way up to the very top of the highest point, and then there were those breathless moments when it raced to the bottom and your stomach dropped into your feet and you couldn’t catch your breath.
This was just like that, only worse.
“I love you, Katie.”
Katie
I’d forgotten how to speak. How to take words and put them together in my mind in an order that would make sense and convey what I was feeling. Maybe because I didn’t know what I was feeling.
“I know this is the wrong thing to say, at the wrong time. It’s all wrong.”
Something Lottie said came back to me. Something about how maybe Stryker and I were so wrong for each other that it was right.
“I just…I had to tell you. I had to say it out loud.”
Words, words would be good right about now. Some words. Any words.
“Are you fucking serious?” Not the best choice of words, but it was a start.
“Yeah. I know, I know. It’s…crazy.” He started pacing again, as if he had to keep moving. “You know what’s even crazier? I knew that first time I saw you. In that pink dress. I just…I knew. I was watching you during the entire party. You didn’t see me, but I was. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. I kept trying to find your flaws, to convince myself you weren’t attractive, which backfired because I only wanted you more.”
“My flaws?”
“I told myself that your eyes were too big, and you were too short, and…well, that was as far as I got.”
“Oh.”
My stomach still felt like it was going to fall out my body, through the floor and into the room below us.
“But, Katie, there’s something you should know.” Other than the fact that he loves me? What more could there be?
“I haven’t said it back,” I said, interrupting whatever thing he’d been about to tell me.
“I know. I didn’t expect you to. I didn’t expect to say it, but I can’t take it back now.”
“Do you want me to say it?”
“I want you to say whatever you feel. I always want you to tell me the truth.”
What was the truth?
“I can’t breathe right now. And I can’t feel my fingers or toes. Is that weird? I also feel like I swallowed my heart and it’s beating in my throat.”
“I’m familiar with the feeling,” he said, finally standing still. “I kind of feel like I’m going to die.”
“Yeah, me too.”
There were several feet of space between us. The truth was that I wanted that space to go away. I wanted to push it aside and not let it come between us. I wanted to beat the shit out of any space that would dare come between us. Was that love?
I made my legs take one step. It was like trying to walk through waist-high water. I took another. He didn’t move, waiting for me to come to him.
“I feel like I want us to be friends, but not just friends. I feel like I want us to be best friends. I feel like I want you to be the person I tell everything to. I feel like I could see you every second of every day and it wouldn’t be enough. I feel like you are the sexiest, kindest, most wonderful person I’ve ever met and that I will never be good enough to deserve you, but I’d like to try anyway. I feel like if you weren’t there when Dad died that I would have died too. I would have gotten sucked down, like Mom. And loving you is one of the only things keeping me afloat right now.”
The words were easy, once I started saying them. They came as if I’d memorized them and recited them hundreds of times, like a favorite song that I would always know the lyrics to.
I stopped with that one last foot of space between us.
“The truth is that I love you too.”
His green eyes consumed me, pulling me closer.
“Are you sure?” he said, as if he didn’t believe me.
“Yes, you idiot, I’m sure.” I tried to smack him in the chest, but he caught my wrist before I made contact and brought my hand to his mouth, kissing my palm.
“Just checking before I did this.” He yanked me toward his mouth and our lips crashed together. Like the first time, only so much more. “You ever loved a guy with a lip ring?”
“Nope, this is a first,” I said as his hands went into my