Neither of them spoke for several seconds, both needing a moment to collect.
She smiled and squinted at him, so he reached for the side table where he’d put her glasses and gave her back her sight.
“It’s good to see you like this,” she said, and he raised a brow.
“Like what?”
“Like your heart is finally mine.”
He tugged on her hair, loving the mess of curls spilling around her.
“Always was. Just took me a while to tell you.”
“I should have known,” she said, and he hated that tinge of regret in her voice. Enough with punishing themselves for what they missed. It was time to celebrate what was still to come.
“Now you do.”
She kissed him, her lips languid and soft against his.
“You have my heart, too, you know,” she said. “I lost it to you ten years ago. Just took me a while to find it again.”
He nodded and kissed her back. He knew that now. And he made himself a promise not to forget it.
Chapter Thirty
L.A. was perfect. Jamie was perfect. Their trip back through Amarillo on the way home—yeah, there were no words for that. But now they were in Chicago, best friends like they were but also something more.
Brynn groaned.
“First-date jitters?” Holly asked, and Brynn pushed past her sister and into the bathroom for the final step in Operation Look-as-Hot-as-I-Can-in-Jeans-and-a-T-Shirt. “I’d like to remind you that this was your idea.”
Brynn took off her glasses and unscrewed the cap on her contact solution. After the first contact was in, she spun to face her sister.
“I know. I know. And it was a good idea, right? I just can’t help thinking of how this could royally backfire, you know? Like, this will either be really good for him, or it’s going to bring up painful memories about his parents, which will remind him of what happened between us ten years ago, and then he’ll fall out of love with me, and life as we know it will be over.”
Holly burst into a fit of laughter, which did not entertain Brynn in the slightest. She closed the eye that was still contact-free so she could glare at her sister without getting dizzy.
“I’m sorry,” Holly said, swiping at tears. “But I thought I was the drama queen around here.”
Brynn crossed her arms but said nothing, grateful for the few moments she could let her unfounded anger hide her very real fear.
“Sweetie,” Holly continued. “You know I am no romantic, but even the most cynical person could look at you and Jamie and just know that you two are the lucky ones. You found what some people spend lifetimes searching for, and tricking your boyfriend into attending a playoff game to see his favorite team is only going to make him fall harder. If that’s even possible.”
Brynn turned back to the mirror, wanting clarity before she digested Holly’s words. Contact poised on her fingertip, she startled when Jamie’s patented knock came at the door.
“You have got to be kidding me!” she yelled, and Holly cracked up again on her way to the door.
Since Galena, Kansas, Brynn had gotten into the habit of always putting her contacts in over a closed sink drain, but that didn’t change the fact that Jamie could still throw her off-balance like this—enough to send the contact sailing from her finger. What was new were the butterflies in her belly, darting back and forth at the anticipation of his arrival.
She stood in the frame of the bathroom door and, through her good eye, watched him enter their apartment.
God, she loved this man. He startled her, infuriated her, calmed her, and right now, when she saw the broad smile spread across his still unshaven face, he warmed every part of her, all the way to the tips of her toes.
“Need some help there, Sleepy Jean?”
He wore his gray hoodie over a plain black T-shirt, dark washed jeans, and those red Pumas. She couldn’t help but smile, though, when her eye (the good one) trailed up his body to where his Sox hat rested on his head. She could tell he’d had his hair trimmed, but the facial hair remained. Yeah, she liked this look on him—different but the same. An incarnation of Jamie that was just for her.
She nodded, all anger and fear dissolving at the nearness of him. She breathed in his scent—one that she knew was nothing more than freshly showered, walked-a-few-blocks-in-the-city-breeze Jamie—and the butterflies rested for a moment while he retrieved her contact and placed it safely in her palm.
“Even cleaned it off for you,” he said, but she would have known that anyway.
She turned to the mirror for a brief moment to insert the lens and then looked back to him, blinking him into focus.