Still, it wouldn’t do to let him off the hook so easily.
And I wasn’t sure, even though hope throbbed like a second heartbeat in my chest, if he truly loved me back.
He hadn’t said it, even though the look in his eyes might have said otherwise.
“Okay,” I said slowly, just to watch him squirm. “You can try to make it up to me.”
He blinked at me then stole my breath as a gorgeous grin curled his purple red mouth. “Yeah?”
“I guess,” I said with a one shouldered shrug. “You can try.”
“Oh,” he said, that grin going rogue, his eyes sparkling again, my Nova back in full force as relief edged out that uncharacteristic shyness. “I’m charming as fuck, so I’m not sure you stand a chance.”
“Arrogant, much?” I quirked an eyebrow, swallowing my laughter.
“Hey, you win some, you lose some… it’s just,” he paused dramatically, leaning back onto his hands so his entire broad, muscled chest was on display for me. My eyes snagged on the ring in his left nipple showing through the fabric, and my mouth watered. “I always win.”
I laughed, letting the sweet rush of relief spread through me like a river through parched earth. I soaked up his goodness, the feel of his smiling eyes on my skin, and let myself luxuriate in his presence after two weeks apart, after thinking we might never recover.
How silly of me, I thought then as we smiled at each other like two kids with crushes on the playground, giddy and shy with our newfound feelings. How silly of me to doubt our bond for even one second.
“Nova,” Milo called from the porch. “What’d I tell you about bothering Li, huh?”
“Don’t make me come down there,” Oliver warned as he cracked his knuckles ominously.
I laughed again, so filled with lightness I felt I might drift away.
“I’m gonna go,” Nova said. “But I’ll be back tomorrow. And the next day. And probably every day until you get sick of me.”
“You are very annoying,” I teased.
“You love me just the same,” he said simply, not cruel, not mocking my feelings, just acknowledging them in that way he had of stripping the truth to the bone so it was just plain fact.
I shrugged, unwilling to give him anything else.
I noticed Harleigh Rose out of the corner of my eye, hesitating before walking back toward us.
“I’ll see you,” I said.
Nova lingered a moment then got up on his knees to lean over and kiss my forehead. I felt the burst of sensation on my skin like an electric shock.
“See ya, Flower Child,” he said, rocking to his boots and winking at me as he backed away then swung forward to leave the yard.
“You didn’t see it, did you?” Harleigh Rose asked as she flopped to the blanket again.
I yanked my eyes from his retreating back. I’d always loved to watch him move, smooth and rolling, a slight hiccough in his swagger on the right side from where he’d torn his ACL doing dumbass tricks at the skate park with Dane. He didn’t have a limp now, he had fully recovered ages ago, but I knew he kept that hiccough gait because the girls had loved it.
“Sorry?” I asked, still distracted by the impression of him caught on the inside of my lids like black spots from looking into the sun.
“You didn’t see it,” she confirmed with an awed shake of her head. “But I did.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re always so damned dramatic.”
“Fuck off. I saw it with my own eyes, otherwise I would never have believed it.”
“Believed what?”
“He just looked at you like you were a flower that bloomed just for him.”
“Shut up,” I ordered as my heart jumped up and down in my chest. I pressed my hand there, hating the way it jarred. “Don’t say that.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but there was a growing twinkle in her eye. “But it’s true. That man? He loves you, Li. As in, he’s in love with you.”
I collapsed to the blanket beside her and rolled into her body, shoving my face in the rose-scented hair at her neck so I could whisper, “I hope so.”
LILA
The next day when I woke up there was a package on my bed.
There was no note, only a purple heart drawn in his modern, minimalist style on the brown wrapping paper.
I knew immediately it was from Nova.
I tore the paper apart like a child with a gift on Christmas morning then rent the box clean in half so that the tissue wrapped item fell into my lap.
My hands shook as I opened it, because somehow, I knew what it was before I even pushed back the tissue and my hands encounter cool, glossy leather.
A biker babe jacket.
Like the Property of No One jacket Harleigh Rose had got me one birthday when I was a teenager.