Chapter 11
chapter
eleven
Juniper
I wake up tangled in a stranger’s sheets, except he’s not a stranger anymore, and the sheets smell like him, and there is a solid, warm, entirely shirtless Leo curled around my back with his face mashed into my hair like he has no intention of ever moving again.
I don’t move either.
For a while, I just lie there, doing the math on my own life.
Three days ago I packed a suitcase with a sword in it and worried about whether Eric would ruin my weekend.
Now there’s a man’s arm slung heavy across my waist, and I can feel his heartbeat against my spine, slow and steady, and I genuinely cannot locate a single part of myself that wants to be anywhere else on earth.
This is either the best decision I’ve ever made or the most catastrophic, and at six in the morning, lying in this particular gold light, I find I don’t actually care which.
“You’re thinking very loudly,” Leo mumbles into my hair.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to. I can feel you contemplating everything against my arm.” He presses a kiss to the back of my shoulder, slow and unhurried. “What’s the verdict?”
“Inconclusive. Possibly excellent. Possibly a beautiful disaster. Jury’s still out.”
“I like those odds.”
I roll over to face him, and he looks unfairly good for someone who’s had maybe four hours of sleep—hair a wreck, eyes soft and a little dazed in that early-morning way, the kind of look on his face that makes my chest do something embarrassing.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “How are you feeling about everything? Honestly.”
“Honestly? Slightly insane. In the good way, I think, but I want to flag that this is genuinely one of the more irrational forty-eight hours of my life. I’m choosing to be at peace with that instead of panicking about it, which feels like progress.”
“I can work with slightly insane in the good way.”
“What about you?”
He’s quiet for a second, looking at me like he’s deciding how much to say.
“I think,” he says slowly, “that I’ve spent years being extremely rational about exactly this kind of thing. Guarded. Careful. Not making a move with strict calculations before beforehand. Keeping my heart under lock and key.”
I clear my throat. “That’s not the only thing you kept locked up.”
He laughs. “You are the best and most fun I’ve ever had.” He kisses my forehead and I think my heart grows ten sizes.
“Sorry, I interrupted you from your speech. I was distracted—once again—by your impressive package. Carry on.”
“Well, after being careful about everything, the entirety of my adult life, sometime in the last three days, all of those calculations and plans just stopped mattering. Which should probably scare me more than it does.”
“Does it scare you?”
“A little. Mostly it just feels like relief.” He brushes his thumb along my jaw. “I want to get breakfast and then take a walk before we head back to the convention. There’s something I want to do.”
We end up downtown, away from the convention center, in one of those old stretches of a city that still has actual sidewalks.
There are actual trees and stubborn flowers growing up in the cracks of the sidewalks.
Shop windows that haven’t been replaced with anything corporate yet.
It’s quiet this early, just us and a guy walking a dog and a woman setting a sandwich board outside a coffee shop.
Leo’s hand is laced through mine, and he’s got this look on his face—something between nervous and resolute—that I can’t quite place until he slows his steps in front of a jewelry store window.
“Okay,” he says. “I want to say something, and I need you to let me get all the way through it before you say anything back. Because I’ve been rehearsing it in my head since approximately five this morning and I will absolutely lose my nerve if you interrupt me.”
My heart does something squishy. “Okay.”
“I know this is fast. I know it’s been three days.
I know if I told my dad this exact sentence, he’d sit me down and ask very gently if I’d lost my mind, and he’d probably be right to.
” He takes a breath. “But I also know that I have spent years being careful about exactly this, and none of that carefulness prepared me even a little for you. I’m not asking you to marry me right now, standing on a sidewalk, in front of a window full of rings I haven’t bought.
That would be insane, even for the weekend we’ve had. ”
“Even a little insane,” I agree, mostly because I don’t trust my own voice for anything longer yet.
“But I want you to know that I’m not going to need convincing later.
If you ever decide you want this—all of it, the ring, the whole thing—I am completely, embarrassingly ready right now.
Today. All in. I will walk into that store with you this second if you want to.
You can pick out whatever ring you want.
I just need you to say the word, whenever that word comes, and I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret it. ”
I stare at him, this absurd, wonderful man standing on a sidewalk at seven in the morning, offering me his whole future like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever decided. And I wait for the nerves to hit. I wait for the “holy hobbits, this is pure craziness” to come out of my mouth.
“Leo.” My voice comes out thinner than I mean it to. “We’ve known each other for three days.”
“I’m aware.”
