by Susannah Nix
“But…why?”
“Because I hated myself and I hated everyone around me. I had completely closed myself off from everything and everyone. After Hailey, I was so miserable, all I could do was go through the motions every day. I put all of my energy into doing my work and going to the gym, even though I hated it, and I acted like kind of an asshole, because it kept people from trying to be my friend. I was miserable for so long, I forgot how to be anything else.” He shifted his messenger bag, hugging it against his stomach. “So it didn’t have anything to do with you. It wasn’t you that I disliked—it was myself.”
“But you asked Gavin to send someone else in my place.” Why would he have done that if he’d despised everyone just as much? That had to have been about her specifically.
“Because I felt guilty for refusing to give you a recommendation. I wouldn’t have liked whoever else he sent any better, but at least they wouldn’t have been looking at me all week like I’d taken a dump on their birthday cake.”
“I didn’t look at you like that.”
“No, you looked at me like you wanted to kick me in the nads.”
“That’s because I did.”
“I know.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “It was hot.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugged. “Everyone at this job is always trying to kiss my ass. No one ever calls me on my bullshit, because I’m the CIO’s golden boy. All I ever hear is how great I am.”
She couldn’t help how salty she sounded. “Must be terrible for you. What a hardship.”
“See? I love that you call me on my bullshit.”
She shook her head. “You hate my sarcasm.”
“No, I fucking love it. When I showed up at the airport, I was expecting you to be all meek and crestfallen and spend the whole week shooting silent recriminations at me like a kicked dog. I didn’t expect you to stand up to me like you did. I’d never seen that side of you before. The more you challenged me, the more it made me want to poke back, to bring out more of that fire inside you.”
She didn’t know what to say. None of this sounded like any better starting place for a relationship. She’d thought she was the broken one of the two of them, but it turned out they both were. How were they supposed to navigate all this baggage?
Adam looked down at his messenger bag, which he was clutching like a life preserver. “But I understand if you can’t forgive me for who I was. For how I treated you and everyone else. You didn’t deserve it.” His fingers worried at the buckle on his bag. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s better to quit while we’re ahead—while we can still part friends.”
She’d thought it was what she wanted to hear. It was exactly what she’d been saying and thinking. But it hurt more than she expected to hear him actually agree with her. “I mean…with our jobs, I just…I don’t know.”
He looked up, and when his eyes met hers they were defiant. “I don’t give a shit about my job. I’d rather have you than this job.”
It was like he’d dropped a stun grenade into the middle of the room. All Olivia could do was blink at him, dazed, as her ears filled with a ringing sound.
Adam dug around in his messenger bag and pulled out a yellow notepad, which he thrust into her hands. “This is what I did at work today instead of my job.”
“What is it?” she asked, too disoriented to focus on the handwritten black scrawl on the top page.
“It’s a list of everything I like about you.”
“But…” She thumbed through the pages of the notepad. “Every page of this is full.” Page after page, every single line was covered in his cramped, messy handwriting.
She heard the apartment door close and looked up. He’d left. Just handed her this ridiculous, wonderful, unbelievable thing and then walked out without a word.
She stood rooted in place as she flipped through the notepad, reading the exhaustive list of things he liked about her, which ranged from the silly to the unbearably sentimental.
Your sense of humor
Your cute butt
The way you swear
Your brain
How much you care about your job
How much you care about so many things
That you play D&D
Your eyelashes
The sound of you typing
When you steal my food
The smell of your hair
The freckle by your left eyebrow
The way your eyelids flutter when I touch you
Your big heart
That you’re smarter than anyone else I know
That you’re smarter than me
There were tears in her eyes. It just went on and on. Hundreds of lines. Hundreds of little things he’d noticed about her. Hundreds of arguments to prove how much he cared.
Hundreds of reasons not to give up on each other.
And he was gone.
He’d told her he wanted her more than his job, handed her the evidence to back it up, and then disappeared on her.
What the fuck?
She had to stop him before he got too far. She ran across the apartment and grabbed her phone off the kitchen counter.
“Hi,” he said when he answered the phone, like he hadn’t just walked out on a conversation seconds ago.
“Come back.” Her voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the ocean. “Please come back.”
“Open the door,” he told her, and when she did he was standing on the other side like he’d never left at all. “Marco.”
“What? How?” All of this was too much. She was experiencing so many emotions at once, she didn’t know what to feel first, and it was impairing her ability to process information at her usual speed. All she knew for sure was that she needed him not to leave again.
“You’re supposed to say Polo.” He gave a sheepish shrug. “I couldn’t make myself walk away. So I just waited, in case you changed your mind.”
“Asshole.” She grabbed his arm and dragged him inside. “Don’t leave like that again.” This time she locked the door, in case he tried to make another escape.
“Okay.” A ghost of a smile drifted across his lips. A shimmer of escaping hope. “Does this mean you’ve changed your mind?”
