“And the oak’s beautiful, too. Jesus, this is—”
He looks up at me, his eyes full of something I can’t quite read. A big emotion. “This is too much. You don’t have to buy my friendship.”
“It’s not that.” I can hardly look at him for fear he’ll see the size of my hopes.
I didn’t make a plan for what I was going to say. I figured I would open my mouth and a whole lot of stuff would fall out, and some of it would be the right stuff. Now that seems crazy, but here I am, so, well, I open my mouth.
“I got an agent. I sent my book to a bunch of agents, and one of them wants to represent me.”
“That’s so great, Elle.” Still crouched beside the reclaimed wood, he raises a hand to high-five me.
“Jacinda Walters, at Book Smith. She’s amazing. And you were right, Sawyer. About how you—I—can talk myself out of anything. I was talking myself out of Splitsville—that’s what I’m calling my book—telling myself I wasn’t good enough, the book wasn’t good enough, without giving it, or me, a chance.”
He doesn’t say “I told you so.” He just nods.
Sawyer listens better than anyone I know.
“I told Jacinda the story, of what you said about it, and she knew exactly what I meant, because I guess writers do it all the time. She said, ‘You were shooting yourself down before you could get rejected.’ And I realized—” I stop. It’s hard to speak because my chest and throat are so tight. “I realized that’s what I was doing with you. Telling myself you were going to reject me. Maybe you are still in love with Lucy, and there’s no room in your life for me, and no matter what I do that won’t change, and years from now I’ll realize it was like with Trevor, where I was waiting and waiting to know that I was the one—”
“Elle,” he says quietly. “Shut up.”
I do, clamping my lips together.
He stands, reluctantly letting his hands slide away from where they’re caressing the bird’s-eye maple. His gaze catches and holds mine, earnest and intense and so, so Sawyer. “I will probably always love Lucy. I mean, I don’t exactly know how this stuff works, but I lost my grandmother when I was fifteen and I still love her.” He takes a deep breath. “But there is room in my life for you.”
He lets me take that in—on a giant wave of relief and joy—before he says, “And not just room, but the master-bedroom kind of room, if you know what I mean.” One side of his mouth tips up, and then, like the rest can’t resist following, he grins at me.
I do. I do. I know what he means with a big bubble of hope and excitement that’s expanding in my chest as he talks.
He takes a step toward me, opens his arms, and I fly into them. He hugs me—just hugs me—and oh, my God, it feels so good. He is so big and so strong and so warm, and he just holds on and holds on, and, “Even if you never want to have any more sex with me, will you at least hug me from time to time?” I blurt.
He shakes with laughter against me. “You are shit out of luck if you think I’m going to never want to have sex with you.”
Then he kisses me, soft and sweet and brief, before coming back for seconds with gusto—and tongue.
If we weren’t in the backyard, if Jonah and Madden weren’t playing in my basement and liable to appear at any goddamn moment, I’d tackle him to the ground, but we both step back like the sensible parents we are.
“I have something I want to show you, too,” he says.