The crowd had spread out some from the initial crush at the beginning. His group was holding steady, getting into the rhythm of things. There was space beside him, and she pulled up as best as she could, trying desperately to keep up. It was like those things people said about superhuman feats of strength, like when a parent lifted a car because their toddler was in danger. It didn’t make sense. It should have been physically impossible for her to match him stride for stride.
But she did it. For now, at least, she had no other choice but to stay in it and run.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he gasped, although she could tell his intake of breath was out of surprise, not because it was particularly hard for him. It was sort of awesome and sort of infuriating to realize what he was capable of. To see that this was no big deal—not much more than a walk in the park for him. It was part of his routine, his schedule. She was the one out of her element. Out of her depth.
She had to explain herself before her heart exploded.
“I think I’m dying,” she said, which wasn’t exactly how she’d planned this reunion.
“You have to stop,” he said urgently. “Stop running. Whatever it is, I’ll find you after. It’s fine. It’s not worth hurting yourself for.”
But she shook her head and kept going. Now that she’d found him, she couldn’t bear the thought of letting him go, of missing out on any moment she could spend by his side. Especially if this, now, was going to be the last time.
“It’s not fine,” she said. “None of this is fine. Or maybe you’re fine, I don’t know. But I’m not. I have to tell you, Noah. I had to come and tell you.”
“Jesus, Amanda.” He glanced at the road ahead of him, at his watch to check the time, then back at her. “Tell me what?”
She took a breath. Or as much of a breath as she could fit into her body. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.
“I’m falling in love with you,” she blurted, since she didn’t have time to waste words. “I know I didn’t say it before. I know I didn’t say enough. But I have to tell you now, Noah, before you go. I need to tell you I love you.”
She wasn’t sure what she expected him to say in response. Wasn’t the whole point of this stunt that she couldn’t predict what he might do, but that couldn’t stop her from following her heart? But whatever it was, she hadn’t anticipated an invigorating pep talk about closing in on the first mile, feeling how loose and warm her legs were, and getting ready to kick it into gear.
Then she remembered. He was of course talking to the running group, who were probably wondering why this random woman had shown up here again and was dying right before their eyes.
But over the sounds of sneakers hitting the concrete and the steady rush of her own breathing, she heard cries of, “Hey, Amanda!” and, “Run with us, Noah can coach anyone!” And, she could have sworn, more than one comment about how Noah hadn’t been himself all week without her around.
She looked at him. Was that true?
“I want to talk to you, Amanda,” he said. “But I’m a little busy right now.”
“I know,” she said quickly. “And I didn’t want to interrupt. I just had to—”
“Talk to her!” someone cried behind them. Followed by something that sounded like, “This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.”
Great. Amanda hadn’t been counting on an audience for this. But at least no one had told her to go to hell or stop sticking her nose where she wasn’t supposed to. Or that Noah had been so much happier without her.
“If you want to talk right now, we can talk,” Noah said. “But I have to keep up the pace for everyone.”
She steeled herself and her resolve. Could she do this? But even as she asked herself, she knew it wasn’t a question. The answer had to be yes. When it came to Noah, she needed to show that she was all in.
“I want to be with you, Noah. Not just for now or when it’s convenient. For always. I want to be with you.” She stopped to give herself a few breaths. And to hear the words ringing between them. To hear that she’d said them. She meant them, and she’d say them again and again. I want to be with you.
There were no qualifiers to the sentence. No deflecting. She wasn’t pretending, or hiding, or imagining herself with anyone else. It was out there now, the truth of her heart. She couldn’t take it back.
And she knew she didn’t want to.
“I don’t want to stop you from doing anything,” she went on as best she could. “I’m not telling you to move, or not move, or what to do. I want to be someone in your life who makes things possible, not someone you have to work around. So I don’t want you to take this as some kind of pressure. I don’t want this to be a source of stress. I’m not coming between you and Luke, and I would never ask that of you. I know you have your reasons for moving, and all the reasons a relationship is a bad idea. All I wanted to do is come here and tell you that there’s something for you in New York. There’s something for you with me. Even if we do long distance. Even if we plan to try to be in the same place sometime later. Even if it doesn’t work. I still think we’re worth trying for. I know that you’re worth it to me.”
Another series of breaths, a sharp pain stabbing in her side. But she kept going.
“This sounds ridiculous,” she sputtered. “And I’m not going to be able to walk for a week. But I wanted to be honest. Maybe for the first time in our whole relationship. Not relationship. Whatever this is has been. I just wanted you to know that I’m serious about you. As serious as the heart attack I’m about to have. I think you might not have known that. I might not have known it, either. I didn’t say it when I should have, but now you know.”
And then there was no more talking because she couldn’t get another word out of her body, she was gasping so hard. And because she couldn’t keep up with him, he was running away, and there was no chance to see his face, to know what he was thinking. If he was happy or angry or confused or didn’t even care.
