Page 37 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

What a day.

Annoying in some ways since town is so busy—cars crowd the roads, people crowd the stores. I spent longer standing in line to pay for my groceries than I did shopping for them, which wasn’t exactly quick either. And I’ve gotten two more calls from Jayden, both of which went unanswered; they were followed up by texts that let me know he’s not in a state of emergency, though I also haven’t answered those. Something is still holding me back from wanting to talk to him and I’m not really interested in thinking much about it.

Because in most ways, this day is great, not annoying.

The time I’m going to get to spend with Maggie over the coming days…I don’t want anything to ruin it. We’re both excited about it, and that excitement deserves to remain intact.

So fuck everything else.

I smile triumphantly as I start a load of laundry—both because of my mindset and because I remembered what the thing I forgot I wanted to do was. And I did it. And now I have another pair of sweatpants just like the first pair I bought. I can wear one and Maggie can wear the other.

I make a mental note to tease her later about how I remembered to go buy them all by myself, without a reminder. Then her voice pops into my head: ‘A mental note? No! Actually set a reminder so you won’t forget!’

It makes me roll my eyes.

Also makes me chuckle, though.

I’ve got it bad for that girl.

The honest thought has all kinds of things rippling through me: heat, a chill, something admittedly fluttery, something else heavy with surety.

It all intensifies with my quiet resolve to do things right this time. To do what it takes to keep her and allow her to keep me.

I never thought I’d get a second chance with her—never thought I even wanted one—and now that it’s in my hands, I can’t wait to hang on to it.

—

What. A. Day.

I haven’t quit thinking it because things have kept getting better. I got my apartment tidied up, including my bedroom since I don’t know where Maggie will feel comfortable sleeping, and it felt good to have everything extra in order. We texted during her break at work and she had me grinning over her optimism about Kyle and her seeing that the universe didn’t unravel from her not clocking in on time. Then I talked to my aunt on the phone for a while, helped Ms. Ruth and Mitzy hang Christmas lights outside their front window, got the idea to have Maggie help me decorate my own front porch soon…. Now she’s back with me and we’re shopping for things with which to do that very decorating and she’s dropping her head back and laughing because I let her put a reindeer headband on me and apparently it’s hilarious.

I don’t even care if I look silly. I can’t help laughing with her.

But I say.

“All right, you owe me,”

and reach for some of the fake mistletoe set out for sale on the endcap of this aisle.

She gasps out of laughing as I hold it above us—but nope, the laughter is back because I’ve bumped my reindeer antlers with my hand and I guess they’re even funnier-looking now than before.

“Oh, you don’t need this,”

she manages to assure me. She takes the mistletoe from me and tosses it away, her other arm going around me as she slants her face up to mine.

It’s my turn to gasp even as I draw her closer to me.

“Did you just blindly throw that thing somewhere instead of putting it back where it goes?”

She presses her lips together as if embarrassed, the pink in her cheeks adding to the look. But that color has been there for some time now, born of her good mood, the brightness of which hasn’t gone anywhere.

I freaking adore it.

I think about the mistletoe and about her being a little late to work, and finally letting my lips near hers, I drop my voice to a whisper.

“You’re a rule-breaker today.”

“Well,”

she whispers back with a smile.

“relish it while you can, because I am gonna put the mistletoe back where it belongs.”

“Unless…?”

We laugh so much it gets in the way of our pressing kiss—and then somehow the antler headband topples awkwardly off my head and bonks hers, which cracks her up so much that her burst of laughter echoes around this part of the store.

I’m hit right in the middle of my chest by that unbridled sound, by the happiness in her eyes when we lean back from each other…and by the realization that this is…

…how it feels to fall in love with someone.

My breath catches.

No, this is how it feels to fall in love with Maggie Moss.

In a rush and in moments we’ve paused everything else for.

Out of nowhere and after a long time coming.

And…it’s exactly right.

She is exactly right for me. For who I am.

She always was.

“Holy God,”

she says, wiping beneath her watered eyes as her laughter dwindles into giggles. She bends over to get the headband from where it landed on the floor.

“I think this is a must, Luke. You simply must buy this.”

To keep making you laugh? Done, part of me thinks. But I steady myself and summon a mischievous counter of.

“Only if you don’t put the mistletoe where it goes.”

She tries to look appalled by this form of bribery, but it’s too silly, so she’s almost instantly grinning.

God knows I’m grinning with her.

And God knows I’ll buy the headband regardless of what she does with the mistletoe, because she has gone and attached that thing to a moment I’ll never forget.

—

“Do we really have to do this?”