“I don’t even know your last name. I realized that last night and had a minor crisis about it.”
“West,” he says. “Leo West. I should’ve led with that, in retrospect, given everything.”
A laugh startles out of me. “Juniper Hill.”
“Juniper Hill.” He says it like he’s testing the weight of it, like he’s already practicing.
“This is insane,” I say. “This is genuinely, certifiably insane. People don’t do this. People date for years before any of this gets said out loud.”
“I know.” Then he tilts his head. “Though, aside from my dad and my uncle, the latter of which is happily married now, for the record. The rest of my family is kind of fast with this sort of thing. My cousin Kelsie married her husband after they’d been pen pals, while he was still an active SEAL.
Though she thought she’d been writing to a completely different man.
” He waves his hand in the air. “Not important right now. My other cousin, Addison, met and married her husband, Thorne, super fast. Henry technically waited a long time, but that’s what happens when you meet your soul mate as a kid.
And Oliver, he and Cora, had a no-names, no-strings one-night stand.
Then she ended up working for his grandparents, pregnant with his child. ”
I know my eyes are probably enormous and I’m surprised I haven’t caught a fly in my mouth yet. “That’s a lot to process. Also you have a sizable family. With a lot of drama.”
He shrugs. “Comes with the small town. I just wanted to point out that yes, this is fast, but I’ve seen fast work for other people.”
I look at him for a long moment. This handsome, nerdy, funny man, who told me the truth about his money the second it threatened to become a wedge between us. Who waited years to touch a woman until he knew she was worth the wait.
“I’m not scared of how fast this is,” I say slowly, testing each word as it comes out, because I want to mean every single one of them before I say it.
“I thought I would be. I think I’m supposed to be.
But I’m not. I feel the same thing you’re describing, Leo.
All of the things I’m normally careful, I mean you’ve seen my color-coded spreadsheet of all the panels and events I wanted to attend this weekend.
All of that stopped mattering somewhere around that pizza place, if I’m being completely honest, and I’ve just been too chicken to say it out loud first.”
“Juniper—”
“I’m not saying yes to a ring today,” I say, before he can get any further ahead of me.
“I think that actually would be insane, and I’d like us to have known each other longer than seventy-two hours before metal hardware is invovled.
” I squeeze his hand. “But I’m saying I feel it too.
Whatever this is. I’m not running from it just because it’s fast. I think some things just are what they are, and the timeline doesn’t change the truth of it, it just makes it inconvenient to explain to other people. ”
Something in his whole body seems to ease at that, his shoulders dropping, the nervous tightness around his eyes finally letting go.
“So,” he says. “Hypothetically. Down the line. When the timeline’s a little less inconvenient to explain.”
“Hypothetically.”
“This window.” He nods toward the glass, toward the quiet, glittering rows of rings sitting in their velvet trays. “I’m coming back to it. Whenever you’re ready. I just wanted you to know that going in. I’m not going anywhere. I already know you are it for me, Juniper Hill.”
I lean up and kiss him, slow, right there on the sidewalk, the coffee shop woman two doors down pretending very hard not to watch us and failing completely.
“Okay,” I say, when I finally pull back. “Right back at you, Leo West.”
“Also, you are probably the only one I can admit this to, but your color-coded spreadsheet made me a little hard.”
I bark out a laugh. “You’re ridiculous. Also, I’m the only one you should admit that to.”
He laces our fingers back together, starts walking again, the jewelry store falling behind us. “Breakfast. Then back to the floor. We still have a prop auction to attend.”
“Were you planning on suiting up today? I’d kind of like to just be Leo and Juniper, if that’s alright with you.
“It’s more than alright. It’s perfect.”
We walk on toward breakfast, hands joined, the early sun coming up warm over the city.
“Hypothetically speaking, we’ve established it’s too soon for a ring,” he says. “But is it too soon for three little words?”
“Maybe not,” I say.
He leans close to my ear. “I’m gonna win!”
“What?”
“The auction item.”
“You suck! And you have more money than me.” I playfully smack his arm.
We start walking again, and I know I’m smiling like a fool, but I do not care.
“Hey Juniper.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
I stop walking and swallow thickly. “I love you too.”
We walk the rest of the way to the hotel with him sharing more insane details about his cousins’ love lives. When we reach the door, I turn to him and smile sweetly.
“If you love me, you will let me win at the auction,” I say.
“Are you using my affection for you to manipulate me?”
“Absolutely! Is it working?”
“You know it is.”