Chapter 20
Nolan follows without a word as I grab his hand and we disappear through the doors and down the first hallway I find.
“Harper, where are we—” I cut him off with a kiss.
Too many thoughts race through my head and I need to spill them all.
Dragging my lips from his, I step back. “You love me,” I laugh between the words.
When he answers yes, my laughter becomes uncontrollable.
I pitch forward nearing hysterics, clutching my chest as my breath sticks in my throat and tears blur his frame.
Nolan simply looks at me with a soft smile and waits for me to come to my senses.
It doesn't take long. But in that short timeframe I realize that Nolan looks at me the way I looked at the paintings in the gallery I worked at. He studies me with a delicate eye, rooted to the ground in awe. He looks at me like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be, and the realization hits me.
“I don't want to stay here,” I blurt out, reaching for his hands.
“We can go back to my place.”
“No, I mean in Cupid. I don't want to stay in Cupid, I hate it here. My family is everywhere and I don’t want to be anywhere they are.”
“Where should we go?”
“I—wait, we?”
“Yes, we.”
I shake my head, trying to get the idea that he would so easily leave everything behind to follow me to settle. “What about you? Your life is here now.”
“My life is wherever you are. If you want to leave, I’ll follow. We can go to the city, visit new galleries every week, or we can find another small town and live our lives out in the countryside. We can go anywhere you want because I’m going to be wherever you are, Harper.”
“Because you love me,” I state. Not a question, I just want to hear it again. See what it feels like on my tongue.
“Because I love you.” He takes my face in between his hands, resting his forehead against mine. “I love you,” he repeats, kissing the tip of my nose. “I love you.” A kiss to my right cheek. “I love you.” A kiss to my left check.
He pulls back but I beat him to it. “And I love you.” I confess, pressing my lips against Nolan’s. A man who’s quickly become my home. A man who’s given me everything, when all I ever wanted was to be wanted.
Nolan is the type of man you read about in books, the type of leading man you watch on the big screen and fantasize about finding, even though you know he probably doesn't exist in real life. He was the man starring in my daydreams while at my desk and he’s standing in front of me telling me I can have everything I want in life.
Everything was worth it. Midnights, the masks, every turn my life took. Every rejection, every time I was looked over and not chosen. It was all worth it in the end because it led me to this moment.
It led me here.
It led me to Nolan.
“I was hoping it would be you,” I whisper against his lips. He blinks as I smile against him. “At Midnights, when a tall, masked man approached me and asked me to go back to his room. In my head, I wanted it to be you.”
When Nolan’s soft chuckle reverberates against my lips, I see it.
The life we live together; learning how to love each other throughout the years, where I'm bathed in the softness I was cruelly denied growing up. I taste the aching sweetness of the life he’ll bring me on his lips and in his breath as he whispers back, “I was hoping it would be you, too.”