worked on honesty, right? We both have to be honest. And I am truly worried that I’m going to use up all that you’re willing to give. I’m afraid I’ll just take from you because you’re so good, and so willing to do anything I need. But if I can’t reciprocate?” I placed a hand over my heart, where that deep-seated worry resided. “I…have feelings for you. I do. But if I don’t know that I can stand up on my own, then how can I trust myself to stand with you, as equal partners?”
He stood up. “It doesn’t always have to be equal.”
“But I have to know it can be equal.”
He looked at me, so sad and disappointed. So confused. “I’m going to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth,” he said with authority.
“I will. Ask me.”
“Is this a test? Is this you trying to find out if I’ll cut and run at the first opportunity? Because I won’t. That’s not me. Not now.”
“I know that’s not you. I know that now. It took me a long time to trust you, Sean. You know it did. I worried for weeks that you were going to disappear, but this isn’t a test. It’s not. I know that if you go, it’s because you hear me and you respect my wishes. It won’t be because you got tired of me. It won’t be because you’re prioritizing something else over me. I know that now.”
His head shook back and forth for a moment, his eyes grieved. “I love you,” he said. And it was different. He’d said it many times before. We’d both said it many times before. But this wasn’t I love you, my friend. This wasn’t even the kind of desperate I love you that he’d thrown at me when we had fought about Nick. This was different. “I love you like I’ll never love anyone,” he said with conviction. “I’ve loved you for so long. And I need to know that you know that.” The intensity in his eyes left no doubt. The way his body seemed to hum with barely contained energy testified of the truth.
“I do know that.” I reached out and took his head in my hands, pressing my forehead to his as my belly ran into him. “But if I’m ever going to know for certain that I love you the same way, I have to know who I am first. Without Jonas. Without you. I have to know I can be a person after everything that has happened.”
I felt his tears drip onto my cheeks. “This isn’t a test?”
“No test.”
“You know how much I love you?”
“Yes.” I wanted to tell him how much I loved him, but I didn’t know how to say it.
He pushed a hand into my hair. “Can I please kiss you?”
My mind didn’t know if that was a good idea, but my voice said, “Yes.”
His lips trembled as they touched mine. He was so careful, so soft. I nearly whimpered with the poignancy of those moments. I kissed him, not because I was sad and wanting to feel better, but because I loved this man.
Even though I’d kissed him once before, it still felt a little strange to be kissed by someone other than Jonas, but it was also so, so good. As our kisses started to burn brighter, my baby girl gave a swift kick.
Sean laughed against my mouth, then broke the kiss and buried his face in my neck as he placed one hand on the side of my stomach. “See?” he said. “She doesn’t want me to leave.”
I sighed as his breath tickled my neck. I could have joked about her trying to kick him out too. But instead I said, “Of course she doesn’t. But her mommy knows that sometimes what we need is very different from what we want.”
He held me tighter for just a moment as he breathed me in, then he pulled back and took my hand. “Come sit with me.”
We curled up on the couch together, and we let the quiet be.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Later that evening, he called Randy to make all the arrangements. Randy was ecstatic, even going so far as to send me a text thanking me and using too many exclamation points.
The next few days were an exercise in putting on a happy face when I really just wanted to cry. If Sean hadn’t already made arrangements and commitments, I probably would have told him