Chapter 37
Micah Barrett
I clear my throat, but the words stick there like wet sand. I have to tell her how I feel. I can’t let her just leave without me saying something. My hands are shaking—full-on earthquakes that I have to hide by pressing my palms together.
The anxiety is a familiar weight on my chest, that crushing sensation that makes every breath feel like I’m drowning on dry land.
My mind races through a thousand scenarios.
What if she doesn’t feel the same way? What if I make her uncomfortable?
What if this ruins everything we have? But then I think about Cricket walking away, and that terrifies me more than any rejection ever could.
I have to stop being a coward. The sun is sinking lower, and I know this moment won’t last forever.
Neither will she—not if I keep hiding behind my anxiety like it’s some kind of shield.
I think about all the times she’s stood by me, talking to record labels when I couldn’t, handling crowds when they overwhelmed me, and listening to every song I write.
She’s never asked me to be anyone other than who I am.
The least I can do is be brave enough to tell her the truth.
I can’t let her leave without knowing how I feel about her, even if my voice shakes, even if the words come out wrong, even if my heart is pounding so hard I’m sure she can hear it over the waves.
My mind spins, and suddenly I know how I need to tell her. “I wrote a song for you,” I say, my voice rough with emotion.
She jerks her gaze to me, the shock evident on her face. “You did?”
I swallow back the fear. The anxiety. I have to do this now, or I’ll lose my nerve. “Yeah. Want to hear it?”
“Of course.”
I pick up my guitar and strum it. “I wrote this a while ago, after realizing something important.”
The seconds tick by as she waits for me to continue. I lift my gaze to hers and try to convey all of my feelings to her. I strum another chord, and a light flickers into her eyes. I know she recognizes it.
I start to sing the song I wrote about her. The song that talks about my feelings for a woman who doesn’t see me that way. The song that she thought was about Kiera.
At first, I see confusion behind her gaze. But as I sing the words that so perfectly fit Cricket, I see her cheeks flush. I can tell she’s understanding that those lyrics aren’t about Kiera at all.
They’re about her.
The last chord fades, and I sit there, swallowing back the emotions inside of me. I did it. I told her how I feel through my song, and I know this time, she won’t misunderstand.
She just stares at me, and something inside of me pushes me to say it out loud. To be perfectly clear.
I set my guitar down. “I love you, Jiminy.”
Cricket Jenkins
Time stops. I blink, not wanting to break this fantasy by saying something. Am I imagining this? Do I want him to love me so badly that my brain conjured up this scene out of desperate hope?
He’s looking at me with such tenderness, such vulnerability. It’s what I’ve always wanted. What I’ve needed from him.
Micah smiles at me, soft and uncertain, and reaches out his hand to cup my cheek. His palm is warm against my skin, his thumb brushing across my cheekbone. “I think I’ve loved you for a long time. I just didn’t know it until someone came along and tried to take you from me.”
My vision blurs as tears flood my eyes. I blink, and they spill down my cheeks in hot tracks. This is a dream. It has to be. He isn’t saying what I think he’s saying. Any second now, I’ll wake up in my bed, alone, and realize this was just another cruel fantasy my heart created.
“Please don’t go. I know I’ve been an idiot. I’ve been so stupid for so long.” His voice cracks slightly, and I can see fear in his gray eyes—fear that I don’t feel the same way, that I’ll leave anyway. “Is it possible that we could try… that we could be more than friends?”
I can’t speak. I can’t even breathe. My lungs have forgotten how to work. Micah really is saying what I’ve longed for him to say all these years. My heart swells so large I think it might burst right out of my chest. “You love me?” I ask, my voice cracking on the words.
Micah catches a tear with his thumb, gently wiping it away. “Yes. I love you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone.”
A shiver runs through me—part cold, part overwhelming emotion that has nowhere to go but out through my skin.
Micah shrugs out of his jacket and places it over my shoulders.
The leather still holds his body heat, wrapping me in warmth and his scent.
I hadn’t realized how chilly it had become, the sun now halfway gone, the sky deepening to purple and indigo.
I shove my arms through the sleeves and hug it to myself, drowning in the jacket and in the moment.
“I love you too,” I say in a whisper, as if saying it out loud would make this magical moment dissipate like morning mist.
“You do?” His voice is so hopeful it almost makes me laugh.
“Yes. I even wrote my feelings in my story, and you didn’t see it.”
He shakes his head. “What? Your book?”
