Chapter 50
MILO
Sadie is radiant. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes bright, her smile the kind that makes a grown man forget everything else—stripping the world down to what’s right in front of him.
And it’s always been her.
As we step outside, we’re met with rain. Sadie lets go of my hand, lifting her palms up toward the sky and then spinning around in it, letting it soak her as she laughs.
I watch her, grinning. Her black dress soon hugs against all her curves, and her mascara runs freely down her face.
Then she lets her arms drop and tilts her face up to the sky, letting the heavens cleanse her. I swear I see all her hesitation rolling down her skin as it puddles around her feet.
When she finally looks over at me, she says, “You didn’t kiss a stranger.”
I close the gap, everything wet and wild between us. “I don’t want to kiss a stranger,” I breathe.
Her eyes slowly drag up toward mine. “You don’t?”
“I’ve only ever wanted to kiss you, Sadie Summers.”
“Ever?” she teases with a tilt of her head.
“Ever.” I give her the truth.
I trace her jaw with my thumb, then tilt her mouth toward mine, lowering my lips slowly until I feel her softness melt into me, the cold rain steaming as she flings her arms around my neck, deepening the kiss.
When she pulls away, her mouth swollen and smeared with lipstick, she says, “I love you, Milo Carter.”
Her words release something in me I’ve been holding on to, and it’s hope.
Hope for us. Hope for our future. Hope that the love we had when we were young hadn’t disappeared—it had just been waiting for us to grow into it.
I rest my forehead against hers, rain tapping softly against my back, her breath warm against my lips. “I love you, Sadie Summers. I always have and always will,” I murmur.
She smiles, the kind that starts small and turns certain. “And because I love you, you have to take the job.”
My mind scrambles while my heart twists. The memory flashes behind my eyelids. A decade later, it’s the same conversation. Sadie telling me to go. Sadie telling me to choose football.
Her hands are soft on my face, forcing me to open my eyes to look into her beautiful brown ones.
“I know you didn’t come back to Dusty Hollow to teach.
I know you came back for me, and I—” She pauses, placing a quick kiss on my slack lips.
“I don’t want my life there, and I can’t be the reason you don’t take this job.
I need to figure some things out. On my own. ”
“Sadie, I don’t want the job. I want you,” I say honestly, my voice trembling, beginning to break.
She smiles, tears pooling. “I know, but I have to figure out who I am first, without all I’ve been the last ten years. I’m not saying I don’t want you, Milo. I’m just not going to hold you back while I figure it out.”
“You aren’t holding me back,” I argue as the pain in my chest pulses, a stabbing sensation I could choke on. “You can’t tell me to go when I don’t want to.”
Everything I want—who I want—is standing right in front of me.
“Milo.” She says my name gently.
“We can figure it out together.” My fingers thread in her drenched hair. “We can do this together.”
Tears fall down her face, their heat melting her rain-streaked mascara.
“I have to do this for myself. Remember how you needed time to heal? I need that, too. I’ve lived almost ten years without you.
Ten years of choices that I’ve got to face.
This is the favor I’m cashing in. Take the job and let me go. ”
The bet.
From yesterday. The one I agreed to without thinking.
“That’s not fair, Sadie,” I murmur.
“For years,” she says, voice quiet but sure, “I’ve just . . . stayed. Stayed where it was safe. Stayed where people expected me to be. And I don’t even know when I stopped asking what I wanted.”
My chest tightens, but I don’t interrupt.
“I love you,” she continues, eyes locked on mine.
“That hasn’t changed, even after all these years.
When I saw you again, my heart knew before I let my head catch up.
” A small shaky smile touches her mouth before fading.
“But I can’t build a life on just loving you. Not if I don’t know who I am in it.”
Rain drips from her lashes, her fingers curling lightly into my shirt like she’s steadying herself.
“I need to figure out what I want . . . without it being about who needs me or who I might disappoint.” Her voice softens. “Because if I don’t, I’ll keep shrinking myself to make everyone happy. Even you.”
That lands harder than anything else. “You can’t disappoint me, Bookworm.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not just about you. This is about me. I’ve disappointed myself.”
“I can be the one to remind you every day of how amazing you are, of how loved you are,” I plead as I frame her face with my hands.
“And I know you would, but I need what you did. I need to find forgiveness for myself. I want to choose you with my whole heart, not just the part of me that’s always loved you.”
Her cold hand wipes the tears and rain from my face. “This isn’t forever, Milo. I’m just choosing myself right now so I can come to you as someone who knows how to stand on her own first—just like you did.”
I nod against her hands that are now cupping my face, and then my mouth covers hers hungrily, letting her feel all of me want her—only her.
We kiss in the rain until we have nothing left in our lungs, and when we walk together back to the hotel, I know I must let her go and trust that she’ll come back to me just like I came back to her.
It took me almost four years when everything I’d built my life around came crashing down. I can only pray it doesn’t take her as long. But even if it does, Sadie Summers will always be the woman worth waiting for.