I ask. I had hoped to relax once we were back at my place, but Maggie changed clothes and went straight into exercise mode.

“Can we put working out on hold for the holiday?”

She looks at me with amused confusion.

“It’s not Thanksgiving yet.”

“Well, no, but this is Tuesday and the day is mostly over, which means it’s almost Wednesday, and Wednesday is basically Thursday, so it’s almost the holiday. We could totally say we’re just gonna chill until the holiday is over.”

“Oh, Wednesday is basically Thursday, huh?”

“Yep.”

I have not forgotten how challenging cardio can be. On one hand, I weirdly liked how it felt to do it, but on the other hand, it wasn’t a fun use of my time. And here this girl is, wanting to do it again, as if she didn’t have a front-row seat to me riding the struggle bus through the other day’s video.

I notice Maggie is chuckling as she fixes her ponytail. With her hands up like that, her loose tank top is lifted enough for me to see some of the pretty curves of her waist and hips in her leggings.

…Okay, maybe doing this workout won’t be so bad after all.

Except for how I now want to admire her with my eyes and hands instead of do anything else.

I look to her face and see her cheeks are growing pink. She has picked up on my appreciative attention; I’m so bad at hiding it anymore.

She finally lowers her arms to her sides.

“To answer your first question,”

she says.

“no, you don’t have to work out, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to. It can be hard. But progress doesn’t get made unless effort is put forth, so….”

She shrugs.

“So I do it.”

I nod at that. Really good point.

But truth be told, half of my brain has gone back to when I realized I’m falling in love with her and when we kissed moments before that and before her work shift and before Ms. Ruth and Mitzy interrupted us outside—and back, and back, and….

“What do you think?”

Maggie asks.

I blink out of my thoughts and see she’s starting to prepare the workout video on the TV.

I’m tempted to answer in a way that has nothing to do with exercise.

However, I know she’s ready to get this thing over with, and when it comes down to it, I do want to join her. And I don’t want to drag any more ass since that doesn’t do much good.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll do it.”

Hearing the bit of distance in my voice, I clear my throat and add.

“I might bitch about it, though.”

She doesn’t have to look straight at me for me to know the smile on her face is a cute one.

“We’ll bitch about it together.”

I smile too.

“Solidarity.”

“Mmhmm.”

And bitch together we do. This is a different video from that first one I did with her, and with each new move, we find something to complain about. Agitation aside, it actually is fun. Definitely helps improve my attitude about the whole thing.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much to distract me from her.

The other day when I worked out with her, it was the first time I’d gotten to see her move in an exercise-y way, and it was cool, but this video is tougher in some aspects and so is she, which is flat-out awesome. Plus, it has a variation on jumping jacks and her shirt keeps briefly going back up when we do them, and it makes my hands itch to touch her. Plus again, she’s funny, and she thinks I’m funny, and when we use our in-between-intervals breaks to get drinks of water, I get to see a little more of the color in her cheeks, and it’s both lovely and sexy—especially when there’s a smile to go with it.

By the time we’re done, I feel a little bit tortured from having to just stand here and watch her happen.

I take a minute to try to calm my heart rate. I continue the shoulder and leg and back stretches that the instructor guided us through at the end of the video. Then I drink some more water. Wipe at my face with the hem of my t-shirt, hoping to clear my thoughts while I’m at it. Try to put all the things I feel for her on the back burner to be seen to later.

But over the fabric of my shirt, I notice Maggie noticing me where she’s leaning sideways against the bar separating my living room from my kitchen. Her eyes hang on my bared stomach like mine kept hanging on hers. It reminds me of how she looked at me way back when we were in the fitting room at the sporting goods store.

And I’m drawn right in.

I tug my shirt back down into place and grab another sip of my water. For as tired as my legs are, they sure do get to work carrying me over to her.

She looks away, tries to innocently focus on closing her water bottle and setting it on the bar, but her eyes keep coming back to me—my feet, my face, my chest. She’s so preoccupied with me that when I stop right in front of her, she’s still loosely holding her bottle. I set mine down, then ease hers out of her fingers and decidedly thud it aside too. And my hands finally arrive home: I take her hips and shift how she’s standing so I can include myself in it. With a quick breath that matches hers, I fix her comfortably between the edge of the bar and me.

Mere inches are the only things separating most of my body from most of hers; I’m back in her treasured personal space.

And even though we’ve been closer than this before, the quiet of my apartment seems thicker all of a sudden for some reason. Humming. Like I’ve affected the very air with my inability to keep my distance from her.

