Page 43 of The Best You've Ever Had

I turn to face him, unable to stop staring at the photo of us.

“What else do you think he’d see in our future?” I ask.

“Do you want the truth, or the commitment-phobe, non-scary version?”

“Truth. Always the truth.”

His mouth finds mine in a kiss that’s soft yet filled with a hunger full of promise. He pulls back, his eyes locking on minewith clear intent. “He’d see me doing the thing I’ve wanted to do for years…asking you to be my girlfriend. Then he’d see me telling you that I’m falling in love with you. And I know it’s early, but I’ve known you my entire life. You’re like a piece of me, someone I know through and through. And while it might scare you to hear it, this all feels so right. Being with you feels like the only thing that makes sense.”

His eyes search mine, gauging my reaction. And I can’t leave him hanging a second longer. Because he’s restored a part of me I didn’t even know existed until this holiday season—a tender part I’d always been too afraid to show, fearing someone would crush it and leave it destroyed.

With him, there’s trust. A deep, underlying history that, while once filled with conflict, has evolved into something more. Something undeniably real and profoundly unshakeable. With him, I’ve learned that vulnerability isn’t a weakness. In fact, it’s one of the strongest things you can be.

“I’m falling in love with you too,” I admit. “It’s like you’ve reawakened a part of me that had slipped away years ago. Turns out, all I was missing was this—us.” The confession bursts out of me like I’m filled to the brim with it. We’re two halves of the same whole.

He smiles at me like no one has ever smiled at me before. “Merry Christmas, Lay.”

I smile back. “Merry Christmas, Benny.”

Even though we’ve felt like we were on opposite teams for nearly three decades, I think we were always destined to be on the same side. And when I look at my future, all I can see is him in it.

Unwavering. Loyal. And irresistibly exasperating.

Most importantly, he’s mine, and that’s the best part of all.

Epilogue

Ben

One Year Later

Layla turns over in bed, the white sheets twisting around her like a funnel cloud. “Hey, wake up,” she whispers. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

“I’m awake,” I mutter, bleary-eyed and definitely still half-asleep.

Her full lips graze my shoulder. “Our parents will be here soon.” Her body language doesn’t read like she’s in a hurry. In fact, she’s pressing those perfect tits into my arm like she wants more of what we did several hours ago.

Sliding my hand between her waist and the mattress, I flip her onto her back, holding most of my weight on my forearm, caging her in on one side. With my free hand, I reach underneath the sheets and swipe a finger over her bare pussy. “You’re fucking soaked, Lay.”

She moans, pushing into my hand. With a thumb on her clit, I kiss the delicate skin of her neck. “I think we have time for you to sit on my face first, yeah?”

The concept of time is thrown out the window as she climbs atop of me and straddles my head. I eat her out, holding her bythe hips so she has nowhere to go, as she grips the top of the headboard. Only a minute later, she’s coming so hard that the neighbors on all sides of us may now be awake too.

Her body goes limp as she rolls back onto the bed, arms dropping from the sheer exhaustion of her orgasm. Rolling her head to the side to look at me, she smiles. “You know, I think I kind of like Christmas now actually.”

She’s about to love it even more. Because I’m planning on proposing to her. Tomorrow.

To keep the small velvet box hidden, I’ve carried the ring with me at all times—the weight of the carats burning a hole in my pocket. We’ve talked about marriage frequently, so I know she’ll say yes. I’m still nervous as hell, fearing she might have changed her mind. But even that small chance of rejection is worth it for the possibility of spending forever with her.

Hank curls up at her feet at the end of the bed, the little traitor having chosen her exclusively since the day we moved in together. Three months after I relocated to the city, we decided to take the leap and move into one apartment. Despite our busy schedules, we were inseparable. I’d come home from my two day shift, and she’d already be there, deep cleaning my apartment with Hank at her heels. On my days off, I’d bring lunch to her office, and we’d finish it off by fucking on her shiny wooden desk. To outsiders, the move-in might have seemed rushed, but we both knew exactly what we were getting into.

The advantage of spending decades at odds is that we already know all the worst parts of each other. We just finally stopped arguing long enough to discover all the best parts too.

As we drive to the airport to pick up our parents, we’re stuck in hellish traffic. The stop lights of thousands of cars twinkle like red holiday lights as Christmas music plays softly on the radio. From the passenger seat, Layla curses at every driver who cutsus off or drives onto the shoulder to exit early. The fire in her eyes, matching her copper hair, only makes me love her more.

“So, should this be the year that we finally tell our parents we started off as a lie?” she asks.

“Nah. I think as soon as we agreed to that whole fake dating scheme, we were already fighting a losing battle.” I kiss the top of her hand that I’m holding across the center console. “I don’t care how it started, as long as it led to this.” While sitting at a stoplight, I gaze at her. “I think it’s always been you. Even when we fought like crazy as kids. Even when we went eleven years without seeing each other. It all happened to lead to this very moment.”

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