Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
EMILY
Sweat tickles my lower back as I think about what is going to happen tonight. What is going to be said, what is going to be thought. I can’t control any of it either. I can’t control what I already did with Beckett and how he feels about me. I can’t control Maisie or whether she hates me or not.
I can’t control anything except myself, and it’s terrifying. Because if this doesn’t work, if his family rejects me, then I know without a doubt he will reject me. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it will happen. He will end this between us, and I’ll be alone. Not just alone, but broken.
So it needs to work. I don’t know if it will, though, not when outside forces swirl around us. I don’t think anyone will really be able to look beyond my past. I can’t see how they would. I’m not sure I could if I were them. And maybe that’s the reality of it all.
Maybe I can’t forgive myself for the rumors I started, for the way I acted for years.
And if I can’t forgive myself, why the hell would any of them?
Baylor is completely unbothered by my panicking. It’s as if I’m not completely losing every single ounce of my shit, which I obviously am. My breathing comes out in short pants, which quicken with each step I take closer to the front door of the house.
The Cooper house.
I fantasized about living in this house my whole childhood.
And now, here I am, standing beside Baylor Cooper, getting ready to walk inside that house—the house.
Every dream I’ve ever had has come true, except it’s a million and a half times better.
It’s beyond anything and everything I could have ever imagined.
I’d always thought the be-all and end-all was having the Cooper last name, but I was wrong, because the be-all and end-all is having the Cooper, and not just any Cooper…
my Cooper. He is the one I was always supposed to end up with because he’s who I love.
I was just too stupid, or blind, or impatient—I’m not sure which, maybe a combination of all three—to see.
Squeezing his fingers, which are laced with mine, I tug on him before he reaches for the doorknob. Baylor stops, turning his head and looking down at me. His eyes find mine before his brows snap together.
“Emily?”
“It’s you,” I whisper.
“Me?” he asks.
Shaking my head back and forth a few times, I can’t look away from him. My focus is on him and always will be on him, because it’s him. It’s Baylor Cooper.
“It’s you, Baylor. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Em, you’re going to have to give me more than that. I don’t know what you’re saying here.”
Lifting my hand, I slide my fingers along his jaw, curling them around the back of his neck. Rising to my toes, I lean forward to touch my mouth to his before I murmur against his lips.
“It was never just the last name Cooper, or your brother Beckett. It was always you, Baylor. You were who I was supposed to be with. I love you. I wasn’t paying attention before, but it was always you.”
He lifts one hand and slides his fingers through my hair. I shift my face back slightly as he tucks my hair behind my ear. I can’t look away. All I can see is him. The world, as it always does, melts away.
I’m not standing in front of the Cooper house. I’m not anywhere but with him. It’s like we’re in a void. It’s just us, just the two of us.
“Yeah, Emily. It’s you for me, too.”