All she could do was watch him keep running away from her, setting the pace he’d committed to for the group he led. She had to trust that no matter what happened, she’d done what she could. She’d done what she wanted and said what she meant.
She hadn’t protected her heart or closed herself off to love.
She’d taken a risk.
No matter what happened, she had to give herself credit for that.
Assuming she survived, of course. She pulled over to the edge of the road, bent over and wincing in pain, trying to remember everything Noah had said about how to breathe.
Some things seemed like they should be so simple. Inhale, exhale. She’d done it all her life.
Only maybe what she’d been doing all her life wasn’t so straightforward.
Maybe, just because she’d gotten into the habit, it didn’t mean there weren’t some things she wanted to change.
She looked up at the sea of runners passing her by. Some of them made it look easy. But she realized, the more she looked, that a lot of them were struggling. She could see the effort on their faces.
Yet no matter how hard it was, they pushed on.
She started walking, massaging the stitch in her side. She was still on the route. She looked around, but no one was staring at her or wondering what she was doing here when she obviously didn’t belong. She wasn’t even the only one walking.
She looked down at her sneakers. At her hands. She tried to look squarely at herself.
She knew what she wanted now. She knew what she was striving for.
And she started to run.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was some kind of autopilot that made Noah keep running. The years of training that got him to put one foot in front of the other without thinking. He had to keep doing his job. He had to get his team to the end.
No matter how much he wanted to stop, turn ar
ound, and run back to ask Amanda if she’d really meant everything she’d said.
And if the answer was yes—what then?
The question almost made him stumble as he crossed the finish line. Just because she said she didn’t want this to be over didn’t mean they could snap their fingers and make it so. All the problems that had been there before were still just as present. The move. His new job. His brother, who he couldn’t very well abandon days before they were scheduled to leave. The nagging worry that his brother was right, and it was too soon after Kristina, too soon after making so many changes, to have a clue what was a good idea or not.
At least the race was over, and everyone was cheering and elated to have finished. He’d completed what he had to accomplish—the race, his coaching. He finished congratulating his group on an amazing job.
Then, when everyone finally began to disperse and he had a moment to himself, he unzipped the small side pocket in his running shorts and pulled out a piece of paper.
“Hey, nice job.”
He looked up. He hadn’t expected his brother to come, let alone meet him at the finish.
“What are you doing here?”
“I needed to talk to you. What’s that?”
Noah’s stomach twisted. Luke gestured toward the paper, soggy with sweat. He unfolded it slowly.
“It’s my plane ticket,” he said. “For L.A.”
There was a beat of silence between them.
“You know that I think about stuff when I run,” he explained. “It’s the best time for me to focus. I brought the ticket because…” He took a breath. “This is something I needed to think a hell of a lot about.”
Luke nodded slowly. “And how’d the thinking go?”
Noah had stared at the ticket the whole subway ride to the race. He’d taken it out again at the starting line. Even when he was prepping everyone to get warmed up and ready, he’d been thinking about the flight. His decision. Not what he’d planned. Not what he’d previously decided. But what he wanted. Now.
He hadn’t known known if Amanda would take him back. She’d made it pretty clear that they were over. But that hadn’t meant he was going to roll over and give up without trying.
And then she’d found him in the race, and hope had beat so hard in his chest, he could barely run without tripping over his own feet. Without stopping and wrapping his arms around her and never, ever letting go.
He didn’t need to look at the ticket anymore. Not when he knew what he wanted. Not when it was already, achingly clear what he had to do.
He put it back in his pocket.
“I know I made you a promise,” he said. “I’m the reason you got a new job and are ready to uproot your life. But she’s the one.” He shook his head, and then he said it. “I can’t lose her. And that means I can’t go to L.A.”
He waited for Luke to explode. He was backing out of everything they’d planned.
But to his surprise, his brother smiled. Wider than Noah had ever seen before.
“Thank God,” Luke said, pumping his fist. “Because otherwise I was going to have to bar you from getting on that plane, and things would get seriously ugly.”
“What?” Noah asked, stunned.
Luke put an arm on his shoulder. “I’ve been thinking a lot, too,” he said. “And I was wrong about Amanda. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things to you. Or to her. Honestly, I didn’t realize. I thought this was some casual thing, and it seemed stupid to blow everything up over nothing. The move, your job, everything you’d said about taking time to figure things out after Kristina. And, you know.” He took a breath. “Us.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when it started,” Noah said. “I should have. I just didn’t know how. I didn’t know when. For a while, I still didn’t know what I was doing.”
“I get it.” Luke held up his palm. “It was definitely weird at first, if I’m honest. But you know what? It’s your life—you don’t have to run it by me. And you’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to, I don’t know, change.”
