As I walked closer, he bent low, disappearing from my sight for a moment. I guessed that he was reading the outside of my card, seeing his name on it and wondering what was happening. I counted the seconds carefully, judging just how long it would take him to pull the card out and see the two words I’d written there.
Turn around…
And he did.
When he saw me standing there at the base of the bridge, his yellow-green eyes went wide with disbelief. After a second, he scrubbed his face with one hand and stepped toward me.
“What are you…?”
I’d rehearsed this part so many times on the plane that it should have been easy. But now that it was actually happening, everything I’d practiced, everything I’d planned, flew from my head. I was too anxious. Too nervous that I wouldn’t get it right.
“I thought you moved back… that you went home?” he tried again.
My tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth, but somehow I managed to free it and pry my lips apart.
“I did go back,” I said, my voice jagged with barely-contained emotion. “I left because I was afraid. Afraid of letting go of what I’d left behind and of losing what I thought was in my future. But mostly I was afraid that if I stayed here, you and everyone else might start to see me the way that I was seeing myself. Like a failure. And I thought that if you saw me like that, you wouldn’t want to be with me anymore.”
I took a breath so that I could continue. “But then I got home and I realized that if I’m going to fail, I want to do it on my own terms. And if you don’t want to be with me, it’s not going to be because I pushed you away. Also…” I pointed to the bag at his feet where I had carefully covered twelve boxes with white tissue paper. “I happened to come into this windfall of Girl Scout cookies and I didn’t know who else to share them with.”
He only hesitated for a moment before his arms snaked out and he pulled me forward, crushing me to his powerful chest.
“God, am I glad you’re here,” he said, pressing a kiss to my forehead.
“Because of the Girl Scout cookies?”
His body shook with laughter. “Because I see you exactly as you are, Hannah from Oklahoma. And I don’t want you any other way.”
And I could tell that it was more than a wish. More than a hope or a prayer.
It was a promise.
Acknowledgements
Where to begin? We really enjoyed writing Hannah and Caroline's story and are so happy to finally share it with you all. What started out as an idea for a novella grew into the longest story either one of us have written to date. We just fell in love with the characters and wanted to know more about them and as that progressed, so did the story. We hope that you love them all as much as we do.
As always, several people helped us along the way. So we'd like to say a HUGE thank you to our families, our friends, our readers, coffee, and the inventor of Girl Scout cookies—we couldn't have done this without you.
XOXO Autumn and Erica
About the Authors
Autumn Doughton writes books. Fun books. Books for you, your best friend, your favorite barista, and that girl you knew back in the tenth grade. She likes to write about the things she knows about. Things like being confused. Being afraid. Falling in love.
When Autumn isn’t writing, she’s usually chasing after her three cats, two dogs, two daughters, two chinchillas and one lovely husband. You can find her in Florida, where it’s salty, sunny, and humid. Bad for the hair. Good for the soul.
Erica Cope lives in southwest Missouri with her husband, three children, three dogs (including Aspen, the loveable but ornery red Siberian husky), and three cats (apparently she has a thing about the number three). She has an unhealthy addiction to coffee, a bad habit of binge watching shows on Netflix and eating pretzel M&Ms for breakfast.
When Erica isn’t writing, you can find her pretending to play guitar, reading, or baking something delicious.
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