Page 42 of Tides Of Your Love (Riviera Shores #3)

Rio

THAT NIGHT I BARELY slept.

Hope and fear twisted beneath my skin.

I was nervous for him, like this thing he’d chased and fought for belonged to both of us now.

The meeting could mean anything. Everything. Nothing. I just wanted it to be whatever would make him happy. I felt it then—the impossible tug-of-war he must have been caught in, wanting to hold on without having to let go.

At some point before dawn, I found myself checking flight times to London—not booking anything, just ... looking. Like if I knew how quickly I could get to him, maybe it would steady something inside me.

By morning, I’d played out every outcome I could imagine. So when his name lit up my screen during my late lunch break, I took a deep breath before swiping to accept the video call.

“It’s so good to see your face, you have no idea,” he said the moment we connected.

Seeing his face, I couldn’t help but smile. Even now, even with a heavy heart. Just seeing him made my lips curve upward.

“How are you, love?” he asked.

The way he said it made me wonder if it was the British ‘love’ they use for everyone or a special one for me.

“I’m okay. Walter is, too. How are you? How was the meeting?”

He inhaled a visibly deep breath on the other end of the line. “They want me to stay. To play. Basically, they want me back as before.”

I nodded, a slow, deliberate motion, my lungs filling with air because hearing the words was so much harder than anticipating them.

“Congratulations, Owen! That’s incredible news,” I said, not replacing a single syllable with an easier one.

For the first time in years, my stutter was more pronounced with him.

I could feel my face slightly twitching at the effort to get the words out, not because I wasn’t happy for him—I was—but because it changed everything and nothing all at once.

“I haven’t replied to them yet. But the news sites and tabloids are already on it. I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

“It’s all you’ve worked for, what you deserve, what would have happened if you had never sustained that injury in the first place.”

“I know. But I want you , Rio.”

“I want this, too. Us. You. But we have to figure out a new way for it to fit,” I said softly. “Your dream is coming back to life, Owen. ”

“I don’t know if that’s true anymore.”

I was afraid the next words would stick in my throat, but I had to say them.

He needed to know that I wasn’t trying to make him choose.

It wasn’t fair to him. It wouldn’t be fair to us.

I couldn’t let him believe that my condition to loving him was that he gave up his dream and moved to California. He had to know I loved him either way.

“Owen, I want you to take it. I want you to know I’m still here. My heart is yours, no matter what. I don’t want to be the reason you hesitate. We’ll figure it out.”

Even if we failed figuring it out, I’d still choose him.

Every atom in me screamed that loving him might break me—but I couldn’t stop.

Owen had been my rescuer time and again—his smile saved me from feeling alone in more ways than one, his body ended my last-standing-virgin status, his heart set me on fire after years of half-felt emotions.

I wanted to do the same for him. Set him free to reclaim his dream—and somehow still be part of it.