Page 115 of Fluke
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“I don’t want to leave room for misinterpretation.”
I grin, my heart so full it might explode. “So interpret.”
He chuckles. “It’s me and you. We’re doing life together now. There’s no more fake relationship situations, no more pretending. I’m extending my seven days to get you to fall in love with me until forever. I’ll make you fall for me every day for the rest of my life.”
My God, this man.
I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him.
He rests his forehead on mine. “So …”
“So …”
He chuckles. “So I need you to please tell me you’re in the same way.”
I start laughing, wrapping my hands around him.
“I mean it. I need to hear you say it.”
“Jess Carmichael …” I wink at him. “I’m. All. The. Way. In.”
He kisses me slowly, tenderly, and completely as we dance in the rain.
25
PIPPA
Jess strokes my arm as we lie in bed and listen to the rain.
I think we’re both processing our new future together, as well as the fact that we go home in the morning. It’s easy to be a couple here—where reality doesn’t exist. We’re funneled away from work stress, busy schedules, and life stress. Exactly what a couples retreat is supposed to do.
I grin against him and hold him a bit tighter.
There was no way of knowing when I sat down and conceptualized my retreat idea a few weeks ago that it would end like this. I didn’t plan on having a fake ex-husband when I blurted out that I had one—and I didn’t expect it to be Jess freaking Carmichael.
Or that the retreat would turn out to be exactly what I needed.
Jess kisses the top of my head.
What we needed.
Maybe I was onto something without even knowing it. I was shooting in the dark, having had no real relationship experience to go on.I hate, hate that Chuck the Fuck was a tiny bit right again.
There it is—Chuck and right in the same sentence again. It’s blasphemy.
Yet by stopping the routine mechanics of life and giving the universe a chance to reframe my relationship with Jess, something truly amazing bloomed.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“About how brilliant I am.”
He chuckles.
“Do you think we would’ve gotten here without Chuck the Schmuck needling me and my reaction?” I ask.
His fingertips leave a trail of goose bumps in their wake. “I’d like to think so.”
