Page 121 of His Heart

And I did love him. God, I loved him so much he consumed my soul. I’d loved Liam like a child. It had been simple, and pure. But Sebastian. Our love was like fire. Like a lightning storm. Full of energy and chaos and passion.

He’d taken the shattered pieces of me and tried so hard to hold them together. But he didn’t have that power. He could fit them back into place, but they’d only fall apart again, unless I decided to glue them back together.

I had to decide.

Was I nothing but a ghost? An echo of a girl who’d once loved a boy? A copy of a woman who’d hurt her own child?

Decide.The word hummed in my mind, repeating over and over in Sebastian’s deep voice. It reverberated through my chest—made my fingers twitch.

I grabbed my notebook from my bag. Sebastian didn’t say anything. He kept his eyes focused on me while I opened it and thumbed through the pages. Decide.

There it was, written in blue ink. I didn’t know where it had come from, because the words didn’t seem like mine. But I’d written them down while sitting at the bar, a glass of whiskey I never meant to drink nearby. A reminder of who I could be, and the choice I was making to be someone else.

The choice is yours, Brooke. Yours, and no one else’s. You get to decide who you are. That’s the beauty of it. The houses you lived in or the messes inside them don’t define you. Your mother doesn’t define you. Loss doesn’t define you. What matters are the decisions you make. You can’t control what happens to you. And sometimes that means pain and suffering. Grief and loss. But the worst pain wouldn’t exist without the love that preceded it. And isn’t that love worth something? In fact, isn’t that love worth everything? But you can’t love if you’re not living. So you’re going to have to decide.

I took a trembling breath and put the notebook down. Grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. Pressed my foot down on the brake as hard as I could. And put the car in reverse.

Sebastian didn’t crumple with relief as I backed us away from the edge. He watched me, his eyes still burning with the same intensity. I stopped and put the car back in park.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

I nodded, trying not to cry. Feeling the deluge of emotion as it bubbled up my throat. “Yes. I’m sure.”

He grabbed the back of my head and pulled me to him. Our mouths connected and the relief that poured through me was staggering. He kissed me hard, holding my face against his.

I climbed across the center console and into his lap, still kissing him. His lips on mine and his beard against my skin felt like fate. Like coming home. I straddled his large body and he wrapped his thick arms around me.

“I love you,” I whispered into his mouth. “I love you and I don’t know what I’ve ever done to deserve you.”

He pulled away and looked deep into my eyes, brushing the hair back from my face. “Maybe love doesn’t have to work like that. It’s not a game. Someone doesn’t have to lose for you to win. I love you because you’re my heart. You’re my life. And if I choose that—if I choose to love you and be the man you need—we both win. Love wins.”

I nodded. “Sebastian, I know I have so much work to do. But I’ll do it. I swear.”

“Don’t do it just for me,” he said. “Do it for you.”

I kissed him again. Stroked his beard. “For me. For you. For us.”

He smiled, then, and much like the first time we met, it took the edge off his intensity. Sparks raced through my veins and the emptiness in my chest filled—filled with his love. His light. His life.

Something inside me had known, when I’d met Sebastian, that my life would never be the same. But I’d never have guessed how true that could be. In him, I’d found my future. My home. My life. And I was never letting it go.

I’d make that choice, every day. The choice to love, and to live. For me, for him, for us.

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