Chapter Twenty-Nine
Arielle walked into the bridal suite to see Judah pacing, muttering to himself as if he was practicing a speech. It was tempting to stand in the doorway and simply watch him, a lion both proud and caged, but then he looked up and saw her, and she became the one feeling dangerously trapped.
“You came.”
“I did.” She twisted Liana’s ring on her finger, grateful to have something to fidget with until she remembered what it was. “I was hoping you could explain to me what the fuck that was, Judah.”
He swallowed. “That was Eshet Chayil. ‘A Woman of Valor’? Traditional to sing at weddings and on Friday ni—”
“Judah. What. The fuck. Was that.”
He walked purposefully toward her, and her breath hitched in her throat when he stopped a kiss’s distance away. “Ask me again what I want in a partner.”
“Judah—”
“Ask me. Please.”
The desperation in his voice pierced her heart, and she cracked. “What do you want in a partner?”
He tipped her chin up so she had no choice but to hold his gaze as he responded.
“I want someone who listens to me share the scariest parts of myself without judgment. I want someone who lets me discover new things about myself and embrace them. I want someone who lets me be a hypocrite when I need to be, when I want to be, without ever invalidating who I am as a person or as a Jew. I want someone who makes me feel at home no matter where we are, who makes the loneliness that’s plagued my entire adult life feel like a distant concept.
And yeah, I will take the bonus of a partner who’s so terrifyingly beautiful I can’t think straight in her presence.
And I never thought to say those things alongside the others because I never knew it was possible to have them. ”
She swallowed hard. “Judah—”
“There are three hundred and twenty-seven people at this wedding who just watched me sing to you, and if you give me the okay, a video of it with a very clear caption is going to go out to my half a million followers. I hope that makes it clear that you’re not my dirty little secret.
You’re not a liability or a passing occupation, and the only regret I have is that I ever convinced myself we weren’t meant to be, because I don’t believe that for a second.
“You are the most incredible woman I have ever met, and I would rather turn my life upside down than cease to have you in it. There is no one on earth I like being with as much as you, and no version of myself I like as much as the one I am with you, and when I say you’re my future, I don’t mean ‘until the next time we face some pushback’; I mean that you are it for me. ”
“Judah.” She was vaguely aware of sounding like a broken record, but that one word was all she could manage. It was so much that she could barely breathe around it. “You’re saying … serious things. Do you understand that you’re saying serious things?”
“I do. And I have more serious things to say, but first I want to know that I’m not sending you running for the hills.”
“I’m not running,” she assured him quietly.
“You’re … not.” His voice was tinged with wonder. “I mentioned settling down, and you are not panicking.”
She tugged gently on his bow tie, rubbing her thumb over the silk. “I’ve had a little time to think about it, and I think maybe settling down doesn’t sound so bad if it’s with you.”
He froze. “Really?”
“I mean, in the spirit of being in Liana Radinsky’s bridal suite, this is where she’d be jabbing me with her razor-sharp elbows if I didn’t admit that I had maybe planned to ask you out for real when you got back from Mexico.
” Her voice came out in a mumble, and her gaze was focused about a full foot below his, tracking her fingers on his tie, but she knew he hadn’t missed her confession.
“Arielle.” His hand covered hers, stilling it.
“I really hate the way you use my full name.”
“No, you don’t.”
No, she didn’t.
“Arielle.” She looked up and met his wide-open gaze. “I’ve been completely in love with you since that first kiss. You have to know that.”
Her breath hitched in her throat. “I did not, in fact, know that. I mean, you remember why I didn’t—couldn’t—ask you out then, right?”
“I do, and trust me when I say I wish I’d done things so differently. I was trying to have everything, trying to find a path that made sense for me.”
“And now you have?” she asked with an arch of her brow.
He squeezed her hands. “And now I understand there is no ‘everything’ without you, and there is no path for me that I want to walk without you. You’re not the only one still learning how to be an adult, Ari.
Just because I have a sponge organizer doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing.
But I want to learn with you, and I really hope you want to learn with me. ”
“I do,” she said quietly, “but the haters aren’t gonna go away. I don’t want to be responsible for ruining your career.”
“First of all, you wouldn’t be the one responsible,” he said firmly, “but second of all, screw anyone trying to control my professional life through my personal life, or vice versa. I’ve spent way too much time thinking I need other people’s approval to succeed, and I’m not doing that anymore.
This past trip to LA involved a lot of talks about my next album and where my career is going, and I feel really good about the possibilities.
Regardless, you are the nonnegotiable part.
I will figure the rest out. I just need you to give us a shot. ”
“It would maybe help if you kissed me again.”
“Do not need to ask me twice,” he said, bending to brush his lips over hers.
The soft touches quickly deepened, the kiss turning hungry and wild.
God, she’d missed this—the seamless way they fit together, the way his thumb stroked her pulse at the base of her throat.
