Page 72 of You Complicate Me

Please, God, don’t let me screw this up. That ticket-taker was super-cute, and I really don’t want to have to give her Nick’s phone number if this whole thing doesn’t go my way.

Nick had already been tired and pissed-off at the world when his boss called and asked him to pick up a flight to Boston, filling in for a fellow marshal who’d gotten the flu. But now, as he sat in his aisle seat next to a burly, hairy dude who smelled like broiled beef and a little old lady who wouldn’t stop showing him pictures of her seven or eight hundred grandkids, Nick started seriously questioning the life choices that had gotten him to this place in his life.

This was a whole new level of pissed off for him. He was tired of this plane and everyone on it, and the flight couldn’t be over fast enough for his peace of mind.

It didn’t help that his mind and his heart were firmly back in Indianapolis—maybe on their way back to LA by now—with Grace.

Damn it, he hadn’t wanted to leave without saying anything to her, but Gage said she was passed out—literally. She’d had a rough night and needed her sleep, he’d said. Since it was his fault she’d had that rough night, Nick couldn’t bring himself to selfishly wake her up and beg for her forgiveness again. That wouldn’t make her feel any better. As much as he hated it, he’d resigned himself to the fact that she might just need some time away from him to get her feelings sorted out.

And if when everything was sorted, she still didn’t want anything to do with him…well, he’d blow up that bridge when he came to it. Pathetic groveling would ensue, of that he was pretty damn sure.

“And this one is of my granddaughter, Amelia,” the old lady to his right said as she shoved her phone under his nose once more. “The picture doesn’t really do her justice. She’s pretty enough to be a model, you know. Kind of like this young lady right here…only my Amelia would never go out in public in her pajamas.”

Nick lifted his eyes from the phone to see who the old lady was referring to, and almost swallowed his tongue.

Grace stood in the aisle in front of him. Her limp hair was plastered to her shiny forehead. She was wearing mismatched socks and only one house slipper, along with a man’s T-shirt and ill-fitting flannel pants with little purple pineapples printed all over them. There was a pillow crease down the entire left side of her face.

He’d never seen anything more beautiful—or welcome—in his life.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she held up her hands to silence him. “Look,” she said, “I need to get this out, so please don’t say anything until I’m done, OK?”

That was fine, because he had no idea what he’d been about to say to her, anyway. Probably something stupid that involved begging. So he just gave her what he hoped was an encouraging nod.

She took a deep breath before blurting, “I was a complete dumbass. I am a complete dumbass. I was so worried about how things could go wrong between us that I got distracted from how perfect things actually are between us. You were right. The two measly little fights we had this week weren’t anything that any other couple wouldn’t have gone through. But the truth is that I was so scared—of you, of us, of falling in love—that I pushed you away. I used those stupid fights to push you away because somewhere in the back of my mind, I just assumed you were going to eventually leave me, and I thought that if I pushed you away first, it’d hurt less in the long run.”

Tears filled her eyes, and it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. But she must have sensed his intentions, because she raised her hands again to ward him off and squeezed her eyes shut.

“But I was wrong. I was wrong to push you away,” she said, speaking much faster than before. “I couldn’t stand to let you go home without telling you how I really feel. I can’t let you walk away without fighting for you. You deserve someone who will fight for you, and I’ve done such a terrible job of that so far. After how I treated you yesterday, if you decide you don’t want me anymore, I’ll totally understand. But I need to tell you the truth—what I wanted to tell you the night before the wedding, but was too scared to do it. I got all caught up in thinking I needed to hear you say it first, but that’s all just such bullshit. I realize that now. I didn’t realize it until Gage told me you’d gone, but I realize it now.”

God, she was killing him. “Grace—“

“The fact is that we are complicated together, Nick. The history between Sadie and Michael, the distance between us, the fact that we’re so different…it makes us complicated. But I’m not afraid of that anymore. I like that we’re so different; it keeps us interesting. I want you to complicate me, and I want to complicate you.”

He sucked in a deep breath and held it as she impatiently brushed her tears away with the back of her hand.

“Iloveyou,” she blurted, all in one breath. “Oh, God, I love you so much I can’t stand it. And I know that logically it’s too soon for us to feel this way, and that we should take it slow—”

“Grace—”

“—but the thought of taking it slow and spending even another minute without you makes me a little nauseous, you know? And I’m not sure—”

“Grace—”

“—what else to say, except to reiterate that I—”

He grabbed her hand. “Grace!”

Her tear-filled eyes shifted from his hand on hers, up to his face. She looked terrified. “Yes?” she whispered.

“I need you to shut up,” he said.

The old lady next to him sucked in a harsh breath, and the burly guy shot him a dirty look. He ignored them both as Grace nodded and said, “Okay. Sorry. I’ll just—”

He squeezed her hand. “You had me at dumbass.”

She blinked at him several times before asking, “I did?”

Nick stood up and yanked her into his arms. “You did. I came to your room to tell you I’d been called into work this morning, but you were passed out.”

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