exactly the right moment, when she needed him most and would see him for the beautiful person he was. Even though their brains had required a little longer to catch up, their hearts had recognized each other immediately.
He was staring up at her. His too-thin lips were tight, and his broken-and-never-fixed nose flared lightly. His hooded eyes tried to stay, but Verity knew how he felt about her—he was in too deep to keep his worry or his hope out of his steady, intense gaze.
“Are you outta here?” he finally asked with quiet resignation.
“Outta here?” she repeated dumbly.
“You don’t need someone else like Ryan in your life. You’ve got your hands full. I get it. That’s why I didn’t—”
Moving quickly from where she sat cross-legged beside him, she straddled his chest, sitting on his stomach and looking down at him angrily. “As long as we’re making confessions, you should know: I lied before.”
His eyes widened, and he scowled up at her.
“Don’t glare at me, Colton Lane,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She fixed him with an especially sassy look and repeated, “I lied before.”
His eyes searched hers frantically. “About what?”
“I’m not falling in love with you. I’m in love with you.” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and worried it for a moment. “I just didn’t want to freak you out. So I said that—”
“I love you too,” he said, jackknifing into a sitting position and burying his hands in her hair as his lips slammed into hers.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, dropping her hands softly to his back and letting him pull her against his body as fiercely as he needed to, to soothe his fear and affirm his relief as he kissed her. He’d experienced so much loss in his life—his parents, his aunt, his uncle, even, in a certain way, his cousin. She felt the full force of his relief as he understood he wouldn’t have to add Verity to that list, and she tightened her embrace, cradling him in her arms and letting him love her. She needed him to understand that his revelation about Melody wouldn’t lead her to reject him. Oh, no. Quite the opposite. It bound her to him in ways that she immediately felt but didn’t immediately understand, because the scope was too broad. The fit of them together had to be God’s plan because it was so good.
For now, all she knew was this:
You were meant for me. And I was meant for you. And I will never let you go.
As his kiss gentled, his tongue slid tenderly along hers. She ran her fingers up his back to the nape of his neck where she locked them, then leaned away to look up at him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, sensing he needed to hear the words.
“I was worried,” he admitted, grimacing in annoyance as the words escaped his lips.
“You shouldn’t have been.” She cocked her head. “You should have told me sooner.”
“I wasn’t sure I could trust you at first,” he said, his gray eyes deep and dark, “and by the time I knew I could trust you, I couldn’t deal with the idea of you leaving.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said again, letting the love she felt warm her voice and her gaze. “You can trust me.”
“I know, baby.”
“So what is it about her life that I’m not going to like?”
He took a deep breath and sighed. “Could I ask you to trust me? I’ll set up a time when we can pick up Mel at her condo and—”
“I trust you,” she whispered, her voice as absolute as her heart. “That’s all.”
She moved experimentally over his hips, rolling into him to feel the massiveness of his erection, and then away.
“If it wasn’t midnight,” she said, her own voice husky in her ears, “I’d wake up Ryan right now and tell him that we’re a couple.”
Colton groaned in frustration, dropping his forehead to the curve of her neck. His lips touched down on her shoulder, and she shivered, arching against him.
He cleared his throat, but his voice was still gravelly with want. “I’m off on Tuesday. Spending it with Mel, taking her to the zoo. She likes that. Any chance you . . .”
Verity coughed lightly, touching her throat gingerly. “Oh no. I feel a cold coming on.”
He raised his head, grinning at her. “Full-blown flu by Tuesday?”
“You bet,” she said, giggling softly. “And I’m fairly certain that Ryan’s going to come down