Page 125 of One and Only

Her lips twitched, but nothing else. She was afraid to smile. Afraid to trust it. But I could see that kindling of hope in her eyes, and it was enough to have me take another step.

Greer tilted her chin up, her cheeks a beautiful pale pink. “You could’ve called.”

I exhaled a quiet laugh. “I could have.”

“Why didn’t you?” she whispered.

Her hands were loose at her side, and I slid my palm down the length of her arm, relishing the shiver that wracked her frame when I did. My fingers curled around her wrist, and I lifted it to my mouth, pressing my nose to the satin soft skin there. Under my thumb, her pulse raced.

It matched my own, something urgent and frantic, and I forced myself to be patient.

To tell her the things she deserved to hear.

“I almost decided to wait,” I told her. I pressed an impossibly light kiss to the inside of her wrist. Her fingers curled helplessly. “I could have convinced myself so easily.” I moved her palm to the side of my face, exhaling heavily when she spread her hand, stroking her thumb over my cheek. I pulled her palm to my mouth and kissed her there too.

Greer just listened, her eyes fixed on mine.

“I could have made us both spend miserable days apart from each other,” I told her. “Coming up with countless reasons this shouldn’t work the way it does between us. I could have wasted weeks—beating myself up for all the ways I haven’t done the right thing at the right time. And instead, I decided that I didn’t want to waste another second, not when I know what I want.”

Her eyes shimmered. “What changed your mind?”

I slid my hands up the line of her neck, her sharp inhale darting straight into my chest as I cupped her face between my palms. Her eyes fluttered shut, a tear escaping down her cheek in a quick slide. It absorbed into my skin where I held her. A small piece of Greer, just as precious as any other side of her that she’d shown.

I wanted them all.

“You.” I allowed my forehead to rest on hers. “You fight for everything you want. Everything that’s important. And I want to fight for this. For the family we’re building together. Everything felt so empty when you left. And I knew that I’d never fill my life—Olive’s life too—the way I want unless you’re in it.”

She exhaled a soft sob, her hands coming up to clutch my shirt in her hands.

“Can we start over?” I asked, stepping fully into her, allowing one hand to cup the back of her head, the other to wrap tight around her back. Greer sank into my embrace, her arms coiling around my middle as she pressed her face into my neck with a weighty exhale. “Start something real with me, Greer Wilder. You’re the only person who I want it with.”

Her hands clutched at my back, and she lifted her head to look up into my face. “If I say yes, are you going to kiss me?”

I smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Then you should know that my entire family is probably watching us right now.”

Sure enough, when I glanced up toward the house, five or six bodies conspicuously darted back from the windows.

I laughed, tightening my arms around her. I slid my hand over her jaw, tilting her chin up.

“Then let them watch,” I murmured before I took her mouth with mine.

Greer’s lips were soft and sweet as I tilted the angle of the kiss and opened her jaw wider with a slight press of my hand. My tongue swept over hers, wet and warm, and my hand slid back into the cool silk of her hair. She whimpered when my grip tightened into the strands.

This was real, I thought. No matter how it started, or how I found her.

It was real.

And it was right.

Greer might have swept into my life like a tornado, but it was exactly the kind of destruction I needed. Because she took down everything I’d constructed before I knew she existed.

Before I knew love could feel like this—wild and fierce and fearless.

Her body against mine was warm and firm, and my hand coasted over her back, following the line of her ribs, down to the curve of her backside while she pushed up on the balls of her feet to twine her arms around my neck.

This was forever.

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