Chapter 51

Liv

“I had some other things I meant to say before we had sex.” I wrap the trench coat around me, hugging myself. I don’t bother trying to put the panties back on. They were honestly pretty damp even before Chase licked me through them. Anticipation. I mean, not that I was sure how this would go. I wasn’t. I was terrified. But I thought there was at least a decent chance that sex would happen, and I was more than ready. Plus the lace and the satin and the trench coat kind of did it for me. There was also my first sight of Chase in forty-eight hours, broad, cocky, amber-eyed, a little scruffy…

He raises his eyebrows. “Well, me too.”

“When I told you I didn’t think you could change, I realized I did exactly what your parents did. And Thea. I assumed I knew who you were and what you’d do in a certain situation, without giving you a chance to prove yourself.”

He opens his mouth, but I keep going, because I need him to know. “The truth is, I’ve never seen you be anything except exactly what I want. Honest and loyal and a terrific friend and an amazing father and—” I bite my lip.

“—seriously, seriously hot in bed,” he supplies, crossing his arms.

I smack him.

“I am, though, right?” He does that patented Chase eyebrow waggle that should make me cringe but actually makes the pit of my stomach squirmy. Not that I want him to know that.

“You’re supposed to let me say it, asshole.”

“So say it,” he challenges, leveling me a dark look.

“Best ever. So good. You’ve spoiled me for every other guy in the universe, and in any parallel universes, and—”

He makes a face. “Don’t overdo it. I won’t believe you.”

“In all seriousness, Chase, if you’re serious about asking me to stay, I’m serious about staying.”

“Hell yes, I’m serious.”

“I didn’t get much sleep last night. I was looking up job listings in the Seattle area.”

He shakes his head. Hard. “I’ve got a job for you. At the store. I bought the store from Mike. That is, I still owe a lot of money, but I signed the contract to buy it. Not for you,” he says, as I try to protest. “For me. Because I thought about it, hard, and I realized: I don’t feel the way I used to. I don’t feel claustrophobic when I think about it. I feel excited. And I think it’s because when I used to think about it, the first thing I always thought was, ‘I can’t do it. I’m going to fuck it up.’ But I don’t feel like that guy anymore. I feel like the guy you see when you look at me. A guy who’s good at stuff that matters.”

My chest aches and my eyes are all misty. I reach for him, and he pulls me close and clutches me hard against his chest. “I want to stay,” I whisper. “Right here.”

“Good,” he says. “This is where you belong.”

He smells like cotton and sweat and I breathe him in, gloriously happy.

“What about the Denver job?”

“I told them it had been a mistake for me to leave Seattle, that I had fallen in love…”

I peek up at his face, not sure what to expect, hoping for the best.

He’s smirking. Just a little, just enough. “Say that part again.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“Again.”

“I love you.”

He takes a huge breath and sighs it out.

“I love you, too,” he says.

Then he bends his head and we spend a few long minutes not being able to get enough of each other.

But I still haven’t told him all of what I realized.

“I don’t know when I started loving you,” I admit. “It might be that I loved you that night when you looked me up and down on that first date and said it was never going to work, and I was so relieved because I knew nothing ever worked and this time I didn’t have to go through all the bullshit of having it be wonderful and then gone.”

He makes a noise, like he’s going to contradict me, but I put a hand up because I have to get through this; I have to say it all. He needs to know. “And you kept being that way, so honest and so safe. You were the one person who I didn’t need anything from so you couldn’t take anything away, and then suddenly I did, and that was terrifying, and I couldn’t get back to feeling safe with you again, and then when you said you wanted me to stay—”

He sighs. “I should have known you’d freak out. I knew your history. But I—” He looks away. “I never told you this, but when Thea broke up with me, she said something so similar to what you said the other night. That she’d always want me to be more like her, but she knew she couldn’t ask me to change for her, that it wouldn’t work.”

“Oh,” I say, stricken. “Oh, God. Chase, no. God, no. I don’t want you to be more like me. I love that you’re nothing like me. I love that about us, the way we strike sparks, the way we tease, the ways we’re nothing alike but somehow fit together.”

Quietly, roughly, he says, “Do you know what I want for Katie?”

I shake my head. My throat is tight with unshed tears.

“I want her to grow up to be high maintenance and low maintenance and girly and tomboyish and artsy and sporty and rough and polished and loving action flicks and loving chick flicks and—”

Chase’s voice breaks.

Chase’s voice breaks.

I’m crying. I grab the belt of my trench coat and wipe away the tears, but it doesn’t help much. I throw my arms around him and he rocks me back and forth, and oh my God, everything fits. He, the house, this family—everything wraps around me, and I’m home.

I eventually stop crying and can talk again.

“There’s this part at the end of La La Land—that’s what I watched in the hotel last night—where the whole life he could have had flashes before his eyes. Everything, how it would have been if he hadn’t fucked up. And this morning I knew that’s how it would be if I kept driving. Every time someone said the word home, this is what I would picture. This living room, you and me watching our movies. Or the dining room with you and me and Katie. Every party I went to, I’d think about the barbecue we had. Every guy who asked me out—”

Chase roars. I don’t even think it’s actual words, just outrage.

“It’s not going to happen! I came back!”

He gives me a dark, dark look: better not.

Mmm. I do so love Chase’s possessive thing.

“Anyway, I didn’t want to be like the La La Land hero anymore, with the life I wanted just a film playing in my mind.”

He points a finger at me. “Damn straight. Good thing you came when you did. I had just about given up on you.”

Fear flickers. “You had?”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” he says, and wraps me up in his arms again.