I laugh—a sound caught between a sob and pure joy—too elated to hold it in any longer. “Yes. I was trying to tell you. But you didn’t get it. I thought you looked at me like a sister.”
“I did. Until that kiss.” Micah scoots nearer to me, pulling me into his warm chest.
I snuggle against him, fitting into the curve of his body like I was made to be there.
“I was so confused when it was the most amazing kiss I’d ever had.” His voice rumbles against my ear. “I thought we were just friends and that I was the worst friend in the world because I was suddenly very attracted to you, and you were dating River.”
I shake my head against his chest. “We’d broken up by then. But River didn’t want me to tell you. He wanted to see if you’d get jealous.”
“Oh, I did.” Micah’s laugh is half embarrassed, half fierce. “I kind of wanted to punch him in the throat every time I saw him put a hand on you.”
I don’t know why, but this makes me even happier. The thought of Micah jealous, territorial, wanting me for himself, sends a thrill through me. “You did?”
“Heck yeah. He was driving me crazy. I was seriously going nuts. I wanted you for myself so badly.”
“Then his plan worked.”
Micah kisses the top of my head, his lips lingering in my hair. “Yeah. It worked. I fell so hard for you I don’t think there’s any going back.”
I pull back so I can look at him, needing to see his face when I ask this. “What happens if…” The question sticks in my throat, too terrifying to voice.
“If what?” His eyes search mine, gentle and patient.
“If we break up,” I say quietly, the words like stones dropping into still water.
Micah shakes his head firmly. “I don’t know.
All I know is I can’t watch you leave without doing everything in my power to get you to stay with me.
I need you in my life, Cricket. You’re a part of me, in the most meaningful way possible.
And I have a chance at having something most people only dream of—a love so deep and wide that nothing can hold it back. I’m not going to give that up.”
Warmth spreads through me, radiating from my chest to the tips of my fingers and toes as I stare into his beautiful gray eyes. He’s looking at me like I’m his whole world, like I’m the answer to every question he’s ever had.
“Then I won’t give up either,” I whisper.
Micah’s expression shifts to relief and joy and desire all tangled together. He slips his hand around the back of my neck, his fingers threading through my hair, and pulls me to him with exquisite slowness. He’s giving me time to pull away, to change my mind, even though we both know I never will.
His lips brush softly over mine—tentative, questioning—and the whole world goes still. The ocean waves fade to nothing. The cries of the gulls disappear. The breeze stops moving. Everything narrows down to this single point of contact, this moment I’ve been dreaming of for years.
Then he deepens the kiss, and I’m lost.
His lips move with mine in a slow dance that takes my breath away, stealing it right from my lungs and replacing it with something sweeter—hope, love, promise.
One hand cradles the back of my head while the other slides to my waist, pulling me closer until there’s no space between us.
I grab fistfuls of his shirt as the world spins around us.
This kiss is nothing like the demonstration. This is everything. This is confession and commitment and coming home all wrapped into one perfect moment. His lips are soft but insistent, his touch both gentle and possessive, and I melt into him completely.
When he pulls back slightly, just enough to look at me, we’re both breathing hard. His eyes are dark, his lips slightly swollen, and he’s smiling at me like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Like Mr. Darcy would look at Elizabeth.
“I’ve been such an idiot,” he whispers against my lips.
“Yes,” I agree, smiling so wide my face hurts. “But you’re my idiot now.”
He laughs and kisses me again, shorter this time but no less intense. When we finally break apart, the sun has set completely, leaving us in the soft purple twilight. Stars are beginning to appear overhead, pinpricks of light in the darkening sky.
This is what I’ve always wanted. What I’ve needed from the time I realized Micah was my one true love. And now my dreams are finally coming true.
Micah pulls me against his side, both of us looking out at the dark ocean, then he turns toward me. “Stay with me,” he murmurs into my hair. “Stay on the island. Be my manager and my girlfriend and eventually, if you’ll have me, so much more.”
My heart swells impossibly larger. “I’m not going anywhere,” I promise. “I’m right here.”
“Right here,” he echoes, saying the title of the song he wrote, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “Where you’ve always been.”
He kisses my forehead. We sit there on the beach as night falls around us, wrapped in each other and his leather jacket. The ocean continues its eternal rhythm, the waves rolling in and out like a heartbeat.
And for the first time in years, I’m not wishing for something different. I’m not hoping for a future that seems impossible. I’m just here, in this perfect moment, with the boy I’ve loved forever finally loving me back.
My own happily ever after.