Page 123 of Love, Just In

A smile breaks out across my face. ‘There’s nothing to figure out. I’ve actually got some pretty huge news that I haven’t told you about. Yesterday, my news director up here offered me a job. I’m the new weekend news presenter for NRN News!’

Zac’s lips pop open.

‘I’m moving to Newcastle,’ I add. ‘Hopefully permanently. And I love this city—I mean, why didn’t you tell me it was this freaking good?’

Zac gapes at me before hooking an arm around my shoulder and dragging me close. ‘Oh my god,’ he says into my hair, his bewildered laugh making clear he’s ashappy about this news as I am. ‘Oh my god,yes! I told you that you were fucking brilliant, and they’d be lucky to have you.’

The fact that he was prepared to move to Sydney—risking his new critical care job and putting himself back in the city that caused him so much suffering—almost makes me want to sob.

I clutch his back and bury my face in his neck. ‘I love you so much. And I’m going to be saying ita lot—just a word of warning. I’m officially doe-eyed. I’m a doe with eyes.’

A warm laugh oozes out of him as he pulls back, and a memory shifts inside me.

‘What was that question you once asked me on a train station bench?’ I say, pinching my brow like I’m having a hard time remembering, even though I could never forget it.

Andboom. Zac’s adorable laugh hits me right in the chest.

He gets up on his feet and turns around to look down at me with a fierce blush, so very beautiful. So very kind. So veryZac.And so very mine.

‘What do you say, Josie Larsen?’ he murmurs, the happiness in his gaze reflecting my own. ‘Will you go out with me?’

I smile up at him, fourteen years of love passing before my eyes.

‘I thought you’d never ask.’ I pause. ‘Again.’

Then, we burst out laughing.

EPILOGUE

Today

ZAC

My palm grips Josie’s thigh as our car inches along Victoria Road, my pulse nicely settled now that we’re basically going ten kilometres per hour. She had to ply me with whisky, impersonate me until I nearly fucking died laughing, then undress me to get me to agree to let her drive on this road trip to Sydney. I hate saying no to her and always have, but this was a massive, heart-pounding step for me. It took six months of us being together for me to work up the courage to drive four hours to Bellingen for our half-year anniversary and another nine months for me to come around to being in the passenger seat on this Sydney trip.

It’s another first that Josie’s given me without really realising it. Just like I’m pretty sure she’s still clueless that she was my first crush, my first heartbreak, my first love. My first everything.

Those ocean-blue eyes that I don’t have a hope of resisting glance at me for half a second. ‘Come on, admit you miss this traffic,’ she says. ‘You have wet dreams about it.’ Then she throws her hands up at the windscreen. ‘Honestly, it’s not even two pm on a Thursday. What the hell, Sydney!’

One side of my mouth pulls up. ‘Feeling a little stressed there, sunbeam? Want me to drive?’

‘Hell no. We had a deal. You do what you do best—sit and look pretty.’

I let out half a laugh. ‘She only wants me for my body,’ I pretend-grumble. My gaze then veers to the strip of tanned thigh that I’ve been reaching over the console and grasping for most of the way here, but I force my eyes off it. No time for that right now.

‘Finally,’ Josie moans as the GPS leads us off the main road and onto a side street, the gridlocked traffic slowly disappearing in the rear-view mirror. ‘Oh my god, there it is.’ She snorts a laugh.

I peer through the windscreen at the approaching slab of burgundy brick wall and share her grin. We must be the only humans on earth this excited over a decaying high school that holds as many bad memories as good, but it’s a key stop in our little nostalgia tour around Sydney. Since leaving Christina’s baby shower this morning, we’ve already driven around the sleepy suburban streets that we used to race bikes down as kids, gawked at our humble, tan-brick childhood homes from the footpath, and are now pulling upoutside this shitty old school that I love because it gave me Josie.

We park across the road and step out of the car, gazing up at the silent, weathered building coated in street art that’s been left alone for the school holidays.

‘It’s so small,’ I say, my eyes trailing over the main complex, which used to feel like an entire planet.

‘I know, right?’ Josie leans so close to me that our thighs rub, and I fold an arm around her back. I turn my head and brush my nose over the wild waves of blonde hair that will be the death of me, inhaling deeply because I need a little hit. That’s all it takes for her to twist and lift her mouth to mine, and my stomach dips hard when our lips connect. I cradle her face and do a thorough job of kissing her until she’s gorgeously delirious, her eyes blinking dizzily into my own.

‘I love you,’ she says, and I fucking kiss her like crazy again.

‘I loveyou,’ I eventually get out, wrapping my arms around her lower back and just holding her for a while.

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