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“You really are an angel.”

He reaches out and cups my cheek, looking at me with all the love in the world as he leans in to kiss me. It’s that thought that causes me to spew my next question without letting it filter through my brain.

“Do you still love her?”

“What? No.”

He halts, inches away from my lips, and I want to stab myself in the eye with a fork. Still, I can’t seem to stop from digging this grave.

“It’s just you loved her enough to get married, and you were high school sweethearts, so...”

“The piece of me that loved Celine died years ago. It’s gone, and there is no chance of me falling for her ever again.”

“Do you think you could fall in love with anyone again? Get married again?”

My questions are selfish, but I can’t help the emotions that are ruling my tongue. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to me that the burn of Celine could be severe enough to traumatize him for life. That there could be a chance that he has ruled out his future after the failures of his past. It terrifies me that I might have fallen for a man who won’t be able to give me every part of him, that the relationship we just started comes with an expiration date I didn’t know existed.

“Yes.” He smiles, thumb tracing the length of my jaw. “I can see myself falling in love again, see myself waiting at the end of the aisle as that very person walks toward me. I told you that I believed in soulmates.”

He speaks of an imagined future, but as those hazel eyes hold my own, I can’t help but feel as though he is referencing us, and that assurance lights a hope within me.

He dips down with a soft kiss, so barely there that it is a mere brush of our lips, but it sends a warm shiver along my skin, curling my toes.

If Cullen is choosing to love again, I hope he will choose me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGH

CULLEN

Hannah’s alarm goes off at the ass-crack of dawn. I have no clue how Verity sleeps through the blaring noise on the other side of the wall. It’s not even a regular alarm; it’s some old pop-punk song, the chorus repeating three times before she shuts it off.

I try to fall back asleep, but it’s impossible. Hannah makes so much damn noise. Verity is a saint to be her roommate.

I spend the next hour admiring the woman in my arms, listening to her soft breaths as she dreams peacefully. Last night had been unexpected. I’d known after the run-in with Celine earlier this week that there was a chance we’d talk about her, but I didn’t bank on it going the whole nine yards.

Recounting the messy history of my ex with my new girlfriend was dangerous territory. A small part of me had been worried that she would see me as the naive and selfish twenty-something I’d been and not the man I’ve grown into. It wasn’t just the trauma of my relationship with Celine that shaped me into someone different. I changed because I got older, and with that came general life experience you can’t gain any other way.

You don’t realize how young you really are at twenty-five—you have this false sense of adulthood after college, not understanding that so much of the world is unexplored. Evennow at thirty-five, I am only just starting to settle into my life and am still unsure where the future will lead.

But I am sure about Verity.

She didn’t balk at my past, didn’t judge me for the blow-up of my relationship with Celine. She held me tighter, snuggled with me on the couch, and devoured almost an entire pint of ice cream as we continued to chat well into the night.

A soft chime rings out from Verity’s phone right on the hour, the xylophone tune tinkling into the silence. She groans, eyes squeezing tighter. I shift up, reaching over her body and picking up her phone from the nightstand, turning it off.

“What time is it?” Her morning voice has a drowsy deepness to it that is utterly adorable.

“Eight.”

I plant a kiss on her shoulder. Verity snuggles closer to my chest, looping one of her legs around my waist. Her sweet cunt lines up with my half-hard cock, stirring it to life.

“I don’t wanna get up.”

“I can think of other things to do.”

I run my hand down her back, slipping it under the band of her sleep shorts and cupping her plush ass. I hoist Verity farther up my body, forcing her pussy to slide against my shaft in the most delicious way possible.

“Cullen,” she warns.