Page 163 of The Games We Play
He stopped reading then, locking his phone and slipping it back into his pocket with care, as if what he’d just said didn’t even scratch the surface.
Mac’s hands came up to cradle my face, and we stopped moving. The music faded in my ears as everything narrowed to just him. His touch. His gaze. His words.
“You’re not just a part of my future, Penelope,” he said, his voice raw, trembling with everything he felt. “Youaremy future. You’re the reason I want to build something more. The reason behind every choice I’ll make from here on out. You’re my beginning and my end. My everything.”
And that was it—the dam broke.
Tears spilled over, streaking my cheeks as I clutched at his jacket. His words were a balm and a wound all at once. Too much and still somehow not enough.
“I am so fucking in love with you, Penelope Hudson, that it hurts,” he said, his eyes burning into mine. “I am a man wrecked because of it, because nothing will ever compare to you. I’m completely, irrevocably yours.”
He lifted my hand, turned it palm-up, and pressed a kiss to the tip of my pinky finger.
“You have me wrapped around…”
He kissed the next finger. “Every.”
Then the next. “Damn.”
Another kiss. “One.”
And another. “Of your…”
His lips pressed to my thumb, lingering there as he looked up at me with a tender smile that shattered the last of my composure.
“Fingers.”
“Oh, Mac…” I breathed, my heart pounding so hard it echoed in my ears.
His eyes searched mine, warm and vulnerable, his voice barely above a whisper. “I hope I’ve done enough.”
“You have,” I said softly, a smile tugging at my lips. “I love you. I’ve loved you for far longer than I admitted. I never stopped. Not when everything fell apart, not even when I tried so hard to avoid you. I never lost this spark, the one that ignites every time I’m near you.”
Mac exhaled, the breath of a man who’d been holding on, waiting. He pressed his forehead to mine, his touch gentle, grounding.
“You make me feel a way I never had,” I confessed. Never once in my life have I experienced genuine, unconditional love like this before. Someone who spent weeks planning and plotting all on the hope that things would change.
“I meant it when I said I’d do anything for you, Penny,” he murmured, voice rough with feeling.
I tilted my head and caught his lips in a kiss—urgent, aching, deep. It wasn’t just a kiss. It was a declaration, a surrender, a promise sealed in the press of our mouths. It redefined every kiss that came before because this one… this one meant everything.
It was love.
It was forever.
A loud pop exploded behind us, startling me so much that I jumped back, clutching Mac’s chest in surprise.
I spun around, only to find all our friends standing near the barn doors, each holding a confetti cannon, grinning like fools. Pink glitter rained down from the rafters in a sparkling, slow-motion storm of celebration.
“Oh my God,” I gasped with a breathless laugh, my chest shaking as the confetti drifted around us like magic.
I looked up, spinning slowly in the glowing barn light, glitter clinging to my hair and shoulders. “The pink glitter?” I called, turning back to Mac with wide, amused eyes.
He was grinning, full and wide, as he gazed up at the shimmering sky of color. “How could I not? It was pretty iconic.”
The barn erupted with cheers, whistles, and the unmistakable sound of love being celebrated by those who knew us best.
I looked around at the faces of our friends—beaming, laughing, holding up their phones and clapping like proud witnesses to something real.
