinks. I looked for someone interesting enough to help me get over you. I found a pretty girl. She came over. Bought me a drink. Guess what it was.”

His lips are curved, but I don’t find anything amusing in his story thus far. “What?” There’s an edge to my tone, but he seems not to notice.

“Tequila. Of all things, she bought me a shot of tequila. The instant it hit my tongue…” He trails off, his eyes drifting shut. “Damn.”

“The instant it hit your tongue what?”

His lids peel back from his sparkling black irises, and he smiles warmly down into my face. “I knew she’d never be you. And I knew in that moment that no one else ever would be.” Nixon raises his hand to drag the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “You’re the only one I want. I can’t get you out of my blood, but now, I don’t want to. I want you there. I want you on the tip of my tongue, always. I want you in the back of my mind, always. I want you to be the first thing I see when I get up and the last thing I see when I go to sleep. Yours are the only eyes I want to stare into, and yours are the only lips I want to kiss. You’re my tequila. And you’re my hangover. I’m in love with you, and that’s the only high I need. Just you. Always.”

The last of his words seem to melt into the air, his whisper like steam or mist or the fog of hot breath in cold air. I feel them all the way down to my soul, seeping and sinking and dripping into me.

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to feel. It’s all too much, and it’s happening so fast I can’t keep up. I’m too spent to be able to think clearly. “Y-your five minutes are up.”

“What?” Disappointment registers on his face. I watch as resignation sets in. His hands drop to his sides, and he moves back. “Can’t forgive me, huh?”

“It’s not just about forgiveness, Nixon. How will I ever know that you’re sincere? You own my childhood home. It’s easy to say all this now, when you’ve got what you wanted.”

“What happened between us was never about that ranch. Never. I thought I’d made that clear.”

“But it’s all connected. Don’t you see? It’s all intertwined.”

“So if it weren’t for the ranch, you’d reconsider?”

I stammer for a second, shrugging one shoulder. “I suppose, but—”

“Haley, the ranch isn’t mine anymore. The company didn’t buy it. I did. My father and I couldn’t agree on a vision for it, so I bought it with my own money. That’s why Jason couldn’t buy it from Dad. It wasn’t his to sell. Now, I’m glad I did it that way, because I worked out a deal with your father. I put the property back in his name. That place belongs to your family, and your family deserves to have it as long as you want it.”

“But what about the money?”

“He’s paying me like it’s a mortgage, but interest free. He can do what he wants with the ranch, although I should warn you that I think he liked the idea of a dude ranch.”

“Wait, what?”

“The ranch isn’t part of the equation anymore. This is just about you and me.”

“You…you did that for him?”

“No, I did it for you.”

“But…but…”

“You thought every man who said he loved you was just using you. I didn’t want you to ever feel that way about me again.”

“You didn’t—”

“I never used you, Haley. I only ever wanted you for you. Just for you.”

I feel like my insides are soaring; yet, my body is anchored to the ground like lead. My arms and legs are so heavy I can’t move them. “Tell me that again.”

“I never used you. I—”

Slowly, I edge my way closer to him. “No, the other part.”

“What other part?”

I let my lips curve into a smile that seems to emerge from the deepest, darkest, most scarred place in my heart. That place is now filled with the most incredible light. It pours from me in bright, shining waves. “The part you said before, about loving me.”

His face relaxes into the most beautiful expression of love and relief I think I’ve ever seen. “I don’t remember mentioning love.”

I slap his arm. “Now is not the time for your antics.”

“Never have I ever done ‘antics’.”

“Never have I ever joked about love.”

“Neither have I.”

I loop my arms around Nixon’s neck. He splays his hands over my lower back. “How does a man who doesn’t do love fall in love?”

Nixon bends and rubs his nose back and forth across mine a couple of times. “One shot at a time, I guess.”

I tilt my face and meet his mouth halfway. His lips skate over mine in the sweetest of kisses, one reserved for life’s most delicate and breakable moments. When he raises his head, he licks them.

“Tequila?” I ask.

“Nope. The love of my life. Much better than tequila. There’s just one thing missing.”

“What’s that?”

“Is there anything you’d like to say to me? Any confessions you feel like making?”

My brows draw together for a few seconds before I realize I haven’t told him how I feel. I haven’t told him that I love him. “You mean that I’m glad you came?”

“That’s nice, but no.”

“Uhhh, you mean that I’m glad you fell for me?”

“That’s grand, but no.”

“Uhhhh, you mean that I’m glad you—” Nixon sinks his teeth into my earlobe. Hard.

“Don’t tease me, woman. You might not be able to walk for a week when I’m done with you.”

“Wait, that’s supposed to be a deterrent, right?” He drops down into a squat like he’s going to throw me over his shoulder. I squeal and thump his shoulder. “Okay, okay, okay. There is something I meant to say to you.”

He straightens and widens his eyes in comical interest. “Yessss?”

I smile, reaching up to cup his cheek. “I love you, Nixon Holt. I think I loved you from the first night I kissed you. I tried to deny it. I tried to run from it, but I couldn’t escape it. I couldn’t escape you. And I’m so glad, because my life was miserable without you. I don’t want to spend a single day away from you. Not now. Not ever again.”

He smiles as he pulls me to his chest. “That’ll do for now. I’ll expect some more of that later, after you scream my name a few times.”

Before I can comment, he lowers his head and kisses me in earnest. All the passion I’ve come to know and expect from him is there. It’s like he wants to devour me for hours and hours on end. But tonight, there’s something else. Something new. Something so magical yet so real that it sets my insides on fire. I burn with it from top to bottom, from inside and out. I’ll take this kind of burn, though, this exquisite kind of hurt. All day, every day for the rest of my life; Nixon and I can burn together. Flames so high they touch the sky. What a high that will be!