Page 128 of If We Never Met

She gave him a playful punch on the arm. "That will be hours from now. Anyway, wait until you see Hannah's wedding gown. It's the show-stopper."

"I'm looking forward to that."

"I'm so glad you were able to stay for the wedding. This will be our last chance to hang out together with all my friends for a long time."

"We'll keep in touch with them, Keira, I promise." He knew it would be difficult for her to give up so much of her life, and he intended to make it as easy as he could.

"I know we will. I'm actually more worried about missing you at the moment. It's going to be hard not to see you for two weeks."

"It will feel like forever," he agreed. Keira would head to Los Angeles on Monday and then return to Whisper Lake to organize her life and get her managers up to speed. After that, she would fly down to Miami. He couldn't wait for them to be together in Miami, but he was also excited to see her take her first steps toward a full-time design career. "The time will go fast, and you'll be busy in LA with Jessica Stillman."

"I am eager to hear what Jessica wants. It will be fun to work with someone new. Hopefully, she'll like my design drafts and will want to sign a contract."

"I'm sure she'll love you. How could she not?"

"You're prejudiced."

"I might be," he admitted. "But I know how talented you are. Jessica would be lucky to have someone as dedicated as you are to creating the perfect dress."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. By the way, my mom and Mark are saving you a seat. They're in a great mood, because Mark just officially bought the house around the corner."

"That's exciting." He'd heard there was an offer but not that it had been accepted.

"It is. They're both thrilled. My mom gets to stay in the neighborhood, and she'll be close enough to walk over and watch the rebuild. Until that house is out of escrow, they'll live in the cabin that my friend owns."

"Our cabin?"

"Well, not technically ours," she said with a laugh. "Although, we did make some memories there."

"Some smoking hot memories. When is the cabin going up for sale?"

"About a month. There are still a few things to be done, but my mom can oversee those as well. She's actually excited to have more work to do. I'm excited to have less."

"The perfect trade-off. Maybe I should buy the cabin."

Surprise filled her beautiful brown eyes. "Why would you want to do that?"

"Because I love it. Because it always felt like ours, and we'll need a place to stay when we come back to visit, which will be often."

"There's still my house. I'm not sure what we'll do with that once it's rebuilt."

"True. We can think about it."

"I like that you want to buy a place here, though."

He pulled her closer to him. "I want you to be happy, Keira. I know you're making sacrifices for me."

"I'm really not, Dante. We need to be together, and I'm more flexible than you."

"For now," he agreed. "But the future can be anything we make it."

"As long as the future is us together, I'm good."

At her words, he thought he might just be the luckiest guy in the world. "Me, too."

"It's funny that we met because Hannah insisted that I needed a plus one for the wedding. That's the only reason I went on that date. I sat down at the wrong table, but I met the right guy. And now you're here—my plus one. How different would our lives be if we never met?"

"I don't even want to think about it. I love you, Keira."

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