“Wanted to see you,” he said simply, opening his hands to the sky like he’d been helpless to resist and was asking for forgiveness.
A laugh shot from my lips, a burst of disbelief and relief.
“Well then,” I said, gesturing to the blanket.
Harleigh Rose shifted, rolling to her feet. “I’ll just… check out the greenhouse for a second. See if it’s ready for Dane.”
We didn’t watch her walk off. Instead, I tracked him as he swaggered across the lawn, his eyes pinned to mine the entire time, even as he gracefully collapsed onto the blanket beside me.
I didn’t know what to say. Everything I felt defied words, the gravity of hope that still clung to my heart, the stubbornest of weeds, the gratitude I wanted to express that he’d searched for me and found me, the love I had, always, glowing so bright in my chest I worried it would give me away, as bright as a second sun.
“How’re you feelin’?” he asked then cleared his throat of hoarseness. “I’ve been comin’ round to see you, but the family’s pretty pissed at me.”
“I just heard. I hope you know, I wouldn’t, I would never want to keep you away.” And I wouldn’t, not ever. I’d tried that before, to cleave him from my life as much as I could in those two years I’d been with Jake, but it had only strengthened the bond between Nova and me like a tested muscle growing strong under the strain.
“I know.”
We lapsed back into silence. I looked everywhere but at him, unable to bear the sight of the black stubble on his square jaw, the intensity of his velvet gaze even when his left eye was still faintly purple from Oliver’s fist. Instead, I watched the flowers bow in the breeze, their bright faces unwavering smiles.
I smiled back.
“You know, when I can’t sleep at night, I still play that game,” Nova said, his voice low and intimate, like incense in a small room, warming me, perfuming the suddenly small space between us with memories. “Amaryllis, Bluebells, Calla Lilies… usually, by the time I get to Suntastic Yellow Sunflowers, I’m mostly asleep.”
I hummed, because I couldn’t open my mouth or a sob would spill out.
“It’s not the game that lulls me to sleep, though, Li,” he admitted hoarsely, leaning forward to cup my face feather-light in one palm. “It’s the thought of you. The thought of you curled up in your bed as a little girl, so fuckin’ afraid ’til I got onto the bed with you, as if you trusted me to keep you safe no matter what. The thought of you with lopsided braids in your hair at the skate park talkin’ trash too young ’cause Dane and I taught you los tres Caballeros didn’t take shit from no one.”
He sucked in a deep breath and watched as his hand traveled down my cheek to wrap whisper soft around my neck, his thumb rubbing back and forth over my thrumming pulse.
“It’s hard for me to express exactly how I feel about you, Li, ’cause I’ve never felt this way about anyone or anythin’ before. It’s like askin’ a blind man to describe the colour blue. So forgive me if I don’t do this justice, it’s the best I can do, and a wise woman once told me it’s the effort that counts.”
He smiled, and it was a new expression, one I’d never imagined on Nova’s gorgeous, arrogant features. Small, almost shy, and not quite realized like a bloom still tightly budded.
“I did you wrong, and I’ve been doin’ you wrong a long time by forcin’ our relationship into a box it no longer fit into. We grew outta that kinda friendship into somethin’ more a long fuckin’ time ago, but I was too chicken shit, too much of a dumbass to see it. I kept sayin’ I wouldn’t ever be worthy of you, and honest to Christ, I gotta say, not sure there’s a person on the planet worthy of the kinda love you have to give, but…I’m gonna fight for it. To deserve it. To get it back, even if I broke it to pieces when I ended things.”
His jaw set in that stubborn Booth way, a muscle jumping, eyebrows thick black slashes across his face, but still his touch on my throat remained achingly gentle.
“I’m gonna fight for you,” he repeated. “The way I fought for you as a girl. I’m sorry as fuck I ever stopped, and I swear to God, I won’t again.”
I stared at him, at the ferocity of his expression, at the delicateness of his touch, at the beauty of his face cracked open with vulnerability just for me.
And I forgave him.
Just that easy, just that much.
Because he was Jonathon Booth, and whether he realized it or not, he’d been fighting for me all along. His only mistake was in thinking he should be fighting to find me better than him when he was the only answer all along.