A desperate noise escaped her, and he responded to it immediately, his hand fisting in her hair.
A banging knock on the door startled them both. “You two better be decent in there!” Akiva hollered through the doors.
“What a shame that we are,” Arielle murmured, smoothing down her hair as Judah groaned and pushed away.
“I’ll make it up to you later,” he promised, straightening his bow tie and smoothing down his jacket before unlocking and pulling open the door. “Kivi! Thanks so much for the subtle alarm.”
Akiva grinned widely as he looked back and forth between Judah and Arielle. “Anytime. Something you’d like to tell me?”
“Never,” said Judah, earning himself an elbow jab to the ribs hard enough to make him cough up a lung. “By which I mean, you already know my girlfriend.”
“He hasn’t actually asked me to be his girlfriend,” Arielle told Akiva. “He’s just making assumptions.”
“He does that a lot,” Akiva said conspiratorially. “So rude, isn’t it?”
“So rude.”
Judah looked back and forth between them. “I think I hate that the two of you are friends.”
“You love us though,” Arielle pointed out.
A slight smile curved Judah’s lips. “Yeah,” he agreed, his gaze firmly on hers. “I really do.”
“Oh, shit.” Akiva’s eyes darted between them again. “So this is, like … real real.”
“Yeah, it’s like that.” Judah twined his fingers with Ari’s and squeezed. “Don’t worry, we’re coming. I’m not about to face Liana’s wrath.”
They followed Akiva back to the party room, but just before they stepped inside, Judah halted her. “Listen, I really wanna do this right—”
“For God’s sake, Judah, yes, you can call me your girlfriend.”
“Oh, thank God. I was out of speeches.”
She smirked up at him. “Good thing all you have to do now is sing.”
“So, you and Klein, huh?” Danny asked, leaning over the empty seats between them. “I did not see that coming.”
She resisted the urge to make a comment about how seeing her coming was never really his expertise. “Surprise,” she said dryly instead.
“Hey, you guys weren’t—” he started, but his question was cut off by the return of Akiva and Judah to the seats between them.
“I confirmed it was made with ginger ale,” Judah said as he set her drink down in front of her. “Got an extra cherry, even.”
“You weren’t kidding about making things up to me,” she murmured as she brought the drink up for a sip. She watched Judah watch her dart her tongue out to bring the straw between her lips.
“I’ll have you know,” he said, leaning in to whisper in her ear, “I’ve been taking note of every seam on that dress.”
“Are you suggesting,” she returned with a flutter of her lashes, “that you’d like to see me out of it? Because I have it on good authority that my roommate will be sleeping elsewhere tonight.”
“If that’s an invitation, I wholeheartedly accept. Although…” He turned too quickly for Akiva and Danny to stop making kissy faces in time. “Maybe we should go to my place instead. The neighbors at yours leave something to be desired.”
“I think we’ve been insulted,” Akiva said with a sniff.
“I see you found each other okay.”
Ari looked up and jumped from her chair, throwing her arms around Liana as the bride and groom made their way over to table 12, fingers intertwined. “Leelee! You are such a beautiful bride.” She looked over at Gideon. “You clean up pretty good too, bestie-in-law.”
“Take a good look,” said Gideon, tweaking his bow tie, “because you are never gonna see it again.”
“Unless he has a black-tie wedding to go to at some point, of course,” Liana said knowingly, glancing back and forth between Ari and Judah.
Ari snorted. “Subtle.”
“I don’t think she was going for subtle,” Judah said dryly, but he sounded distinctly unmad about it.
“I assure you she wasn’t,” Gideon confirmed
“Tell me,” Liana demanded. “I need to hear it.”
“Lee—”
Liana gestured at the tiara perched neatly in her updo. “I am the fucking bride, Arielle. Say the words.”
Ari sighed. “You might’ve been right about me liking the guy.” She gestured behind her at where Judah was barely concealing a grin as he watched their exchange. “He’s all right, I suppose.”
“Turns out, she’s been kinda into me for a while,” Judah said casually, wrapping an arm around her waist. If he cared that people were definitely taking note, it didn’t show. “Did you know that?”
“I did, in fact,” Liana said with a big, dimpled smile aimed at her eye-rolling best friend. “And you?” she asked Judah innocently.
“You’ve met her, right?” He kissed the top of Ari’s head. “Pretty sure we all know I’ve been a goner since she stomped on my foot.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You said it was the kiss.”
He smiled down pleasantly. “I know what I said.”
Liana clasped her hands over her heart. “I’m just throwing this out there—winter weddings are lovely.”
Ari looked to Gideon for a sanity check, but he was looking at his wife as if she’d hung the damn moon. He shrugged. “Chanukah is extremely underrated as far as romance potential goes.”
“You’re all insane,” Ari declared, and they laughed, but as Judah squeezed her hand and Liana and Gideon moved on to greet the rest of their guests, she wasn’t … not picturing it.
And it looked pretty damn good.