15. Brody
Iforced a smile to my face as Katie chatted nervously. As nice as she was, the last thing I was in the mood for was talking to my ex-hookup about the date she was about to go on, while my heart was like a fucking lead weight in my chest.
Talking to her last time had been easy. I’d had a few drinks, and I was upset about Skye’s reaction to my kiss—I’d needed to vent to someone who didn’t know us both. Tonight, without the haze of alcohol, it was just awkward. But Katie had indulged me last time by listening to me drunkenly ramble on about Skye. And now, since I’d apparently given her some good advice, she’d made a move on the guy she’d been crushing on in her office and was going for a drink with him the next night.
She’d told me she was here for a pre-date confidence-building night out with her friend, who was running late. So I was doing the polite thing and keeping her company, listening to her distractedly while I thought about Skye and what a mess I’d made of things.
I hadn’t thought things through well enough. Hadn’t considered it from her point of view. I’d been too impatient and pushed her too hard too soon.
It had been easy for me to try to reshape our relationship into what I wanted it to be. I’d never lost someone, never gone through the pain she had. I’d been her safety net all these years, and I’d been quick to rip that out from under her, leaving her to face the fear of falling all on her own. What did I think would happen?
My gaze roamed restlessly over the crowd as Katie talked, wanting only to find a relatively quiet spot to sit and have a drink or two to take my mind off my mistakes. But a pair of familiar hazel eyes, narrowed and staring right at me, caught my attention. My spine straightened as I realized Ivy was sitting at the far end of the bar, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through me. Was Skye here too?
I did another quick scan of the space but didn’t see her. I was contemplating how rude it would be to abandon Katie to her own devices when her friend finally appeared at her side.
Thank god.
With a distracted farewell and good luck on the date thrown her way, I made a beeline to where Ivy was sitting.
As I got closer, Ivy’s eyes narrowed further. Had Skye told her what had happened between us? Was that why she was giving me that look? I didn’t particularly care at the moment.
“Are you meeting Skye?” I asked, searching the room, hoping she’d materialize out of thin air.
“She just left.”
My attention snapped back to her. “How long ago?”
“About thirty seconds after you walked in with your ex-one-night stand, looking pretty damn happy with yourself.”
When what she was saying registered, my heart sank. “I told Skye there was nothing going on between Katie and me.”
Ivy looked unimpressed. “Was that before or after you hadn’t spoken to her for four days?”
I clenched my eyes shut for a moment, then met Ivy’s gaze. “I love Skye. I would never do that to her.”
Her expression softened. “I know, Brody. So will she when she starts thinking logically again. She’s just scared. Don’t give up on her.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I said, my focus already on the front door. I might catch her if she’d only just left.
I’d only taken two steps when Ivy called my name. I spun around, and she jerked her chin toward the back door. Shooting her a grateful look, I headed that way.
I burst out onto the deck, automatically looking toward the path that led to the parking lot. But my eyes were drawn to a small figure standing in the middle of the open area running down to the lakeshore.
What was she doing? She was facing me, lit by the moonlight, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
“Skye?” I called out.
She gave me a crooked little smile, and my heart jumped. I jogged down the steps of the deck and came to a stop in front of her.
For a moment, we stared silently at one another, the only thing between us was the fog of our breath in the cold air. The night was dark, but the sky above us glittered with a thousand stars. The quiet lap-lap-lap of Lake Tahoe was all I could hear, even though the bar behind me was packed full of people. It was as if all my senses were tuned into the small area around us.
As if I knew my entire future would pivot around this place, this moment.
I reached for her, slipping my fingers through the silk of her hair while I brushed the thumb of my other hand over the smooth skin below her ear. “She wasn’t here to meet me, Skye. And I definitely wasn’t here to meet her. Every single time I’ve stepped through that door, there’s only been one woman on my mind.”
Her eyes searched mine, and I hated the sheen of tears I could see there. I cupped her face. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry if you—”
She gripped my wrists on either side of her face. “Don’t apologize, Brody. You have nothing to be sorry for.” She let out a little sigh. “I’m the one who needs to apologize.”
I shook my head, but she reached up and laid her palm against my cheek. “Yes, I do, and you know it. Don’t let me off the hook so easily.” She angled her head and flashed me a look that had a smile breaking across my face. Keeping her eyes on mine, she dropped her hand to my chest. “When I saw you and Katie in there, deep down, I knew you weren’t with her.” She closed her eyes for a moment before she met my gaze again. “But seeing you together made everything I was frightened of crystallize before me. If I allow myself to love you and then lose you, if I don’t have you in my life anymore and have to see you with another woman, it will break my heart.”
“That isn’t going to happen,” I said. “How I feel about you won’t ever change. You are it for me. I want to love you, marry you, have babies with you. When I think about my future, it is always you I see.” I searched her face, looking for something, anything, to give me hope. “But if that’s not what you see, then I don’t know where to go from here.”
“But I do see that.” She tilted her chin up, her lower lip trembling. “I didn’t want to admit it to myself. But it has always been you, Brody. I am so in love with you, it hurts. I wanted to keep you as my friend because I convinced myself that was the only way it was safe to have you. And I needed the security your friendship gave me, especially after losing Mom and Dad. But there’s more to life than being safe. So much more.”
Skye dashed tears from her cheeks and stared up at me fiercely. “The way I felt when we were together at the cabin? I have never experienced anything like that before. You’re the only person who will ever make me feel that way—the only person I will ever have that kind of connection with. Because we’ve spent our lives building it. Every smile, every laugh, every hug, every promise kept. What’s between us is too strong to just fall apart. It’s too rare and beautiful not to take a chance on.” Her lips tilted in a wry smile. “It just took me a hot minute to see it. But I’m not giving it up. I’m not giving you up. Ever.”
I’d hung on every word she said. But there were exactly seven that struck my chest like an arrow. “Say it again,” I managed to get out.
She looked confused for a moment, her brow crinkling. “All of it?”
I shook my head and waited, my heart pounding.
Her face cleared, her eyes flaring bright with understanding. She stepped closer to me, rose to her toes, and pressed her mouth softly to mine. “I am so in love with you,” she breathed the words against my lips.
I gripped the back of her neck and pulled her tight against me so I could kiss her properly. The taste of her was fucking heaven, and the little moan she made had me hard and aching. “I’m taking you home,” I said as soon as we came up for air. “You might want to call Ivy and tell her you won’t see her for a few days. Because I’m not planning on letting you out of my bed for at least forty-eight hours. You okay with that?”
“God, yes,” she laughed, the sound still a little watery from her tears. “I think it was the thought of never getting to see you naked again that was the most heartbreaking part of the whole thing.”
The sparkle in her eyes had my heart soaring.
“Is that so?” I pulled her under my arm and guided her toward the parking lot. “If I’d known that was the case, I would have paraded around outside your house naked for the last four days so you could see what you were missing.”
“I think the resulting frostbite might have had a detrimental effect on our physical relationship.”
“Or maybe you would’ve taken pity on me and offered to warm up parts of my body with parts of yours.”
She laughed again, but as we got to my truck, I stopped and tugged her against me. Cupping her face, I stroked my thumbs over her cheeks.
“I love you, Skye. I have loved you for almost as long as I’ve known you, and I will keep on loving you for the rest of my life. You have always been mine, sweetheart. Always.”
“I love you too, Brody. I always have. Even when I was too scared to face the truth.”
I bent down and pressed my lips to hers again, reveling in the fact I finally had her. My best friend, my girl, and hopefully, one day, my wife. She was mine now, the way she was always meant to be.
The way she always would be.