Page 63 of Forever Then
Chapter Forty-Eight
I’VE LOVED YOU ANYWAY
Gretchen
This is where I should have been the whole time. I know it now with perfect clarity. The progression of concern, to panic, to defeat in Connor’s messages that led him to pack my suitcase makes it painfully obvious that he was here, struggling…alone.
I should have been here. With him.
Hurriedly, I brush my teeth and put on my glasses, because my eyes are on fire from wearing contacts all night.
I throw on a fresh set of clothes—jean shorts and one of Connor’s t-shirts because I need to feel him close.
I also crank up the thermostat because it’s the mother-effing tundra in here.
Then, I’m pacing, thumbnail buried deep between my teeth.
Ten minutes later, Connor tumbles into the apartment in a rush. Dressed in dark jeans and a light blue collared shirt, he’s disheveled, breathless. He looks at me like he’s just spotted his oasis in the desert when, in reality, he’s mine.
I close every inch between us and throw my arms around him. He buries his face in my neck, arms wound so tight around my waist I can feel the beat of his racing heart in my own chest.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t have gone. I should have been here with you.”
“Did I lose you?” he croaks, voice tattered.
I yank my head back to look at him, his eyes glassy and bloodshot. Jaw cradled in my palms, I sweep a soft touch over where my brother punched him. “No.” I kiss him, his fists clenching into the fabric of the shirt at my back. “You didn’t lose me,” I get out between the give and take of our lips.
Breathless, we pull back and I bring his forehead down to mine.
“But I messed up everything for you,” he chokes out. His tears are so heartbreaking, I can’t help but cry, too.
“You didn’t. I’ll talk to my parents later.”
He swallows thickly. “Everything Drew said about?—”
“Doesn’t matter.” I kiss him again.
“But it was all true…”
In a dark room, I could hold a blacklight up to Connor and find streaks and stains, lashes of shame, spanning every inch of him. This man—this good man—has borne the guilt of his mistakes in broad daylight for years.
But his past doesn’t scare me. He doesn’t scare me.
“Stop,” I command. “What happened back then doesn’t matter to me.” I’ve told him this before, but he needs to hear it again. “You can’t change your past, but that doesn’t mean it gets to define you.”
Embarrassment clouds his features as he looks away.
“Look at me, Connor.” He meets my gaze. “I know who you are, who you’ve always been.
You’re a good man. Now, then, tomorrow—you are good down to your bones.
It’s what pulled me to you when I was a kid.
” A tear slides down my cheek. “It’s why I fell in love with you at eighteen.
” Connor takes in a shuddering breath. “And it’s why I haven’t been able to stop loving you since. ”
He crushes his mouth against mine, but retreats a moment later. “Baby, goddammit , I was supposed to say it first.”
I arch a brow. “Well, technically, you did.”
Finally, he smiles and the joy that breaks across his face has me throwing myself at him. I jump up and wrap my legs around his waist. He catches me effortlessly, hands squeezing the skin where the hem of my shorts hits the backs of my thighs, and he kisses me again.
Without breaking the kiss, Connor spins us to one of the dining chairs.
My legs dangle on either side of his hips as his hands rake over me—up and down my bare legs, gliding up my sides, peeking under the hem of my shirt to touch the skin of my stomach and lower back.
At last, one of his hands finds mine and he weaves our fingers together.
He grabs a fistful of hair at my back with a gentle tug and my mouth opens for more of him. We taste, we savor, we devour.
When we’ve pulled back to catch our breath, I play with the hair at the back of his neck and ask, “Why’d you pack my suitcase?”
“I got your brother’s message last night and I never heard from you.” He shakes his head, dislodging a memory he’d rather forget. “I didn’t wanna be here when he came for your stuff.”
Suspicion prickles in my mind. “What did Drew’s text say?”
“That you were staying the night there and that he’d be by today to get your things.” My jaw drops. “I assumed that meant?—”
I hurl myself forward, arms around his neck once more. “Oh my God…That’s not…no…” The words get caught at the back of my throat.
I should have been here.
His face in my hands, I let the words spill out.
“I swear, Connor, Drew brought my phone back from the restaurant but the battery was dead and he didn’t have a charger because my phone’s a million years old, but so is yours which is why we can share a charger, which is just another reason why I love you.
But he refused to talk to me and I refused to leave until he did talk to me which meant I was sleeping on the couch and I asked him to text you to let you know I was staying the night there so you wouldn’t worry.
Then I tried to hack into his laptop while he slept so I could email you but I couldn’t figure out his password. ”
He grins and I fumble on some more. “I literally ran here this morning and when you weren’t here, I freaked out. I plugged in my phone, found my suitcase by the door and finally saw all your messages right before I texted you back.”
A smile fills his whole face as we both begin to laugh and I slap his arm.
My hands land softly on his chest as the humor fades. “I’m sorry Drew said that to you.” His mouth tics and then settles. “He’s still mad.”
He nods, arms tightening around my waist as he whispers, “I know.”
“We need to give him time.”
The fear of losing his best friend—that he might have already lost him—is a tangible thing on him. Almost like I could reach out and pluck it right off his shirt. If only it were as easy as flicking a piece of lint away.
“I should head back to my parents’ house this weekend. I still need to talk to them.”
He looks over my shoulder toward the bedroom where my previously impeccably packed suitcase now lays open in utter disarray on his bed. “In that case, you could have left your bag packed.”
I shrug. “I had a point to make.”
“You want me to come with you?”
“I think,” I kiss him softly, “I need to do this on my own.”
“I promise I’ll be good.” He jerks his hands away. “See? No hands.”
A laugh bursts out of me.
“Too soon?” Connor jests before he links his arms at my back again, pulling me in for another swift kiss. “When do you leave for your interview?”
