Page 144 of One More Chapter

“We’re not an ending, Ant. We just put a bookmark in the chapter until we were ready to read it together again. That’s the beauty of our story—it’sreal.”

What I find inside the pages aren’t Finn and Delilah. No, this is Ant and Penelope, right down to the names of the characters.

“I love you with or without this, Pen,” I rasp, holding the book in one hand and her in the other. “I love you with everything that brought us here, and with everything we get to build moving forward.”

I grasp her chin and pull her in for a kiss that seals those words into forever.

And then, I spend the rest of the night reading.

Our story.

And all of the feelings she had formealong the way.

Right down to the poem she wrote on the flight back from Florida.

One locked gate

was the barricade

between staying on the safe side

and taking the risk for once.

How fitting that I stumbled at first.

How bittersweet that

you were there

on the other side

to catch me.

We laid beneath

constellations,

marveling at the way that

they seemed to move

while we stayed put,

naming the ones

we thought we knew.

I never understood

in all of the books I’ve read,

and in all of the ones I’ve penned,

how a girl could be so charmed by a smile?—

until yours snuck up on me

as the brightest array of stars invading my space

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