Page 92 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
I stand and shake out the blanket then carry it toward the house, stopping when I see Charlie ambling toward me.
My heart stutters then starts again, beating at triple speed as I bend down and scratch his ears. If Charlie is here, that means Brody is too.
Instead of going in the back door, I skirt around the side of the house to the front porch.
Brody is sitting on the steps. His truck is nowhere in sight, so he must have walked over. The magazine proof is sitting on the rough, wooden planks beside him.
I stop a few yards away from the porch, and Charlie drops to his haunches at my feet.
The night isn’t silent by any stretch. Cicadas are humming in the trees, the sound rolling across the night like a wave, and frogs are croaking down by the creek. But the heaviness ofBrody’ssilence is almost more than I can take.
I won’t talk first though. He came here. It has to be because he has something he wants to say.
“Are you still leaving at the end of the summer?” he finally asks, his voice floating across the settling darkness.
I take a step closer. “No.” My heart squeezes. “I don’t ever want to leave again.”
He doesn’t respond for a long moment. So long that Charlie walks over and sniffs Brody’s hands as if checking to make sure he’s okay. “You want to live here?” Brody finally says. “Forever?
“Honestly, the where is less important to me right now. I’m more concerned about who I’ll be living with.” I slowly walk to the porch and climb the stairs, dropping onto the top step beside him. We aren’t quite touching, but he’s close enough for me to feel the warmth of him. To catch his scent. “Brody, I love you. I mean, I’ve always loved you. But now I’minlove with you.”
He closes his eyes and huffs out a laugh. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited to hear you say those words?”
For a split second, I tense up, wondering if there’s abutat the end of Brody’s sentence.But you’re too late. But you missed your chance. But it wasn’t worth the wait.
But then Brody looks up, and his eyes are so full of love and tenderness, my fears evaporate in an instant. “So I guess you aren’t taking the job in London?” he says through a grin.
I smile. “No. I don’t want to live in London. I want to live here. Or anywhere, really. As long as you’re there too.”
He holds out his hand, palm up, and I slip my fingers into his. He tucks it close to his chest, scooting me closer so my side is flush against his.
“I didn’t meet anyone else in Charlotte,” he says after a long stretch of silence.
I shake my head. “Brody, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter now.”
“She was just a stranger who led me to the dance floor. That was it.”
“Okay,” I say simply, suddenly sensing that wherever he’s going with this, it doesn’t have anything to do with the nameless woman in the photo.
“Kate, I was so close to deciding the only way I could move forward was to cut you out completely. No more texting. No more reading your articles. That’s why I didn’t respond to your texts. Because I couldn’t be the guy you talk to about stuff like that if I wasn’t—if I’m not—anyway, I was done.”
I press my lips together. I came so close to losing him for good.
He looks at me, a seriousness in his gaze I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. “If we do this, we’re all in, all right? Right from the start.” He reaches out and wipes a tear from my cheek. “I won’t lose you again. I can’t. And I can never go back to just being your friend.”
“You won’t. I’m not going anywhere, Brody. I promise.” As I say the words, a peaceful certainty blossoms deep in my gut. He’s it for me. He’s always been it.
He leans over and kisses me, and I arch into him, my hands moving to his chest. His hands are everywhere, on my shoulders, my back, running up and down my arms, tangling in my hair. It’s like he’s cataloging every inch of me, and I do not want him to stop.
“Seven thousand, one hundred, and forty-five days,” he whispers into my throat, his lips close to my ear.
I lean back, catching his eye. “What’s that?”
“That’s how many days I’ve loved you.”
“That . . . is a lot of days.”
He scoffs, a smile in his voice. “Tell me about it.”
