Page 83 of The Promises We Broke
The dreams part was obvious. The physical intimacy, the emotional connection, the way he looked at me like I was the answer to every question he'd ever asked, all of that was exactly what my seventeen-year-old heart had imagined love would feel like.
But what I hadn't expected was the everyday domestic bliss of it all. The way he automatically took my coffee order when we went out. How he'd started keeping a toothbrush for me in his bathroom without us ever discussing it. The casual intimacy of watching him make breakfast in his kitchen, wearing nothing but jeans and bed-rumpled hair.
It was perfect and terrifying in equal measure.
Forty-five minutes later, he was standing at my stove flipping pancakes while I sat at my small kitchen table, watchinghim move around my space like he belonged there. Which, increasingly, he did.
"You're staring again," he said without turning around.
"Can you blame me?" I asked, not bothering to deny it. "You're very nice to look at."
He glanced over his shoulder, grinning. "Just nice?"
"Devastatingly handsome, then. Better?"
"Much." He plated the pancakes and brought them to the table, dropping a kiss on top of my head as he set my plate down. "Eat up. You need to keep your strength up."
"For what?"
"For keeping up with me," he said with a wicked smile that made heat pool low in my belly.
"Confident, aren't you?"
"About us? Yeah, I am." He settled across from me, his expression growing more serious. "Speaking of us... Dad wants me to come to Blue Point Bay with him in a couple of months."
My fork paused halfway to my mouth. "To meet them?"
"Caroline and Leigh." He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit I'd noticed he still had. "It'll be the first time I meet my sister. I'm terrified, honestly."
"That's understandable. It's a big moment."
"Yeah, it is." He reached across the table and took my hand. "I was hoping... would you maybe want to come with me? I know it's a lot to ask, and it might be awkward, but I could use the support."
I squeezed his hand. "Of course I'll come. If you want me there."
"I do. More than you know." His smile was grateful and relieved. "I always want you with me. I keep thinking about what Christmas might look like too. With you at the cottage, making coffee in your pajamas while I figure out how to work that fancy espresso machine I've been thinking about buying."
The image he painted made my chest tight with longing. "That sounds nice."
"Just nice?"
"Perfect," I corrected. "It sounds perfect."
"It will be," he said with quiet certainty. "All of it. We will be."
The confidence in his voice, the complete faith he had in our future, should have scared me. Instead, it settled something deep in my chest that I hadn't even realized was still unsettled.
"I love you," I said suddenly.
"I love you too."
"No, I mean... I love you. Present tense, no conditions, no reservations. I love the man you are right now, in this moment, sitting in Aunt Helen's kitchen planning our future like it's the most natural thing in the world."
His eyes went soft and wonder-filled, like I'd just given him the most precious gift imaginable.
"I love the woman you are too," he said quietly. "Brave and strong and willing to trust me with your heart again despite every reason you have not to. I love your laugh and your stubbornness and the way you get that little crease between your eyebrows when you're thinking hard about something."
"I don't have a crease."
