Page 82 of Bad Boy Crush

“Are you? Mad?”

“I’m a lot of things.” He was an immovable statue, a lot like the sculpture they’d delivered to the Hamptons. “Come in.”

She followed him inside, shutting the door behind her. The shop was quiet, sawdust and woodchips strewn across the floor. At his desk, he sat on the corner, arms still folded, and waited for her to speak.

Time to stop delaying the inevitable. Either he saw with his own eyes why she was here and what she had discovered, or he didn’t.

“I wasn’t sure how I felt about you because I was too busy trying to keep myself safe,” she explained. “For the last year or so I’ve been writing a book. Or a journal. I don’t know what it is.” She flipped the spiral-bound pages in her hands. “I thought I was brain-dumping. You know? Letting off some steam, emptying the clutter inside my head. I didn’t expect a big revelation. But that’s exactly what I found.

“Here.” She offered the book. “Read this.”

He frowned at the bundle of paper, his head shaking back and forth slowly. “I…can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” She nodded her encouragement. She refused to allow them to end before they’d really started.

“No, Lourdes. I can’t.”

She swallowed down a lump in her throat. If she had to cry and beg his forgiveness and drop to her knees, dammit, she would. He meant too much to her, and she’d wasted so much time already.

His eyes lifted to hers, tenderness in their depths. “What’s it say?”

“A lot of things. You’ll understand when you read it.”

He pulled in a breath through his nose, exhaling the same way. “Hear me. I can’t read it.”

“You mean you won’t.” She instantly reconsidered the begging and crying part. Hadn’t he been fair enough to her? Hadn’t he put his own heart on the line when she’d refused to share hers? How could she force him into her timeline when she’d resented him for cornering her in the same fashion? “Okay. I understand.”

“You don’t.” He took the book from her and held it between them. “It’d take me the rest of the year to read this, and I’m not willing to wait that long to hear what it says.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m dyslexic. It sucks. I can read and write, but it’s a slow process and usually ends with a headache, or in this case, a crippling case of embarrassment when a beautiful woman brings me a work-of-the-heart read. I’ll read it eventually, if it takes me the rest of my life, but right now I need you to give it to me straight, because seeing you is the best thing that’s happened to me in a week.”

“It is?” Her smile was cautious, her mind busily categorizing everything he’d just confessed to her.

“You being here is giving me a metric fuckton of hope. You looking gorgeous and smiling up at me with clear expectation in your eyes. I want to drop to my knees and hang on tight. So. For the love of god, Lou.” He shook the pages. “Tell me what it fucking says.”

“Cliff’s Notes version?” She understood everything. He’d been hiding part of himself, too ashamed of his struggles to share. The college thing made a lot more sense. But like he’d loved her through her fear of storms, she would love him through this.

“Should I know what those are?” His mouth flinched into a half-smile. “I’m kidding. Yes, Cliff’s Notes. What’s this say?”

“It says I love you.”

His expression softened in a way she’d never forget. On her deathbed, she bet she’d still recall the warmth in his dark eyes, the way his firm lips parted, and the way he dropped the book to his lap as if it had weighed his arm down.

“In a book about my life, your name popped up 154 times. More than any name by a lot. I used to think of you as a thread in the tapestry. You’re not. You’re the backing holding the whole thing together. Without you, there would only be a pile of useless strings.”

He swallowed, his throat working. She wasn’t done yet.

“You matter more to me than anyone ever has. You, Anthony, are who has held me together for the last five years. Not Liam. Not me. Even when you weren’t around, it was your voice I heard in my head, your face I saw in my dreams. I love you. And I’m sorry it took me this long to be brave enough to see it.”

He dropped the book on the desk and stood. He cupped her jaw with his hands and kissed her. She returned the kiss, pouring every drop of love she could into it. She prayed this meant that she was forgiven, that he’d take her back, no matter the cost.

He thumbed her cheek, holding her gaze for a beat before saying, “Come here. I want to show you something.”

He led her around a dividing wall and into his shop. A tall sculpture stood out from the other pieces dotting his work area.

“My God.” She dropped his hand to circle the piece. It was nearly eight feet tall, and the artistry was unmatched. He’d carved, in excruciating detail, the torso of a skeleton. The top stopped at the jaw and at the bottom, a hip bone faded into the trunk of the tree he’d carved it from. Each curved rib was there, and plenty of other bones she didn’t know the names of. Behind the ribcage was a heart, still wet with red paint. The only spot of color on the piece.

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