Instead of answering, she hurled herself into his arms.
Nothing else mattered except how fiercely he held on to her, and the way his chest hitched as she pressed her face into it. His scent enveloped her, that sweet, fresh Adam smell, and it was like coming back home after being away on a trip.
She still clutched the notepad in her hand. It was making it hard to touch him the way she wanted to, but she couldn’t let go of it—not yet—so she held on to it and she held on to him, like they were the two most important things in the world.
“I can’t believe you wrote all that stuff,” she said. “It must have taken you hours.”
“It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Shut up.”
“I was so awful to you before, I just needed you to know how I feel about you now.”
“I do.”
He cradled her face in his big, warm hands. “I see you,” he said, and the way his dark, piercing eyes were looking down at her, she felt the truth of his words like never before—right down to the very bottom of her soul. “Sometimes it feels like I can't see anything but you. I know you feel like people don't see you, Olivia, but I see you. With my whole heart.”
“Goddammit,” she said, blinking furiously. “Stop making me cry.”
He touched a finger to the underside of her chin, tilting her face up. His eyes raked over her like they were drinking her in. She strained toward him, and their lips met in a kiss that turned her inside out, leaving her shaky and defenseless.
But it was okay. She didn’t need her defenses around him anymore. She could lower the drawbridge and let her walls crumble a little. The man at the gate was a friendly.
When they parted, Adam was breathing almost as hard as she was, and
he clutched at her like she was the only thing holding him up.
“I see you too,” she said, and felt a tremor run through his body. “I see the real you. The one you try to keep hidden from everyone.” She curled a hand around his neck and tried to bring him back for another kiss, but he evaded her lips.
“I feel like I’ve been in a coma for the last two years. And then you walked in and woke me up.” He leaned away from her so he could untangle himself from his messenger bag.
She tugged him back toward her as soon as he’d lowered his bag to the floor. “By yelling at you?”
He smiled in response, and she laughed. “It felt more like a kick in the head.” He extricated the notepad from her fingers and dropped it on top of his bag.
“Some Prince Charming I am.”
His arms wound around her again. “It was exactly what I needed. You were exactly what I needed.”
Their mouths came together like two magnets attracting. A force of nature. Their opposite poles perfectly aligned, creating a magnetic field that forced the world to change around them.
He was there with her. He wanted to be there, and that meant something.
It meant everything.
Epilogue
Six months later
LAX at Christmastime made Dante’s vision of hell look like a trip to Disneyland.
Apparently everyone in the greater Los Angeles area was traveling out of town today, lugging packs of whiny, overstimulated children and shopping bags full of presents home for the holidays. Olivia had already seen two near-fights break out—one at curbside check-in and another over the last empty table at the airport McDonald’s. Merry fucking Christmas.
She was glad she’d gotten there early. Even with the extra-long security lines, she’d made it to the gate with enough time to stock up on snacks and bottles of water in one of the airport shops.
Still no sign of Adam anywhere, but that wasn’t a surprise. She’d known what she was in for when they’d agreed to meet at the airport. They were both coming straight from the office, but Olivia worked in an office in El Segundo these days.
A few months after finishing the Future Leader Development Course, she’d taken a job with another company: leading a team building wind farm optimization software for Sauer Hewson’s wind energy division. It was challenging, and scary, and hard, but she loved it.
As the minutes ticked toward their scheduled boarding time, Olivia swallowed down a bubble of nerves. She couldn’t do this without Adam. The only reason she’d even agreed to go home for Christmas this year was so he could meet her family. For some reason it had been important to him, and she hadn’t had the heart to say no.
He’d introduced her to his family months ago, and they’d welcomed her with open arms and plates of homemade Mexican food and endless intrusive questions. It had been intimidating and overwhelming, but also pretty wonderful. She’d never felt anything like that before—like being smothered with attention.
If it had been up to Olivia, they’d have spent Christmas with Adam’s parents and sisters and nieces and nephews and cousins in Riverside. Or used his frequent flyer miles to book a mini vacay on some tropical beach somewhere, just the two of them.
If Adam missed this flight and made her face her family alone, she swore to Christ—
“Hey, Woerner,” he said, elbowing his way through the crowd toward her.
At the sight of him, Olivia’s heart swelled like a balloon attached to a helium tank. Sometimes she still couldn’t believe he was hers.
Adam propped his bag next to hers and wrapped his arms around her, dropping a light kiss on her mouth. “I made it.”
She tugged at the hem of his henley, and her knuckles grazed his stomach. Where there had once been a six-pack, he’d developed a soft little pooch. He still went to the gym, but only three days a week instead of seven. He had better things to do now, like spend time with his girlfriend.
Olivia loved his little pooch, because it was physical evidence of how much happier and more relaxed he was. His body was softening along with his personality. He wasn’t half as brusque as he used to be, and he smiled all the time, even at people who weren’t her. He’d even been making more of an effort to make friends. He showed up for after-work drinks with her new coworkers most weeks when he wasn’t traveling, and had even made a few appearances at her knitting group’s weekly meetups. His knitting skills hadn’t progressed much, but he’d scored massive points with her friends for being the first boyfriend in the group to even make the attempt.
