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“Because you seem like someone destined for more,”
He likes to feel cared for. He likes that someone in his life wants things for him aside from what he does for them in return.
His eyes flicker over my face. “You’re prettier than any of them even without makeup,” he says gruffly.
“Thank you.” It comes out as a whisper, barely audible around the lump in my throat. God, am I really about to cry over this? “I can’t accept, but thank you.” His nostrils flare. “Why the fuck not?” he demands. “I can make all your problems disappear in the blink of an eye, with very little effort. Why not let me?”
“Because,” I say, unable to meet his eyes, “everyone in your life seems to take something from you, and that’s not what friends do. I guess I’d rather be your friend.” It feels too intimate, too earnest. I want to make a joke, find a way to lighten things up. But I see something in his face that hasn’t been there before—as if he really sees me, as if he might even trust me—and I can’t stand to ruin it. For once, I keep all the awkward jokes inside me. And then I walk away, wishing, more than anything, I could stay.
“Then who here do you find attractive? Aside from me, of course. Obviously, in a perfect world, I’d be your first choice.”
He glances at me, his eyes falling to my mouth, soft as a snowflake, before they jerk away. “Every eye will be on
His hands cradle my jaw, forcing me to meet his eyes. “You have the purest face I’ve ever seen in my life,” he says quietly. “A face I couldn’t possibly replicate, and if I could, she and every other female here would ask me to.”
“He’s jealous as hell right now.” It takes me a second to even remember Matt was here. I press my palm flat to the barstool beside me, trying to get a grip. “You’re not even looking at him, so how could you possibly know that?” “Simple,” he says, grabbing my hand. He begins fighting the crowd again, pushing toward the exit. “Because I’d be jealous as hell if I were him.”
“You’d look amazing in that,”
“Yes, I know. Just like you were fine earlier. You don’t have to do everything alone, you know.”
“What’s wrong with the beige dress?” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Nothing. That’s why she’ll hate it. When you’re in the beige dress, there’s nothing wrong in the entire world.”
“Actually, Tali received a rather large advance for this book when she was still in graduate school,” he says, a warning in his tone. “There’s nothing aspiring about it. If you’ll excuse us, I’m going to introduce her to Grandmother.”
“I saw her photo on Jonathan’s desk and started looking for her all the time, because she worked at this bar I’d pass on my way home,” he says. Weirdly…it doesn’t sound like a lie. “I saw her reading while she was walking in, even though it was raining. And I thought she was the loveliest thing I’d ever seen in my life, so I followed her.”
Home is Hayes, and I am going to miss him every minute of the day for a long, long time.
“He bought the house you stayed at in Laguna,” he says. “He bought it for the two of you. His somewhat inept way of telling you what you meant to him, and what he was hoping for.”
The point was never whether or not I could trust again, because love isn’t an exchange. It’s not something you hand out only if it can be returned in equal measure. Love is handing your fragile heart to someone else because you want him to have it, no matter what he’ll do in response. You do it because you love him more than you love yourself.
“I’ve been in love with you, I think, since the day I saw you reading in the rain as you walked into work,” he says. He presses the box to my palm and covers it with his own. His eyes hold mine, and there’s an urgency there, as if nothing in the world matters more than my answer. He swallows. “Marry me. Please marry me.”
