Page 71 of Merry Me
“That he didn’t care how long it took. He just wanted the chance to be the one I didn’t have to be brave with.”
My throat caught.
“I hope you let someone love you like that, Natalie,” she whispered. “You deserve to be loved without armor.”
“You said love is proven in the staying,” I murmured. “But what if I’m not sure I believe in that anymore?”
My mom looked at me, her eyes warm and steady. “Then let someone show you it’s still real.”
I felt something shift then. A door cracking open. Not wide. But just enough for light to peek through.
“I’m not sure I know how,” I whispered.
She squeezed my hand. “You don’t have to know. You just have to try.”
Silence fell again, but it wasn’t heavy this time. It was full of something else—something like peace.
I leaned my head on her shoulder, and she rested hers gently against mine.
“You were never hard to love, you know,” she said softly.
I closed my eyes.
And for the first time in a long time…I tried to believe.
The hallway was quiet, wrapped in the kind of stillness that only settles in late at night—blurred at the edges, almost reverent. My footsteps were barely a whisper against the old wood floor as I walked toward the suite.
I stopped in front of the door, heart thudding a steady rhythm that echoed in my chest.
The key card was cool between my fingers.
I stared at the door for a long time, chewing on my bottom lip, the silence between heartbeats stretching thinner with every second. The words from my mom still echoed in my head.
What if it’s the beginning of the best thing that ever happened to you?
I swallowed hard, then slowly slid the card into the reader.
A softclick. A green light.
The door swung open with a whisper.
The room was dim, lit only by the warm glow of the bedside lamp. It smelled like cedar soap and the faintest trace of my perfume, clinging to the sweater I’d left thrown over a chair.
And Easton was there. In bed. Propped up on one elbow, shirtless, the blankets rumpled low around his waist. His dark hair was messy, his jaw shadowed with scruff, and his green eyes were heavy lidded but locked on me the second I stepped inside.
He didn’t say anything.
Neither did I.
We just looked at each other, the silence between us thick with everything unsaid. With everything we’d been. Everything we still could be.
After a long moment, he shifted, his expression softening.
Then, slowly, he reached for the covers and pulled them back, exposing the empty space beside him.
“Come here, Trouble,” he said, his voice low and raw.
It was just three words. But they pushed that door inside me open a little wider…the one that had started to crack the moment he walked back into my life.
