“Put on some fucking pants. You’re going after the girl. You got the girl,” Jacob said, the look on his face telling that the words left a sour taste in his mouth. “Don’t show up in your underwear for Christ’s sake.”
I found myself smiling as I pulled on my jeans, not that I knew why. My relationship with my brother would forever be strained because of this night. I wasn’t sure if we could have much, if any, relationship from here. My relationship with Cora was . . . a question mark. Twenty minutes ago I’d known, but now, I wasn’t sure. She hadn’t seen the best side of me just now, and I couldn’t blame her for having second thoughts about wanting to be with me after everything.
After everything we’d been through, nothing could go back to being the same.
I knew that, and I was willing to pay that price to have her in my life. I wasn’t sure if she felt the same.
“Maybe I really do love her the real way, after all.” Jacob’s voice cut through the quiet as I moved through the door.
I was at a loss for how to respond to that. “Yeah?”
He was staring at his hands, turning them over like he was trying to remember them. “I’m letting her go so she can be with the one of us who can love her the way she deserves.”
My mom used to tell me that nothing worth having in life came easy. Or cheap.
I’d never realized how true those words were until now. This hadn’t come easy. It felt like it had cost me almost everything I had to give. But I knew he was worth having.
I knew he’d been worth the hard work, worth the fight, worth the cost.
Matt Adams was worth it all.
The journey that had led me to this realization had taken years, and the price of accepting it had been dear. Three lives had been uprooted by it. Three lives had been permanently affected by me realizing what I’d really known all along—I might have wanted them both in my life, but there was only one I couldn’t live without.
The rain had finished the job of drenching me a while ago as I stood on the beach, having a heart-to-heart with the dark ocean. It was funny how a silent conversation with an inanimate object could reveal so much. I guessed silence was sometimes the only way to hear what your heart had been trying to tell you all along.
The beach was empty—the late hour and a torrential downpour had a way of doing that—but I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I was right where I needed to be. The answers I’d been chasing for the past few days had been right here, waiting for me to accept them.
I finally had.
It was the same beach Matt and I had snorkeled from, and I found myself smiling at the memory of him emerging from that mobile changing room, trying to be the picture of confidence as he strutted into the water in a patch of python-print fabric. All of my memories of Matt were like that—drawing smiles when reflected upon. It had been obvious, so obvious, but I’d been so very blind.
Because of it, I’d hurt them both. I’d do anything I could to make it up to them, but I guessed only one would allow me to. The other was lost to me in all ways. Jacob was the price I’d paid for Matt, and it seemed unfair that one had cost me the other.
The rain was coming down like every cloud up there had just opened up, and it was so dark, I was lucky to see what was a few feet in front of me, but I knew the moment he found me. I felt the moment he saw me. He was as much a part of me as I was a part of him, our bond breaking through the metaphysical.
“Come on. Let’s get you out of the storm.” Matt’s voice surrounded me before I could see him.
A few moments later, he came into view. He was walking funny and he was barely recognizable. One eye was sealed shut, the other swollen, his bottom lip busted open as a mix of blood and rain trickled from it. He was still shirtless, but he’d pulled on his jeans. I’d never seen him like this, but as he kept coming closer, his hand reaching out for me, I knew he’d never been so perfect in my eyes. He’d come for me, he’d found me, he’d waited for me . . . he’d saved me.
“Why? I’m not afraid of the storm. It can’t touch me.” I angled toward him, lifting my hand to capture his. “You’ve always been my shelter from the storm. You’ve been my stronghold keeping me safe from the rest of the world even when I didn’t know it was you. Your walls might have been invisible, but they were invincible.”
Matt swallowed, hobbling one last step closer. “Maggie.”
I nodded. “Maggie.”
When his arm lifted so he could slide my wet hair over my shoulder, he winced but didn’t stop. “What did she tell you?”
My arm looped around his waist gently as I stared up at him. Bloody. Broken. Bruised. He was so damn beautiful it hurt. “Everything.”
Matt didn’t say anything. He just stood there, his fingers combing through my hair, seeming to melt into the bend of my arm around him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
The skin between his brows creased. “Because it didn’t matter who saved you that night, just that you were okay. I didn’t care who you thought was making you happy, just that you were.”
I didn’t know I’d been hollow until his words filled every empty space and dark corner inside me.
His hand molded behind my neck, his thumb brushing along my hairline and tracing the bandage covering my cut. “How can you forgive me? How can you ever trust me again after what I did?”
It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. All I could think about was all of the ways he’d earned my trust, everything he’d done for me, selflessly and endlessly.
“You made a split-second decision at the wedding, Matt. I can’t blame you for that. You were trying to do the right thing.”
His head shook, sending rain falling like diamonds from the ends of his hair. “Not the wedding day.”
My other hand lifted to his face. “You were drinking. We both were. We’ve been over this.”
“I might have had a few drinks, but when I leaned in, when I put my hands on you and drew you to me, that wasn’t the alcohol. That was me. All me.” His forehead creased. “You trusted me, and I betrayed that trust.”
When I blinked at him, rain spilled from my lashes. “I knew it was you.” I had to say it again. Louder. “I knew it was you, Matt.” I paused to make sure he’d heard me. To make sure he understood what I was saying. “I might have been afraid to admit it to myself, but I knew. Deep inside, I knew it.”
He watched me for a minute, searching my face for any signs of doubt. He wouldn’t find any. His arm slid behind my neck as he pulled me to him and stiffly wound his other arm behind my back. He turned us slightly so the rain was pelting his back instead of mine. We stood like that for a while, our toes in the wet sand, our bodies pressed together, our arms clinging to each other.
“I need to tell you something.” My head lifted from his chest so I could look up at him. “Something I’ve been waiting to say for twenty years.”
He shook his head, a smile starting to form. “Me first.”
Not a chance.
“I love you,” I blurted, so loud and fast it surprised him.