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If nothing else stops me, I’ll be flying back tomorrow, and then my publication schedule for the next week might be disrupted because of this. I appreciate everybody’s patience. The shelter abuse project is still coming together, and I’ll have it in your inboxes soon.

But for right now, I want you all to know who I am. And what this means to me, and how I’ve gotten here.

I like to imagine she’s reading this. In which case… thank you. I promise I’m not going to regress. You cared too much about me for me to do that.

My breath caught when I reached the bottom of the page, my hands shaking, scrolling further but finding nothing—looking for more, one more word from Ryan when every one of them felt precious as diamonds. The comments below the article gushed in support, congratulating her on coming out—a nominal couple of people telling her to stick to reporting and leave her personal issues out of it, and I managed to restrain myself from leaving nasty replies to them, satisfying myself with the way they were already getting dogpiled by the other commenters—and more than one person telling her that the woman in question shouldn’t have let her go.

Christ, and I guess they were right. Everybody was right, dammit. As if I’d be able to live with myself if I just walked away? Like I’d justget over herlike I did with the others?

I wasn’t normally like this. But hey, I guess we were all learning. I wrote out a comment.

I was just realizing how I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about you, either, Ryan.

I’m by the water, if you want something else to get in the way of your flight tomorrow. You know where.

Not to be corny, but I’d gladly be the reason you miss every flight.

- Brooklyn

Chapter 26

Ryan

When I was trying to mope and wallow, I didn’t very much appreciate the way Stella barged her way into the hotel room, even with a bag of much-delayed takeout slung under her arm.

“Ryan—what the hell are you doing here?” she blurted, and I shot her a look, turning off my e-reader and setting it down next to the armchair.

“We booked the same room, Stella. In case you didn’t remember volunteering to sleep on my sofa.”

“She’s still here?” That one was Allison’s voice, from out in the hallway, and I sat up taller, eyebrows high as Allison leaned into the room too. “Why are you still here?”

“What—” I put my hands up. “You two can get your own hotel room instead of trying to gaslight me out of this one!”

“Did you not see—” Stella took out her phone, marching across the room, and when I reached for the bag of food, she snatched it away. “Oh my god, focus.”

“You said you were picking up food forus, not for you and your girlfriend—”

She shoved her phone in my face, close enough I flinched to avoid getting clobbered. My own article, the update I’d just released. And then underneath it, the top comment, crowded with dozens of replies, was a message tagged by Brooklyn.

I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about you either.

The world stopped turning around me, the screen the only thing that existed.

My stomach dropped out, a dizzy sensation settling in, and I hazily took the phone from her hands, not even realizing I was commandeering her phone until I had it—I didn’t care—I scrolled through, my chest tight, reading the message. The other comments underneath, gushing about romance. Oh, god. I didn’t think my readers were so swoony. Should I have been embarrassed?

“She’s waiting for you,” Stella said quietly, and my throat tightened, looking up at her, a protest dying on my lips, looking back down at my phone.

“But she’s…”

“She’s what? Everything you’ve ever wanted?”

I swallowed, hard, reading the message again. She’d asked. Wasn’t that everything I’d been waiting for?

I flicked my gaze up, nervous, vulnerable, looking at her, back to where Allison hung by the door. Allison, who alternated between looking expectantly at me, hoping, and looking at Stella like she was the whole world.

“What are you doing?” I said quietly, looking back at Stella, and she picked up on what I meant—her expression softened, and she took the phone back.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I… I’m not sure. But I don’t want to go back. I’m on summer vacation anyway. What does it matter if I go back or stay here for it? I know—there’s my whole life back there and everything, but—but I want to see what’s here. If I spend a little more time here.”