Maggie doesn’t say a word about it. She just gazes up at me with her hands suspended between our chests, her eyes still soaking me up.

Until one of my hands lifts to swipe aside her sweaty bangs and the bit of damp hair that needs tucked behind her ear—then she huffs out.

“Oh, you—you don’t wanna touch me right now.”

“Like hell I don’t,”

I disagree lowly.

“I’m disgusting.”

There’s a slight shake in my hand as I trail it along the shell of her ear, then let the backs of my fingers slowly follow the line of her jaw.

“No,”

I assure her.

“you’re not.”

She takes the most delicate of breaths.

I move now down the dewy slope of her neck, over the old scar there. Her exhalation is a light drift over me. She settles her hands against the front of my shirt, bridging that gap between us—she doesn’t withdraw them a single centimeter when she feels how sweaty I also am.

I think about commenting on that, but she says something before I can. Something so soft I can’t make it out even from up this close.

My fingertips want to trace her collarbone, but I simply rest them there instead, then whisper, “What?”

Shyness has begun emanating from her, a sort of heat wave all its own.

After a few moments, she whispers back.

“It didn’t make me ugly.”

I watch a sweet frown come onto her face.

“You said that to me about my eyebrow. ‘It doesn’t make you ugly.’”

Oh.

Of course I remember that myself. She was timid back then as well. Insecure. I was sad she had any scars from that wreck, but I couldn’t understand why she was embarrassed by how the eyebrow one in particular made her look.

It’s just visible now, so I study it for a moment.

Then my eyes lower to watch my hand start moving once again. Watch it go along her shoulder and over the strap of her top, down her bare arm.

My breath wavers as chill bumps come up on her and make her shiver.

My hand claims her waist, molds right to the inviting curve of it.

“Still doesn’t make you ugly,”

I finally tell her.

“Nothing ever could.”

I gently flex my fingers here and around her hip where I’m still holding it—just for a second, and then again for longer. She’s such a fucking perfect shape for my hands, and for all the rest of me too.

She’s also growing breathless.

From me. Not from exercise.

“No one has ever complimented me like you do.”

Her wispy words take my gaze back to her face from where I’ve been relishing the look of her in my hands. She’s still frowning…but quite unlike moments ago, her eyes are glistening something fierce.

She doesn’t seem sweet anymore. She seems vulnerable. Even a little bit…hurt?

God, what her upset tears do to my heart.

And God, what she’s just said….

I release her hip, shuffle closer yet, thumb beneath one of those eyes even though no teardrops have escaped yet.

No one has ever complimented her the way I do?

“Crazy,”

I whisper into the diminished space between us.

“That’s crazy to me, Maggie.”

As her words seep deeper into me, I brush my thumb over that place again, and to her temple, and down the side of her cheek. And as I do it, I swear I can tell it’s seeping into her right back—not just my touch, but the tenderness of it, the honesty of it.

I’m glad for that.

I think of her most recent stupid ex and have to ask.

“Did Marcus never tell you how lovely you are?”

Her expression threatens to crumple.

“Not in the ways you tell me,”

she says, her voice starting to wobble.

“I didn’t realize until you started doing it that he—and the others—all the guys I’ve been with—they weren’t so sincere. I know they liked things about me, but they didn’t sound the way you sound. They didn’t look at me the way you look at me.”

She hesitates. Then, so faintly it almost escapes me.

“The way you’ve always sounded and looked at me.”

My chest burns.

Sixteen-year-old me cared about her as much as he was capable of. Current me is surpassing that like a motherfucker, somehow both falling backwards into how these feelings started so long ago and then through to the biggest, deepest, steadiest version of it that there can be.

But it’s strange: even though I don’t believe anyone could match Past Luke or Now Luke when it comes to feelings for Maggie Moss, I have no idea how anyone could not feel so much for her either. Even in my stupidest times, I was smart enough to know how special she is.

I find myself nodding and, just as faintly, agreeing with her. “Always.”

A tear finally swells out of one of her eyes and skips down her cheek. I wipe it away.

Here, her gaze does soften and turn sweet again.

“Sometimes you tell me I’m beautiful just with a look, like you believe it so much that it radiates from you, and other times you tell me by—by touching me when even I don’t like how I feel.”

She lowers her eyes to where her hands are still resting against my chest. More tears slip down her cheeks; this time, both of us brush them away.

“And it’s been helping me,”

she whispers.

“God, Luke, you overwhelm me in the—in the best ways. As effortlessly as you breathe. With everything you do, not just the physical…. I didn’t think you could do that anymore, but you can, and…”

she sniffles.

