Anyone But Nick (Anyone But... #3) - Penelope Bloom Page 0,86
still worried. I feel like I should be able to relax and just enjoy where we are, but instead I keep thinking how everything could still go wrong—how Robbie might not be done trying to split us up or how my idea about the dog resort could be the dumbest thing ever. Or how maybe I’ll regret letting Max trash my reputation.”
“Hey,” Nick said. He came to stand behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, putting his head by my ear. “The only thing that could split us up is us. And I don’t know if you know this yet, but I would give every last thing I have to stay with you. I haven’t felt good like this ever. I feel complete when I’m with you. Happy. It’s—” He stood up straight and walked in a small path around the desk, arms folded and eyes searching the floor for the right words. “It’s like I was spending my whole life trying to solve more-and-more-complicated problems because I was hung up on what happened between us. It was the original puzzle.” He spread his hands like he was reading off a billboard. “Why didn’t we end up together?”
“Because I was too chicken to sign my name on a silly little poem?”
He chuckled. “No. More like I was too afraid of the real answer. So afraid I looked for answers in every place but the one I should’ve been focused on. Us.”
“And what was the real answer?”
“That you were the one challenge I was too scared to take on. Maybe I just wanted to get enough practice before I decided to tackle it—or you,” he added with that boyish smirk of his.
I stood up and turned to look him in the eyes. I chewed my lip as I idly ran my hands over his tie. “You know you never had anything to be afraid of with me, unless the idea of somebody falling hopelessly for you is a spooky concept.”
“Very spooky,” he said, studying my lips from beneath those long lashes of his. “Because you do things to me I didn’t think were possible. I don’t wake up restless and angry, just waiting for something complex to bash my head against. Now I just want you.”
“How do you want me?” I teased.
“Vertical. Horizontal. In a boat or in a moat.”
“Hmm. I think the moat gets my vote for least desirable.”
Nick’s eyebrows were pulled together as his eyes roamed my face. He put his thumb to my eyebrow and moved it softly as he spoke. “You want spooky? I think I’m falling in love with you.”
Love. Suddenly I thought my knees might actually be made of melted butter, because it felt like I was going to collapse. It was the word that had floated around in my own head and made me feel silly. I’d said it with boyfriends before. Love you too. It was casual, almost. Like a little obligatory catchphrase to signify a relationship had gone from infancy to adulthood. But Nick made me realize how empty those words had been.
“I feel it too,” I said so quietly I wasn’t sure he could hear me. “Maybe that’s what has me so scared. I thought my heart was broken seven years ago, but what happens when I feel like this?”
“What happens is we fight for it. Nobody comes between it, because we can’t live without it. So this shit with Robbie is meaningless. He can try whatever he wants, but it’s not going to matter.”
I nodded. “You know, if this is how snails feel, I think I can finally understand why they spend their whole lives just gooping along at two inches an hour in search of it.”
He chuckled. “Did you really just turn this into a snail conversation again?”
“Maybe,” I said. “You have to admit there are some parallels to be drawn.”
Nick walked over to me and kissed me so tenderly that I thought I might just turn into warm, runny liquid and slide out of the chair. “I love you,” he said.
“I love you too.”
Chapter 28
NICK
My brothers and I were in the middle of our annual fishing trip. It had been a tradition since we were kids, and even the rinky-dink boat with a single engine and rust spots was part of the ritual.
We’d spend most of the day trying to catch whatever we could with cut-up hot dogs as bait, because that was what we’d used as kids. It was a perfect day for being on