“I was only a little worried,” Olivia admitted.
“I wasn’t going to miss the plane,” Adam said, gently admonishing. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I know, but you know I can’t help worrying.”
“I do know, and I love you for it.” He rubbed his nose against hers. “How long have you been here?”
“Only about ten minutes.”
“That’s not bad. Did you get snacks? I assume you got snacks.”
“I did.” She wriggled out of his embrace and opened her purse to show off her haul from the airport newsstand.
He shook his head as he peered at the selection of candy bars and chips. “You know we’re not going to need any of that, right?”
He’d used his miles to upgrade both of them to first class. Soon they’d be reclining in luxury, sipping free alcoholic beverages and enjoying hot towels and warm nuts on the flight to Houston. It would probably be the highlight of the entire trip.
“This is for stress eating at my parents’ house,” she said, repositioning her bag on her shoulder. “I’m going to start drinking my weight in champagne just as soon as they let us on the airplane.”
The crowd around them was getting pushy, and Adam draped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into the shelter of his body. “It’s going to be fine.”
She pressed her hand against his cheek, imagining the two of them kissing in the surf or soaking up the sun on one of those big deck chairs made for two, and let out a wistful sigh for what could have been. “You’re so sweet and naive, and you’re going to eat those words, buddy.”
“Come on.” He laid his hand over hers and nuzzled a kiss into her palm. “They’re not monsters. How bad can it be?”
She snorted. “Well, my dad probably won’t talk at all unless it’s about the glory days of my brother’s football career, my mother will talk incessantly about my perfect sister’s perfect husband and perfect career, my brother will do everything in his power to push my buttons, and I’ll revert to the emotional maturity of a sulky teenager. If you still love me after this trip, it will be a miracle.”
“I’ll always love you,” Adam said, brushing a kiss against her temple. “And it won’t be that bad this time because you won’t be alone. You’ll have someone on your side. Team Olivia all the way.”
She rose up on her toes and kissed him long and hard on the mouth, ignoring the disapproving looks it earned from their fellow passengers. Adam’s lips parted for her as he tugged her against his body. Just before things veered into socially inexcusable, Olivia broke off the kiss.
“Goddamn, do I love you,” she said between breaths. Every time they kissed it set her heart racing in her chest. Apparently she was never going to get over that electric thrill. She’d be eighty and still gasping at every kiss like it was their first.
“Not as much as I love you,” he said, beaming down at her with adoring eyes. He really meant it, of that she was one hundred percent certain. Whatever small indignities her family inflicted on her were meaningless compared to that.
The gate agent announced that pre-boarding for their flight would begin in a moment, and Adam laid a hand in the small of Olivia’s back to guide her through the swelling crowd.
“You ready?” he asked as the gate agent scanned their boarding passes.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Adam reached for her hand as they stepped onto the jetway, and a sudden surge of happiness drown
ed out the last of her apprehensions.
Whatever happened, she knew it would be fine, because they were together. The unknown didn’t scare her nearly as much anymore. She knew she could survive anything, because the person she loved most in the world had her back.
Everything else would work itself out, one way or another.
Don’t miss Susannah’s steamy Hollywood romance, RISING STAR
When a struggling grad student agrees to dog-sit for a workaholic movie star, they both get more than they bargained for!
Start reading now!
Acknowledgments
Readers familiar with Texas geography may notice I’ve taken some liberties for the sake of plot. In spirit, however, I hope I’ve been true to my beloved home state.
As always, thanks are owed to my wonderful husband, Dave, for being my biggest cheerleader and number one fan. Also to my beta readers Mer and Jo, for encouraging me and saving me from myself. And to my excellent editor Julia, for being so amazing at what she does.
A special shoutout goes to Siobhán Nevin in my Facebook reader group for giving me Adam’s name.
This book wouldn’t exist if not for the support and encouragement of a wonderful community of indie authors who’ve been with me on every step of this incredible journey. In particular, I need to thank the following:
Melanie Greene, for taking me to an RWA meeting three years ago.
K.L. Montgomery and everyone at IAS, for creating a welcoming community where we can all learn from each other.
Annika Martin and Penny Reid, for holding out their hands to lift me up.
Skye Warren, for sharing her wisdom and helping me make sense of this business we’re in.
And finally, to everyone who picked up my first book and took a chance on an unknown author. If it weren’t for the confidence you gave me, I’m not sure I would have made it to book six.
About the Author
SUSANNAH NIX lives in Texas with her husband, two ornery cats, and a flatulent pit bull. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading, cooking, knitting, watching stupid amounts of television, and getting distracted by Tumblr. She is also a powerlifter who can deadlift as much as Captain America weighs.