Time slows and I let my gaze fall to the gap of space between our bodies.
“I fly out Monday.” His fingers slide under my shirt.
“If I make it to the second round, I’ll have to stay through Thursday.
” His hands run up my sides. “And if I get the job, I should probably stay through next weekend to look for an apartment.”
“You’re gonna get it, Gretch,” he breathes, words landing in a soft puff on my cheek.
Moving to New York means leaving Illinois. It means leaving my family. It means leaving Connor. We could do the long-distance thing, but to what end? Until I’ve had my fill of Manhattan? Until we miss each other so much we have no choice but to end things?
“I don’t have to take it.” His hands freeze on my hips. “I could find something here.”
“No,” he commands, hands cradling my face to pull my eyes to his. “You’re going.”
“But what happens to us?”
“I love you too much to let you give this up.”
I grab his forearms and hold his stare like a magnifying glass held up to the sun. Embers of fire blaze to life in his blue eyes right before he tilts my entire existence on its axis with his words.
“I don’t know when I fell in love with you, Fish.
I’ve tried and tried to figure it out, but I can’t.
I don’t think you can fall in love with someone when they already have your heart.
The love is just…there.” His thumb sweeps across my cheek.
“I think I’ve always loved you. It looked different when we were kids and it didn’t mean the same then as it does now, but it was there.
It’s like one day I looked up and there you were—my favorite person.
Somewhere along the way my heart became so tethered to yours I’m not sure it beats apart from you anymore.
“It’s why, from the moment you messaged me four years ago, I lost interest in anybody else.
It’s why, when I saw you at Drew’s rehearsal dinner, I knew you were it for me.
It’s why, when I saw you at that restaurant two months ago, I knew I would never get over you and to even attempt to love another woman would be unfair to them, because I could never possibly love anyone as deeply, as wholly, as I love you.
“I loved you long before I kissed you and every day since. All the days I wasn’t supposed to, all the days I shouldn’t have—I’ve loved you anyway.”
I kiss him until I can’t breathe, squeezing him so tight I want to fold myself into his skin.
“New York is where you want to be. I know it is. It’s where you need to be. ”
I choke back the emotion rising in my chest, my breaths choppy and muffled against his shoulder.
“I’m not going to let you change your plans for me,” he adds.
A sob breaks free before I can stop it.
“I would do anything for you, Gretch. Buy you every collector’s copy of Little Women I can find.
” I smile through a very unattractive sniff against his neck that I’m sure he felt down to his toes.
“Take you to see the wild horses.” His hands run up my spine and my body melts under his touch.
“Hold you when you cry.” My breathing steadies. “Move to New York to be with you.”
I jolt back. “Wait, what?”
“I wanna move to New York.”
My brain cannot compute these words. “But why?”
He rolls his lips and I swear there’s a concealed smile there. “Because I want to be where you are.”
I scan his face. “Why?” I ask like a total ignoramus because words are hard right now.
A quizzical smirk hitches up one side of his mouth before he says with a question inflection that is all tease, “For all the reasons I just said?”
Look alive, Gretchen.
I shake my head in an attempt to reorganize my jumbled thoughts before dropping my face into my palms. “Right.”
Gently, Connor lowers my hands and folds them in his.
“I know it’s a lot. You’re allowed to ask me to stay if you think it’s too fast. We can do long-distance until you’re ready, but I need you to understand that I don’t want to be apart from you.
I can be a graphic designer anywhere, Gretch.
Please,” he kisses me, “let me do this for you. For us.”
“But your whole life is here.”
“No, it’s not. It’s wherever you are.”
On a normal day, you could drop a camera into my brain and all you’d find is mushy, muddled, conflicting-thought soup—a slew of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs strewn together, none of which I can parse into a single eloquent thought.
But right now, my brain is clear, like a windowpane buffed to such perfection you can’t discern inside from outside. Only one thought floats through my head, free and unencumbered, at odds with nothing. Because Connor is where my head and my heart have always aligned.
“You don’t have to decide right now. If you need time to?—”
“No,” I say over him in a rush. “I mean, yes!” Stop. Breathe. I suck in a big gulp of air and order my brain to speak in coherent sentences. “What I mean is…I love you and I don’t want to be apart from you either.”
He smiles. “I love you, too.”
“Are you sure, though?”
Connor cocks his head. “About loving you or moving to New York?”
“Moving.”
He pinches the tip of my nose and gives it a wiggle, my glasses shifting with the action. “Easy yes.”
Connor’s gaze is molten as I fix the frames back into place.
“And loving me?” I preen.
Without hesitation, he says, “Easy yes.”
The space between us grows hot with want. I stare at his lips for half a second before he swoops in to kiss me first. There’s no easing into it, no gentle touches to test the waters—only open mouths and greedy hands shamelessly seeking and chasing.
His hands are up my shirt, tangled in my hair, then kneading my ass through my shorts. My palms sweep up and down his torso, feeling the hard contours of his muscles underneath. He nips my neck and I grip his biceps for dear life.
“I need more,” I breathe out between hurried kisses, unbuttoning the top three buttons of his shirt so I can touch his bare chest.
His hand back under my shirt, I gasp when his thumb sweeps across my nipple over my bra.
“You want my mouth or my fingers, baby?”
Without pause—because it was always going to be him—I pull back and peel the shirt over my head and toss it to the ground. “I want you. ”
His pupils flare, eyes hooded as they roam over me only to halt on the black lace cups holding my modest breasts. His throat bobs before he meets my gaze. “Are you sure?”
Your first time is supposed to be wrought with nerves and self-doubt. Constant worries over if you’re doing it right, if you’re pretty enough, or if your partner will want to do it with you again when it’s over. But I feel none of those things.
“Easy yes.”