Page 110 of Dropping the Ball

We reach for each other, and I pull her so tightly against me that we may as well be welded. I duck to kiss her, no gentle hellothis time. I’ve been starved for her, and she kisses me back as if she’s been just as hungry for me.

Eventually, she pulls slightly away. I murmur an objection. “We have lost time to make up for.”

“Yes. I don’t know how much will be enough, but there’s not a measurement I can think of that will cover it.”

“Not time, not quantity, not intensity.” I kiss her where commas would fall between each phrase.

She presses another full, soft kiss against my lips. “I agree. I only needed to catch my breath.”

I brush a kiss against the corner of her mouth. “I prefer to take it away.”

“You’ve been doing that since ninth grade.”

I press my forehead against hers, almost disbelieving she’s finally confessing. “Call it payback.”

She leans back enough to look into my eyes. “This feels impossible.”

“It feels inevitable,” I counter.

“Impossible the way magic is impossible.”

“Inevitable the way physics is inevitable.”

“I beat you in physics,” she reminds me, smiling.

“Then you should understand the inevitability even better than I do.”

She smooths her thumbs over my lips, swollen from kissing her, and I pull her to me to double down.

“Words like that, the good work you’re doing here”—she traces my mouth—“must always be rewarded. And who, after all, is more generous than the head of a nonprofit?” She pulls away only long enough to turn the Christmas music back on, and then she’s in my arms, applying herself to rewarding me with her legendary diligence.

Truly.

Legendary.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Kaitlyn

Monday morning, I walkinto the office humming “Frosty, the Snowman,” and Suz, who has never heard me hum, pauses in the process of booting up her computer.

“Good Thanksgiving?” she asks.

I stop in front of her desk. “Micah is my boyfriend now. Madison made me spill my guts on it all this weekend, and I swear, if you try to make me do the same thing, I will spend your Christmas bonus on cat toys for Daisy.”

Suz is grinning. “Almostworth it.” Then she mimes zipping her lips.

I set my things at my desk, but I’m out of the suite and in the elevator without stopping. I spent the weekend hanging out with Micah in his woodshop while he made ornaments out of polished tile, and I worked on the proposal for the board, luxuriating in my spreadsheets and running numbers.

Also, there were many kissing breaks.

I hit the button for the executive floor, smiling as I replay all those kisses. It’s like neither of us can quite believe we got tothis point. We can do this, explore every taste, touch, and sound. Micah makes really good sounds.

I’m checked out, thinking about them, when the elevator chime brings me back to reality. Dad’s receptionist waves me into his office. I’m here to cross the final hurdle.

He looks up when I walk in, and I glance around, noting how little it has changed since the first time I came here when I was little. Dark wood and leather, and if the furniture has been replaced, it’s with similar pieces. But there are new pictures of Harper Ivy Mae behind his desk, and I smile at the discovery that Dad is one of those grandfathers—grandpas—who wants everyone who enters his office to see his grandbaby.

“Kaitlyn,” he says, as I take a seat.

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