Page 51

“Hotel here and leave tomorrow morning after traffic dies down?” Rosie asked.

“We can stop for breakfast on the way out of town, too. That place we used to go to before work sometimes, maybe?”

“Are you getting nostalgic on me?” Rosie teased.

“A little. Honestly, I’m kind of surprised at myself. I know I never lived in that house with you – Ami did, twice, technically, and you married her, so it was your homewithher – but I feel like I spent so much time with you there that it’s like we’re saying goodbye to a part ofourpast, too.”

“I feel the same way,” Rosie revealed. “And let’s get a nice room while we’re here. Like a four-star place with room service and just relax in our room all night.”

“Relax, huh?” Felicity teased back.

“Yes, relax. And maybe eat dinner on a balcony, if the room has one.”

“Oh, I think it must,” Felicity joked.

“And tomorrow morning, we’ll sleep in and have breakfast at that little diner that serves the best pancakes I’ve ever had. Then, we’ll hit the road, and–”

“Leave your stuff at my house, babe,” Felicity interrupted.

They stopped walking down the hall, and Rosie turned to her.

“What?”

“Keep the rental, if you want – we’re both about to leave, anyway – but I don’t want to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For you to move in. You’re already there every night and most days. You’ve been working from my place every day for the past month,too. I know I’m still working on my cleaning-up-in-the-bedroom issue, but I haven’t left a towel on the floor in well over a week, and the toothpaste has been capped this whole month.”

Rosie laughed and pulled Felicity into her by wrapping her arms around Felicity’s waist.

“You’re asking me to move in?”

“Well, we already lived together on the ship, which was pretty close quarters, and we managed not to kill each other. You’ve also basically been living with me since you first got there. You can put your stuff in the rental, but we both know that you’ll just have to move it again later.”

“Oh, we do, do we?” Rosie teased.

“Yes, we do,” Felicity replied definitively. “We’re here now. We know what we have and how important it is. It’s real with us, and I don’t want a backup plan for if it doesn’t work out. I want to lean into the fact that itwillwork out. You and me. I love you, and I want you forever. I want your stuff to merge with my stuff. I want the arguments over the stupid towels, the kind of tea I stock in my cabinets, and how I have six kinds of coffee but only two kinds of tea.” Felicity laughed a little. “I’ll gladly stock every kind of tea in the world if it means we finally get to have this.”

“Maybe just my favorite kind. I don’t needallof them,” Rosie said with a soft smile.

“But will you? Will you just move your stuff to my place, and we can call itourplace?”

“I’d love that,” she replied. “And maybe when we get back, we can unpack and really move everything in together. I know you wanted to paint the living room. Maybe we could do that together, and–”

Felicity cut her off with a kiss and then said, “Yes. That. I wantthatwith you.”

“You just want to paint the living room with me?” Rosie laughed a little.

“I want it to be our house, Rosie. I bought it for me, but it’s also so you, somehow. It’s like you walked in, and I knew it was meant to be your house, too.”

“Idolove it,” she replied. “Not as much as I love you, though.”

Felicity smiled at her and wrapped her arms around Rosie’s neck.

“I feel likeyou’re my home, Felicity,” she continued. “I love the house, obviously, but I loved my now-oldhouse, too, until… Well, until I let someone else in when I shouldn’t have. I didn’t understand it back then, but I do now. I loved it more whenyouwere there than when Ami was, and I think there’s stuff I still need to unpack there. Not physical baggage, but the emotional kind. I can’t believe I let you go.”

“I didn’t exactly tell you how I felt, either,” Felicity said.