Page 40 of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend (Catching Feelings #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

SEAN

W es is on the couch for one last night. Kayla’s family leaves tomorrow.

So do I.

Kayla and I are brushing our teeth in tandem—one of those quiet rituals that usually feels intimate, but not tonight.

Not when we’re both still thinking about Aldridge. About Meryl. About how Kayla held those kids like she was being reunited with her own limbs.

I rinse and spit. She rinses and spits. We don’t look at each other.

I don’t know how to say “that sucked for me” without sounding like today didn’t suck for her.

And I don’t know what she wants to say. What she’s holding back.

She was happy with Meryl. Aldridge wasn’t the snake I thought he’d be. There were enough shared memories that I felt like I was the outsider half the time.

And Meryl’s comment about why Kayla married me?—

It made me feel sick. Like I was some fireman on a calendar. Nice to ogle, good for a giggle with your friends, but not someone a girl like Kayla would share her life with.

Kayla leaves the bathroom and I get changed. I don’t care what Wes will think about it, if he notices at all. The fact is, after today, we’re not there. All our progress has halted. The timing couldn’t be worse.

By the time I get to the bedroom, I feel like a raw nerve in human form.

The end table light is on, and Kayla’s sitting on the edge of the bed, one long leg tucked under her butt, chewing on the inside of her cheek.

The second I round the bed and get in, she turns off the light and slides in beside me.

Like last night, I give her too much space when all I want is the opposite. I don’t want a single square inch of my head, my heart, or my life where Kayla doesn’t take up full residence.

So why does this feel so hard?

I want to say it, want to shout, “I love you, I want you, today sucked, probably for both of us, but I’m still in. I never want out.”

But it sits in my throat like a bite too big to swallow.

So I take the coward’s way out.

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

“How I wish Meryl hadn’t shown up.”

“Don’t say that. You were so happy to reconnect with her and her kids.”

“Yeah, I was. But that’s the thing: no breakup is perfectly clean. You miss Dakota every day, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do. Not as bad as I used to, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop caring.”

“Exactly. It’s not a moral failing to be sad about some elements of a breakup.

It’s a … virtue. A feature, not a bug. We both wanted out with our exes, and we’re out.

But that doesn’t make it easy. And I don’t think it’s supposed to be.

Because it shows that our hearts were in the right place even when we had the wrong thing. ”

My throat tightens. My heart pumps louder, harder, faster as I work up just enough courage to ask, “Does that mean we have the right thing now?”

Her voice cracks. “Do you really have to ask?”

“No.” I roll over, closing the distance between us. Putting my hand on the side of her face and staring into her impossibly beautiful eyes. “I don’t have to ask. I’m just being an idiot. A self-conscious, scared idiot.”

A tear rolls down her face. I can see the reflection of the light that steals through the blinds. I wipe a tear with my finger, and then another. “I’m sorry,” I say.

“What are we doing?” she asks, her voice too small for her body. For this cramped room.

“We’re newlyweds,” I say. “Haven’t you ever heard that the first year of marriage is the hardest?”

She laughs and sniffs. “Then we’re terrible at this. This might be the first time it’s felt hard at all.”

I scoot forward.

She scoots forward.

“It hasn’t felt hard at all, has it?”

She shakes her head. “No. It’s been … happy.” She groans. “That sounds so lame. But I mean it. I don’t remember being this happy in my life.”

“Neither do I,” I say.

“Then why aren’t we happy right now?” she asks.

“Because things are about to change.”

“Every change so far has been good. Why shouldn’t this one be?”

I feel like I’m breaking in ways I don’t have words for. I’ve never had to explain this kind of fear. I don’t want to lie here like a lump of dread, but I also don’t know how to say what’s messing with my head. It’s not just the camp or Aldridge. It’s her. It’s me. It’s all of this.

I run my fingers through the soft wave at her temple, slow and careful, like she might spook if I rush it.

“I guess it feels like it’s in the wrong direction.

Distance instead of closeness. This … life we’re building is finally starting to take shape, and I’m afraid I’m abandoning it with a foundation and a frame but nothing else. ”

“We don’t have to stop building just because we’re apart for three weeks.”

