by Rian Kelley
“I know where this is going,” Micah said. “Us. We have something good, Emme, and I’m not just talking about the sex, which is phenomenal.”
“It’s everything I thought it would be. Over the moon and back.”
“I like you. I have from the beginning.”
Emme felt her shoulders tense, her face freeze. Like was such an apathetic word. It was miles away from the emotion Emme was hoping for.
But Micah shook his head. “Like is important, Emme. It’s what hooked me. Your candor and your sense of humor. Your natural instinct to reach out to others—” And here he confessed to watching her for two weeks before they ever met. He recounted the ways she’d extended herself, from stopping to help a stranded motorist to juggling grocery bags for a mother preoccupied with toddlers, and several small gestures in between. “Before ‘hello’, I knew you were dangerous.”
“Is that why you ignored me?”
“Yeah.” And he smiled at his own foolishness. “I knew it was too late. I wanted you. But I had a job to do and some baggage I needed to lose.”
“Felicity.”
He nodded. “I trusted her.”
“You loved her.”
He shifted on his feet but nodded. “I definitely thought we had a future.”
“And us?”
She wasn’t going to say it again, that she would never steal. That she wasn’t a criminal. That she was nothing like the woman who had done all those things to him and then had died in the midst of her deepest betrayal. Emme wasn’t capable of any of that. But Micah needed to know it, he needed to believe it, and she hoped he finally did.
“I know we have a future. I don’t want to be without you, Emme. All that stuff I said about liking you, all those reasons you caught my attention, they’re pieces of you that, put together, make you one hell of a woman. I’m in love with you, Emme. And I know we can make it work. I have to go back to San Diego. Crista and I have jobs lined up and our schedule is tight, but I can get up here on Fridays and stay through the weekends.”
“In a few weeks I’ll have a solid first draft,” she said. “And I was thinking a beach house might be my next nest of inspiration.”
“San Diego has a lot of beaches.”
“The best,” she agreed.
“So are you in?” His arms circled her waist and pulled her closer. “Will you give us a chance?”
“Micah, I’ve been in for days now. Maybe from the very beginning. You were right. I’m not a no emotion elocation kind of woman.”
“No. You’re a happily ever after woman. Thank God.”
She smiled as she rolled to her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m definitely in, Micah. In love with you. In for the long haul. In San Diego. In your arms, your life, your heart. That kind of in.” The forever kind.