Page 114 of Romancing the Grump
Nathan smiles. “Good nervous?”
My heart squeezes, and I step toward him, lifting my hands to his chest, loving the feel of his arms as they circle my waist.
“Don’t be nervous,” I say. “It’s just me.”
He drops his face, pressing it into my hair. “I missed you,” he says. “I hated being away from you.”
His words ease the tension I’ve been carrying around allweekend, and I lean up, pressing a kiss to the side of his jaw. “I missed you, too.”
He holds me for another long moment before dropping his arms from my waist and picking up my hands, holding them between us. “Summer, I’m not going to say any of this right. I’m not…good at this part. I don’t…” His words are shaky, but his eyes are radiating warmth and confidence.
I lift a hand to his cheek, sliding my fingers over his beard. “You’re doing great.”
He leans into my touch, his eyes closing for a moment. “I love you, Summer,” he says, and my breath catches in my throat. I wasn’t expecting him to start there—to go right for it—and now it happened so fast, I feel like I missed it.
“Can you just…say that one more time?” I say, my voice trembling.
Nathan squeezes my hands. “I love you. And I’m sorry I didn’t say it before. I was scared and overwhelmed and those are the kinds of feelings I’ve been running from for a very long time. But I’m done running. I know I haven’t been seeing things right—that I’ve got some messed up ideas about relationships. But if you’re still willing to gamble on someone as screwed up as I am, I want to try. I want to try to love you like you deserve.”
I push up on my toes and press my lips to his. His mouth is warm and soft and yielding, and I melt against him, pouring every ounce of what I’m feeling into the kiss.
I need him to know how much I appreciate that he’s trying. That he’s willing to be vulnerable, to risk love. I need him to know that I believe with my whole soul that any sacrifice I have to make to love him will be well worth the reward of having him love me back.
I’m too practical to think this will always be easy. But I’drather face life's challenges with Nathan than I would with anyone else.
“I love you too,” I whisper against his lips. “I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit, but I love you. And I believe in you enough for the both of us.”
Nathan holds my gaze for a long moment, his expression full of love and wonder and awe. He shakes his head and lets out a little chuckle. “I don’t deserve you. But I’ll spend every day trying to live like I do.”
He lifts a hand to my cheek, his fingers grazing across my skin until his large palm cups the side of my neck, his fingers threading through my hair. Suddenly, the moment shifts, the energy morphing from something tender into something slightly more charged.
Nathan licks his lips, and I close my eyes as his fingers press into my scalp.
Oh.Oh.
This is good.
My skin is on fire. My throat is dry. And every nerve ending in my body is awake and tuned to him. My heart has been craving this for days, but now my body is craving him too, heat coiling low in my belly. Nathan’s eyes flash with desire, his expression molten as he drops his mouth to mine. He kisses me deeper this time, his tongue brushing across my bottom lip and stealing my breath. Holding onto my shoulders, he shifts us backward, sitting down in the nearest chair and tugging me onto his lap.
I sense his control—his awareness that we’re in my sister’s backyard with over a dozen people just around a row of hedges and through a glass patio door. The fire is banked for now, but I find myself thinking, as he kisses me again and again, what it will be like when there’s no need for thatcontrol. When he can love me with his heart and his hands and his body.
The anticipation alone is torture. Blissful, exquisite torture.
“Hey!” Lucy calls, popping her head around the row of hedges. “Just a friendly heads up that the parents are on their way out to meet you. Consider this your two-minute warning!”
“Were you seriously just spying on us from the bushes?” I ask.
“Uh, of course I was,” Lucy says. “How else could I warn you?”
Nathan presses one final kiss to my collarbone as Lucy disappears, then shifts, making it possible for me to stand up. The last thing I want to do at the moment is hang out with my parents, but I can’t fault them for wanting to meet him.
“So, do you and your sister frequently dress alike?” Nathan asks.
“Not on purpose,” I say through a laugh. “Believe it or not, it was completely accidental tonight. Actually, how did you know who was who?”
Nathan’s expression shifts, like he can’t even believe I had to ask the question. “I just knew,” he says. “It seemed pretty obvious to me.”
A tiny confetti cannon explodes in my chest. And he didn’t even have to look at my shoes.
