be at your place in an hour.
I stood up. An hour was just enough time to get home, tidy up, and take this terrifying shirt off. Put on some makeup and weed-whack my legs. I was going to do seduction right this time.
But I couldn’t leave without Tess. I turned to go back into the library to get her, but she was already coming out, a smug smile on her face.
“Well?” she said. “Did you talk to him? You totally did.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you? That whole thing about toxic masculinity. You were just trying to get me to call him.”
“Duh,” Tess said. “You’re totally in love with him, Mina, and he’s crazy about you. You’re so easy to manipulate sometimes. Just go home and make up with him already. Want to go to the movies tomorrow?”
Twenty-Six
Mina
Ten years after prom night, I knew Holden Whittaker was going to show up.
I was ready this time. I had showered and put on makeup. I had found a cute belted dress in the back of my closet and put it on, complete with matching shoes. I had tidied my apartment and dimmed the lighting. I was ready, just like I’d been ready that night all those years ago.
And Holden was here.
He knocked on my door and I let him in. He had just come from work, saving lives, and he was still wearing his sexy navy blue uniform. My hero, every day and always.
I pulled him into the apartment, rose up on my toes, and kissed him. A sweet kiss that I hoped promised more dirty things to come. “I’m sorry,” I said before he could speak. “It was your idea to have Rachel call me, wasn’t it? Because you thought I wouldn’t believe the story coming from you. But I would have believed it. I didn’t really believe you were cheating on me. Not deep down.”
He frowned down at me. “Mina.”
“I freaked out,” I said. “I admit it. I got scared, Holden, because you’re you, and this is a big deal, and I love you, and for a while there I didn’t believe in it. Because it was easier not to believe than to step up and make it work.”
“Okay,” he said. “Stop talking.” He took my face gently in his hands and kissed me. Slower this time, more lingering, but still sweet. He tasted so good. When he finished, still cradling my face, he said, “You love me?”
I closed my eyes for a second, letting the tears burn behind them. Overcoming the fear was the right thing to do, but no one ever said it was easy. “You know I do,” I said, my voice shaky. “How can you doubt it?”
He put his arms around me and held me close. He had that great Holden smell. He dipped his mouth against my neck and kissed me, saying in a low voice, “Good, because I love you, too. And I understand about the fear. I felt the same way after prom night—too scared because it mattered too much. The difference is that you had the guts to do something about it before ten years went by.”
I leaned up and kissed him, again and again. “I’m sorry my creepy boss keeps hitting on you,” I said.
“I blocked her number.”
“Good. I quit my job. Not just because of her. I hated it there anyway.”
His hands went around to the back of my dress, where he lowered the zipper by one inch, and then two. “I know you quit,” he said. “I ran into Tess in the hallway. Actually, she came out of her apartment when I walked by. She told me you’re going to take over your friend’s dance studio.”
“I was going to tell you that.” Bonnie had called me two days ago. She was pregnant, and her husband had just gotten a job offer upstate. They wanted to leave the city. At first she wanted to know if I would take over giving lessons for a few weeks while she made arrangements, but we ended up discussing keeping the studio on with me as the manager and teacher. In the future, we’d make an arrangement for me to buy the studio from her altogether.
It wasn’t acting and singing on Broadway. It wasn’t becoming Adele. But I didn’t need to be Adele to be happy. I needed to be doing what I loved, in the city I loved, with the man I loved alongside me. That