“This has to work,” Noah said, feeling almost frantic now. “I have to find her. I have to tell her I’m staying.”
Luke spun him so he was facing the finish line and gave him a shove. “Go!”
“I don’t know where she is. I don’t have my phone. I don’t even know where she went.” Something else dawned on him. “Wait. How’d you know she was here?”
Luke held out his phone and pulled up the GPS from a bib, number 3974. Noah could see how far along the runner was and the checkpoints they’d passed. But so what?
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
Luke shoved the phone in his face, like that made anything clear. “It’s Amanda’s badge. I was texting with Alix,” he went on when Noah still looked at him blankly. “She was bummed about missing the race. But she said at least she didn’t lose the registration fee. Even though she couldn’t figure out why Amanda suddenly wanted to run.”
“She found me,” he said. “At the beginning of the race. But then she dropped out.”
Luke showed him the dot on his phone again. “Either the GPS is wrong, or your girl is still in it.”
Your girl.
Noah heard the words clearly. Like his brother was sure that Amanda was his.
His heart swelled. All he could do was run.
He pushed back through the crowd heading toward the finish line. Heading past it. There were still people running the race, and now he ran against them, sticking to the side of the road, tackling the whole thing in reverse. He was doing it wrong—he was doing everything wrong. But he had to find her.
At last he spotted her, tired but still moving, a look of pure fury in her eyes. Or what he would have thought was fury before he got to know her. Before he knew her well enough to realize it was her determination, her drive. The face she wore when she wanted something badly enough to do anything for it.
And from the looks of it, what she wanted was to finish this thing.
He turned and pulled up beside her, immediately falling into her stride.
“What are you doing?” she asked, although she was breathing so hard that it took about four steps for the full question to come out.
“Making sure you don’t die,” he said.
“I’m not your pity case. I can do this myself.”
“I know you can. You can do anything.” He paused. “But wouldn’t it be so much better to do it with somebody else?”
She turned to him. Finally. It was like something lifted from her eyes and she remembered who he was. Who she was. Who they were, together.
“If you’re here to break up with me again,” she said, still gasping, “please—wait until this awful hell is over. I don’t think I can handle it.”
He kept running beside her. She looked at him again.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he told her. “From now on, that’s something you’re going to have to get used to.”
She stumbled, and he reached out to grab her elbow and keep her from falling, but she caught her trip and kept moving.
“What—” she started, but it was too much to finish the sentence and run at the same time.
“Don’t talk,” he said. “Just run. And listen.”
He waited for her to protest. Make some comeback. Argue that he couldn’t tell her what to do. But she kept breathing like he’d taught her and let him talk.
“I can’t believe it, Amanda,” he said, his mind still reeling. “I can’t believe you came here, and I can’t believe you said those things. I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to say anything,” he added quickly when it looked like she was about to try talking again. “Just let me say that I’m sorry. Let me own that. I took the easy way out, staying on the path I’d been on before. But you’re right. Just because I decided something before doesn’t
mean it’s still what I want.” He took a deep breath. “Not when what I want is you.”
For all the uncertainty he’d felt before, he knew that. Knew it the way he knew the sound of pavement beneath his feet, the surge of air in his lungs. There was so much he didn’t have figured out. But for once, he understood that he didn’t have to.
He didn’t have to plan each step he’d take or know every curve that was coming. He only had to listen to the contents of his heart. Every leap of his pulse was saying one thing and one thing only.
“I want you,” he repeated. “And I want my life to be with you. I don’t even care where that is as long as you’re a part of it. You make me better every day. You make me more thoughtful. You make me brave.” He shook his head, hardly believing himself because it wasn’t like he’d planned any of this. But wasn’t that the point? No one could plan out a talk like this or figure out what to say in advance. He could only think it and say it. Trust it wouldn’t be wrong.
Or, if it was, that they’d work together to make it right.
“I never imagined anything happening between us, Amanda. And when it did, I never imagined it would grow into more. And then when that did, I guess the only thing to say is that I panicked. I had this whole plan with Luke and L.A., and I clung to it like it was some life vest—the only thing that could save me after my future went up in smoke. But I don’t need saving.” He grabbed her hand as they kept running. “I only need you. And I need to be okay with not having a plan at all times and okay with not knowing the future and what’s to come. I think I can do that, Amanda. As long as you’ll stay by my side.”
He thought she was trying to say something. Or maybe that was just her breathing. But finally, she got one word out: “Luke.”
“Luke will be fine. He can find a new roommate in California. He can kick ass at PlayStation. Or he can stay in New York. Or try L.A. for a little while and then decide. No matter what, you know what’s awesome? He can do what he wants. You know what else is awesome?” He grinned. He couldn’t help it. It was the race and the cheers and the adrenaline and the way that Amanda kept pushing forward by his side.
Wrong Bed, Right Brother (Accidental Love) Page 18