“…you’re even better at it now than you were before. It h-helps me see myself differently. Makes me wanna not dislike myself anymore.”

My stomach flips hard.

It flips and flips as I think about all that—it won’t stop.

Throatily, I confess.

“I’m happy to help, Maggie. And you do that to me, too, you know.”

My hand frames the side of her face, causing her head to tilt into it, her eyes to close, her brow to once again crease in the prettiest way.

A tiny show of trust I didn’t know I craved until this very second.

“You overwhelm me too,”

I repeat.

“and not only because of how you look…”

My other hand slips down from her waist and trembles just under her shirt, finds her skin, puts a sharp catch in our breaths and my own shirt in her weak fist.

“…or because touching you destroys my ability to appreciate anyone else.”

“But you—lately, you haven’t even had the chance to.”

She isn’t far from gasping as my fingertips skim farther up under the fabric, summoning more chill bumps.

“You haven’t gone near anyone else.”

I put my mouth near her ear, let my voice drop to a hush.

“That doesn’t matter one goddamn bit.”

Her fist goes tighter around my shirt.

Her free hand fumbles to grasp my arm.

Her bare waist is now fully in my grasp because I feel like I need to hold on to her too.

I say.

“You also overwhelm me because you inspire me to be better and you make me feel like I’m already enough, at the same time.”

My lips shift kisses onto her jaw, her cheek.

“And I didn’t think you could do that to me anymore either.”

She goes quiet.

The more seconds tick by, the stronger I feel that there are all kinds of things she wants to say back.

In the end, she just asks.

“Am I better at it than the old me too?”

Her face has still been tilted into my hand, so I nudge it upright again. As her eyes drift open, our gazes meet, and I see more teardrops have gotten loose.

“Better than the old you,”

I confirm.

“and better than everyone else.”

As I’m drying her cheeks anew, something worrying occurs to me.

I ask her.

“Have I said too much? Or done too much? Have I upset you?”

Sniffling, she gives a small shake of her head. “No.”

Only when my muscles loosen do I realize they were going tense. I blow out a breath.

“Okay. Good. I hate it when you get so upset you cry.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve never met a guy who didn’t think a weepy girl was awkward.”

I frown and wipe at where a teardrop has slipped down her neck.

“No, it’s never been awkward for me. The fact that something has shaken you up so badly is what I’ve always hated. And what I hate the most is when it’s my fault somehow.”

She blinks wetly at me, looking surprised for some reason. Then her expression shifts into one I can’t read.

“What?” I ask.

All she does is study my face. She seems to be thinking hard about—

The push of her lips against mine is sudden and firm. Heartfelt, like the wrap of her arms around me.

I push into the kiss, too, and get my arms wound around her in return, and the one that’s still under her shirt causes the fabric to bunch up. It gets a tiny gasp out of her despite our kiss, but she doesn’t recoil like she did that time in her bed. She only gathers me in the best she can.

Her name is on repeat all throughout me, in time with my heartbeat.

“Okay,”

she breathes out unsteadily, her lips slipping away from mine.

“you’re sweaty, but you’re not disgusting at all, so maybe that really can be true for me too.”

I promise her.

“There is no ‘can be.’ It just is true. Trust me.”

She hugs me tighter.

Meets me in another kiss.

Whispers.

“I trust you,”

in a way that speaks of more than mere talk of sweatiness.

I love it.

And damn it, do I love the breathy sound she makes when I angle my lips down beneath her jaw. But I only kiss her here once before my mouth helplessly lowers to her neck, and after another single kiss, I find I can’t keep my tongue to myself, and my slow taste of the scar in her skin makes her moan and puts heat in my spine—

I think I catch my name on her breath now. Her embrace of me sharpens with the dig of her fingertips into me, and then that fierce press is gone…and….

It’s my turn to moan because now I’m the one whose shirt is being invaded, whose bare, balmy skin is being skated over by exploratory hands.

“Maggie,”

leaves me, too, on a low sigh.

Her touch whispering up my back makes me shiver and press my face into her neck before I lay another open-mouthed kiss there.

I feel her knees weaken just a bit. I secure my hold on her and dimly remember this is not the first time I’ve had that effect on her and I don’t know how that’s real. I don’t know how I’ve gotten so fucking lucky, how she lets me be this close, how I’ve been blessed with a second chance with her. But I won’t waste any of it. I will not waste it.

And I won’t ruin it.

A promise I make to myself and to her.

Silently, that is, because now she has shifted and sought out my mouth with hers and we’re kissing again, and there isn’t really room for any more words.