party too hard,” he joked, glancing around the empty, echoing apartment.
“We’ll do our best.” Lila unfurled a fitted sheet with a snap.
Luke said final goodbyes and left the apartment, and as the door closed, I made my way to the opposite side of the bed and grabbed one corner of the sheet.
“It looks so lonely in here,” she said as she stretched the sheet over the curve. “But I don’t even care. I’m so glad to be out of a hotel.”
“And out of the baby’s room,” I noted.
“And out of a bunk bed.”
I laughed. “Yes, and that.”
Once the fitted sheet was on, she unfolded the flat sheet and shook it out like a billowing sail. I caught the other side.
“How was the office space?” I asked, curious as to how the tour had gone.
“Oh, it’s perfect. And the price is right. Luke really does have all the hook-ups, doesn’t he?”
“I think he’s on a first-name basis with half of Manhattan.”
Lila chuckled, folding and tucking the corners like in a hospital. “It’ll do nicely until I have my office set up here. Are you sure you’re okay with me taking that space? Couldn’t you use it for growing?”
“Why would I do that when I have a whole greenhouse around the corner?”
She flushed, laughing again as she smoothed the sheets and turned for the comforter. “Oh, I don’t know. But it feels selfish somehow.”
“Well, it is your house,” I reminded her. “Technically, you’re my landlady.”
She hummed with appreciation. “There are so many ways I could collect my rent.”
“Oh, I’ll pay you in that currency, rent or not.”
The pillows went thump, followed by Lila, who flopped onto the bed on her back. “Come here and sign for that promise.”
Smirking, I kicked off my shoes and climbed onto the bed, crawling toward her. The second she was within reach, she was in my arms, my lips signing on the line. I leaned back, looking down at her.
The shiny crimson of her hair against the clean white sheets. The flush of her porcelain cheeks. The steely gray of her eyes and pink of her smiling lips.
“I love you,” I said, dragging a thumb across her cheek.
“Good, because I love you too.”
“Are you scared? About all of this? About me?”
One of her brows rose with the corner of her lips. “Why? Should I be?”
“Not as far as I know. But your plans for life aren’t what you thought they’d be. Two months ago, you hated me.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I’d say hate,” she said with a smile, her fingers twiddling in my hair. “But old me was a little uptight, if you’ll remember.”
“I remember. I remember wanting to undo you like this. I wondered then if it’d just take the right man.”
“I suppose I did—I needed you. I needed your love, because no one ever had loved before, not like this. Not like you.”
I kissed her softly, briefly. And she gazed up at me.
“But you’re right,” she said. “Life didn’t turn out like I thought it would. It’s better.”
My gaze skimmed the planes and angles of her face. “Is it? Because in my whole life, I could never have imagined the truth of this feeling. Of moments like this. Of the depth of how I love you.”
“Me neither,” she said quietly. “And to think, if I’d spent more time in the greenhouse in high school, I could have felt this way for so long.”
“Don’t worry. We have the rest of our lives for that, if you want.”
Her cheek under my hand warmed, and the sparkle of a tear shone in the corner of her eye. “It’s all I want.”
“Then that’s what you’ll get,” I said against her lips before I took them for what they were.
Mine.
Epilogue
LILA
“Are you ready?” Kash asked with that smile on his face, the one I loved so well.
The puppy answered for me with a bark, his dusky gray hair flopping.
I laughed, scooping him up as best I could, big as he already was. “He didn’t ask you, Georgie.”
But Georgie only aggressively licked my face, wriggling in my arms.
“Oh, you’re impossible,” I said, setting him down, the two of us laughing when he jumped at the door, tail wagging and paws on the wood in wait.
Three months had passed since we moved in. Three months of renovations and half-finished projects around the house. Three months with Georgie, the Labradoodle puppy who was the perfect mix of priss and filthy.
Three months of working on putting together my new company, Revelry.
Once the new season