Page 142 of Finding Forever

“That’s oddly specific.” She snickered and then froze as she went over his words again. “Wait... did you just say youloveme?”

His smile was soft and his eyes tender as they lovingly traced over her features.

“I did,” he murmured, running the back of his index finger over the curve of her cheek. “And I do. Fern. So,fuckingmuch.”

“Love me?” she asked, needing clarification.

“I know it’s a lot to absorb and I understand that you don’t feel the same way. I don’t want you to feel pressured into?—”

“Cade!” The impatient snap in her voice shut him up, and he waited warily for her to continue. “I’m going to need to you to back up for a second and spell it out nice and slow for the woman with a traumatic brain injury.”

He winced at the last three words, going pale at the reminder.

“Do youloveme?”

His brows knitted and he nodded slowly.

“Fern, I have trouble remembering a time I didn’t love you.”

She couldn’t explain it. Maybe it was the anxiety of worrying about Casper, the stress of waking up in the hospital, or the pain in her head and all over her body. More than likely, it was a combination of all those things… But Fern burst into noisy tears at his quiet confession.

She was vaguely aware of him swearing in alarm, and his hand grabbing hold of hers and as he tried to comfort her but she found herself quite unable to stop.

In the end, Fern emerged from her storm of tears long minutes later, to find Cade stretched out on the narrow bed beside her. His arms were wrapped tightly around her and he was whispering soothing nothings into her hair.

“I’m okay,” she sniffled, a little embarrassed by how dramatic that had been. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened?” he asked, his lips on her temple.

“You love me,” she replied and he went rigid.

“I’m sorry, it wasn’t meant to upset you, I just wanted you to know. My feelings for you have been so confusing these last few months. I thought we were incompatible at first, sexually and every other way. You were so shy and quiet. Too timid… too fucking pregnant.”

He grimaced guiltily at the last couple of words and his palm brushed against her bump fleetingly, as if in apology.

“But then you began to blossom. You took suchjoyin the smallest of things. Like a walk on the beach, lunch with my family, shopping… talking. Eating. Justlife. You made the smallest, most ordinary occurrences seem special. It’s one of your most endearing qualities. Despite the shit hand you’d been dealt, you were sweet and optimistic. Kind and gentle and also so stubborn and brave. I found you fascinating. And so very hard to look away from.

“You lit up every corner of my bleak life with your soft light. More and more, everything that had once seemed ordinary aboutyouseemed more extraordinary to me. I couldn’t stop staring at you. You—quite simply—became the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

“I’m not beautiful,” she denied quietly and he made a soft dismissive sound beneath his breath.

“To me you are,” he corrected her and her heart melted into a puddle of warm goo that sank into the pit of her stomach and began to radiate heat through her entire body. “You’re quite extraordinary. I don’t think I realized it, but looking back on itnow, I wonder if some of my ambivalence toward your pregnancy stemmed from resentment. Jealousy even. I didn’t know it, but I was falling in love with you, Fern. But I would never know what it’s like to have you entirely to myself. I was always going to have to share you with the baby.

“And since you seemed so invested in a future where it would be just you and your baby against the world, it felt like there was no room for me in that equation. And more and more I began to understand that I very much wanted there to be. But I didn’t know how to change that. All I could do was try to show you that we’re better together. That we work. Which was hard to do when I still had these complicated, mixed emotions about Casper. I’m so ashamed that I didn’t love him unreservedly from the very beginning.” Another quick brush over the bump.

“How long have you felt this way?” she asked on a broken whisper.

“That day we had lunch at Gideon and Beth’s for the first time? I realized I was jealous of the brother I hadn’t seen in literal years. I wanted to fucking lay Nox out for making that off-color comment about how he would have been your default husband. I didn’t like my irrational reaction, I felt like I no longer knew myself, which is why I said those fucking ridiculous things afterward. I regret the way I spoke to you that day, Fern. It was more about me trying to convince myself that my feelings for you were wrapped up nice and tight.”

“You made me so angry that day with yourno smiles, no friendshipmandate. It was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. And to make matters worse you kept contradicting and breaking your own dumb rules.”

“If it’s any consolation, I thought they were dumb even as I was saying them. And I kept breaking them because you’re irresistible as fuck. I was never going to stick to those rules. I enjoyed spending time with you too much.

“And as your pregnancy progressed, I began to panic. I read anything I could find about fetal development and possible complications to the mother. Because, while my feelings toward the baby remained undefined, I was falling hard for you… and I was terrified that something would happen to you. Every time you were sick or dizzy, whenever you looked off or tired, I spiraled and doom scrolled for any explanation under the sun that could cause those particular symptoms in pregnancy.”

“It’s called being pregnant, Cade,” she told him gently, and he winced.

“I know that, okay? But naturally everything you find on the internet leads straight to possible worst-case scenarios. All I wanted was to keep you safe… and it felt like pregnancy was the biggest risk of all. And I think that contributed to my complex feelings toward the baby as well. I felt like I could lose you—in more ways than one—and it would be his fault.

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