“I know. But that doesn’t stop me from being afraid.”

“I don’t want you to be afraid. I want you to believe. In us.”

Us.

The word slices through me, gentle but sharp. There’s an us, and Kayla wants it.

I want it.

So what’s stopping me from saying it?

Kayla’s eyes search mine in the dark. She touches my cheek with her finger, soft and warm, and everything in me goes quiet. Her touch calms something wild in my chest. And when her palm grazes the corner of my mouth, I kiss it without thinking.

Then her wrist.

Then I’m threading our fingers together, pulling her a little closer. My chest is too tight not to.

“You want to know what I’m feeling?” I ask, barely more than a whisper. My throat is dry, my mind buzzing. I stare at her in the dim glow from the streetlamp outside. She’s watching me intently, like she’s bracing for something that might break her.

I cannot be the one to break her.

I brush one of her curls back from her face. Her skin is so soft it makes my fingers feel clumsy. I do it again just to feel her. To calm myself.

“I’m feeling like an idiot,” I say. “I’m lying here next to my gorgeous wife—the only woman who’s ever made me feel like I’m worth the effort—and I’m moping about the future. What is wrong with me?”

“If you’re not moping about the future, what should you be doing?”

That question settles somewhere behind my ribs. I cup the back of her head, thumb tracing her hairline. “I don’t know. Cuddling, at the very least. Maybe nibbling on your ear, if you’ll let me.”

She laughs, quiet and warm, and the sound eases something sharp inside me.

“Cuddling sounds amazing,” she says.

“Then get in here,” I tell her.

She slides into my arms like she belongs there, and I wrap my arms around her. But it’s not enough. I want her closer. She hooks her leg over mine, and it’s like my whole body exhales.

I put my finger on her chin and tip her face up to mine, and I kiss her softly. Not the way I want to kiss her, but still.

It’s progress.

I breathe in deep—her hair, her skin, the warmth of her—then let it out, slow and full.

“Did you mean it about the face paint? At my games?”

She laughs. “Yes.”

“Good. I think you’d look hot with face paint.”

She chuckles and buries her face in my chest, and the sound of it fills the room.

“I think you’re going to blow their minds at camp,” she says.

“Whoa. That’s not equal,” I protest. “I said you’re hot, and you said I’m good at hockey.”

I feel her smile against my chest. “Isn’t noticing your competency better than noticing your beauty?”

“No. A guy needs to know his wife finds him attractive sometimes.”

Her voice drops. “Sean O’Shannan. You don’t understand how attractive your competence is.

But even without it, you are aggressively hot.

It’s my goal in life to see you leave the bathroom without a shirt on.

My résumé now lists ‘heroic restraint’ as my greatest skill, because I haven’t thrown myself at you even once since we’ve been married. ”

“Funny,” I murmur, “your ‘heroic restraint’ is the only thing I don’t find attractive about you.”

She laughs again, but this one sounds breathless. Like we’re both suddenly aware that we’re laughing to avoid something a lot more serious.

“I’ve fallen for you,” she whispers.

“So have I,” I say, no hesitation.

She presses closer. Her cheek rests against my chest, and I know she can feel how fast my heart is pounding. It’s racing to catch up with what I just said—and how much I meant it.

“I don’t want to jump into the physical before we’re completely there, Sean,” she says quietly. “Until we love each other so much, only having a year together feels like cruel and unusual punishment.”

I nod, running my hand up and down her back. “I get that,” I say. “But what happens when we are there? What happens when we say ‘I love you,’ and ‘forever isn’t long enough’?”

She doesn’t answer right away. Just presses her body tighter to mine. And then, with the softest voice, she says, “I guess I’ll update my résumé.”

That makes me laugh. A real one. The kind that rumbles out of my chest and vibrates through both of us. I kiss her temple, still grinning. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

Neither of us moves to say goodnight. We just lie there, tangled up and warm and quiet. I fight sleep for as long as I can, because holding her feels like I’ve stolen a sliver of heaven.

But eventually, sleep pulls me under. And right before I fall, I whisper the truth out loud for the first time.

“I love you. Forever isn’t long enough.”