Page 127 of Love Me Tomorrow

He asked me to be fearless. He asked me to be unapologetic in all that I want. And maybe this wasn’t what he had in mind, but I ignore the little voice in my head telling me to be composed and pulled together.

For the first time in so many years, I give myself permission to be perfectly imperfect.

A splash of wetness hits my cheekbone. I don’t wipe the tear away and I don’t hurry to make an excuse for it either. Instead, I give voice to the words that have lived inside my soul for so long that, to let them fly free, feels nearly cathartic.

“Every time I wrote another email, I promised myself thatthisone, this was the one I would finally send to you. But I never did, not for any of them. I did that for seven months, wanting you so badly while I tortured myself with every possiblewhat-if. What if I hit send? What if you want me back still? All the while I kept that secret locked within me, like a ticking bomb strapped to my back that I couldn’t escape. And when I saw you in the souvenir shop, I finally remembered what it was like tobreathe.”

I shake my head, the sight of him blurring among all my tears. “Because that’s what you’ve done for me since the moment we met, Owen. You showed me how to find the light and you showed me that it was okay to dream the impossible. And every time you looked my way, I fell a little harder—for you, for the life we could have together.” I swipe my eyes with the back of my hand, but only because I’m crying too hard to see. “My dad always says that success is only halted by the lazy, but I think he’s had it wrong all along. Success is only halted by the fearful . . . and I was terrified of losing you.”

Silence crackles its fiery wings of death between us, and my stomach churns with dread.Fight for him!“Owen, please, I—”

His big body lifts from the seat and then drops on the empty spot to the right of me on the bed. Hands balled into fists, he drops them to the mattress on either side of my body, caging me in. “I watched you today,” he says roughly, “from the audience.”

A lump sticks in my throat. “You were supposed to be in Room B.”

His black eyes pin me in place. “I’ve never been all that good at doing what I’m told, Rose.”

Everything in me goes still at my surname on his lips.

Do not hope. Do not hope. Do not hope.

But still my heart strains in want, and my fingers grip the bedsheets even tighter to keep myself from reaching for him.

“I sat in that audience and I watched you navigate those questions and I thought to myself, the world does not deserve her.”

A nervous laugh leaps to my lips. “I don’t know about all that.”

“That Instagram asshole berated you, and you wished him the best. Those men took aim andfiredat you and not once did you take any cheap potshots back, even though I’m sure you could have.” Owen’s elbows bend a notch, his face inching closer to mine. “The whole time you sat on that stage, I thought only one thing:I’m yours.”

“But the email—”

“I forgave you in that moment, sweetheart.”

“Oh.” Here come the waterworks all over again. I squeeze my eyes shut, but calloused fingertips tracing my cheeks have them popping back open.

“Life throws many choices at us,” he says, his voice pitched low, “and all you can do is hop on the one that feels right in your gut—even if your gut is telling you two different things.” Owen moves his hand to the nape of my neck, the pressure in his touch light, so as not to hurt me. “Six months ago, I never would have considered opening up to you about being colorblind—and I thought that same thing, even, that night when we were in the parlor. It would have been easy to pretend I hadn’t noticed the switch in colors. It would have been easy to let the fear of rejection or judgment keep my lips sewn shut when you’d given me the perfect excuse to walk away, my secret safe and sound.”

“Then why did you tell me?” I whisper, leaning back into his comforting touch.

His gaze flicks between mine, searching. “Because you can’t take a leap of faith with the woman you love if you aren’t ready to strip yourself down to the studs.”

My breath hitches. “Owen.”

“Because there is no other woman I’d ever wear an astronaut cat backpack for,” he goes on, destroying me with the absolute sincerity in his voice and the warmth in his gaze, “because there is no other woman in this world who slips her hand into mine when I’m spiraling, and it’s all I need to feel righted again.” He takes my hand, the one balled up in the sheets, and lays it over his left pectoral. Beneath my palm, I feel the quick tattoo of his heart beating fast. Nearly as fast as mine. “And because if there was any chance of me even thinkin’ it might not be love, you killed that thought in an instant when you headbutted Joe like a total badass.”

“Just like a man,” I say, strangled laughter fighting to escape, “to say all the sweet things and give me the flowery words, and then give me a virtual high-five for breaking a guy’s nose.”

Owen’s brows arch high. “Now let’s not get carried away now. Pretty sure I’m the one who broke his nose.”

“Like I said, just like a man.”

Eyes sparkling, Owen sits back. “Is it just like a man to ask to keep his fiancée locked up in the hospital room until he could get there?”

My heart stops. “Did you just sayfiancée? And what do you mean that you kept melocked uphere?”

He ignores me completely, merely grasps my legs by the thighs and gently turns me, so that the back of my knees rest on the lip of the mattress. With a shove of his thigh, he pushes the chair out of the way. Then leans over to turn on the bedside lamp that looks like it belongs in the 80s.

“Owen,” I breathe, “what are you doing?”

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