In the Likely Event

by Rebecca Yarros

scars. Go figure we’d meet again like this. We’d always had a habit of colliding at the worst times and in the most inconvenient places.

He was a reader? This guy just kept getting hotter.

That was because nothing distracted me like Isabeau Astor. She wasn’t some bright, shiny little diversion. The woman was a meteor, a shooting star capable of granting impossible wishes or destroying life as I knew it.

Maybe she was right, and she wasn’t my Izzy anymore . . . not that she’d ever been mine. Not really.

curves. He’d be 100 percent focused. “She’ll be safer with me.” “Because you’re in love with her?” Torres questioned. I shook my head. “Because Jenkins isn’t willing to die for her.”

nearly unraveled me. To sit here, to see her and not touch her, not demand to know whose ring was on her finger, was a hell I wasn’t sure I could live through, and yet, I’d endure it without faltering if it meant I’d get to see her one last time. After all, she was . . . Isabeau.

folder. He snorted. “Like a piece of metal is keeping me out when I hear you scream.”

already had a couple.” I shrugged. There was no chance I was going to dull a single second of seeing her again. “Want to grab a table outside?”

I was just the one willing to fly into a combat zone for her. It didn’t matter how much time had passed; I couldn’t seem to let go. It wasn’t her fault that I still loved her. It was mine.

threatened to take me back to shore. “If no one’s trying to kill you here, then that means I’m doing my job over there. That’s how I choose to look at it, how I have to look at it.” “And is that your dream?” “I don’t follow.”

A few years ago, the brunette would have been just my type. But I’d found out over the last year that my type was now Isabeau Astor. Not just blonde. Not just brown eyes. Not only quick wits and an infectious laugh. Not just a tendency to talk about fourteen subjects at once through lips softer than silk. Only the complete package of Izzy seemed to do it for me. No one else. I’d fallen for her a little harder with every letter, every secret she shared, every time she made me laugh. And it wasn’t that I hadn’t had offers while we were in the sandbox, or that I’d deluded myself into thinking she was back here waiting for me, especially after I’d told her not to. It was just that no one was Izzy.

“You’re all I want.” He cupped the back of my neck. “It doesn’t matter how far I go or how long I’m away. I dream about you. Even when I know you’re with someone else—”

crossed her features. “Please,” I said softly. “Please choose me, Izzy. Choose us. Choose us over whatever life your parents want you to lead. Choose us despite the fact that I’m asking when we haven’t had time to build a life. Choose to give us that time. Choose our future. I’ll do whatever you want. Just marry me.”

I’d come to a conclusion. If I wanted to be with Nate, really honestly be with him, then I needed two things: strength and patience. Strength to know that he loved me, and he’d come to me when he could, and patience to wait for those days.

didn’t know what this new future looked like, but I knew it was ours. And that was everything.