Chapter 25 #3
A season about people who came back to fight for the ending they didn’t get the first time, where the game refused to hold still long enough to let anybody keep the plan they’d arrived with, and the whole thing came down to whether an alliance could survive despite separation.
She’d pitched Doug on second chances like she’d stake the whole franchise on them, when she’d been sitting here waiting for some perfect, airtight plan that would make her worthy of her own.
She had made a huge fucking mistake.
She was certain of it. She should have said yes to making things official, yes to doing long distance, and then fucking figured it out. And she needed to tell Aspen. Tonight.
She picked up her phone and checked the time. 8:04pm.
She could probably get to Coronado in under two and half hours. She had a deck rehearsal at Margaret’s at noon tomorrow. She could make it there and back in time.
She paused. What was she even going to do when she got there? Show up at Aspen’s door at 11 p.m. and deliver some mortifying speech about what an idiot she’d been and how she wanted every inconvenient long-distance ounce of a real relationship with her?
Maddy stood up.
Yes. That was exactly what she was going to do.
She rushed down the hall into her room to pack an overnight bag.
Fresh underwear—make that two pairs of fresh underwear because this was Aspen St. Claire and Maddy’s panties got ruined just at the sight of her—a pantsuit so she could head straight to her meeting tomorrow, heels, toothbrush, deodorant, makeup bag—
Her hand stalled over the makeup bag.
What if Aspen wasn’t alone? What if the date went well, and she brought her home, and Maddy drove a hundred miles to find out in the worst possible way that she was already too late?
Maddy shook her head and threw the makeup into her tote bag. Didn’t matter. She was doing this.
Within five minutes, Maddy was out the door, throwing her bag into the backseat, and heading south.
* * *
Maddy approached Aspen’s door with her heart hammering in her chest.
This was about to be either the most romantic thing she’d ever done or the single most humiliating. The jury was still out on which. And that, she thought, was why she didn’t become a fucking lawyer.
Maddy took a deep breath, and knocked.
Footsteps approached from inside. Maddy’s pulse picked up with each one. The deadbolt unlocked and the door swung open, and Maddy forgot every word she’d ever known.
It had only been ten days, but somehow that had been long enough to blur the details, and they all came back at once: Aspen’s gorgeous dark eyes, blown wide with surprise; that sexy mouth, the one Maddy had memorized, parted now around a question; all that hair loose over her shoulders begging for Maddy to run her hands through it.
“Maddy? What are you doing here?” Aspen’s surprise shifted into concern. “Did something happen? Are you o—”
“I’m fine. Nothing happened. I just—” The speech she’d spent the past two hours and eight minutes rehearsing was gone. Every word. “Can I come in?”
Aspen hesitated, then nodded slightly and stepped aside to let her pass.
With her back to the room, Maddy exhaled, one long unsteady breath, and shook her hands out where Aspen couldn’t see them. At least there was no one else here. Thank God. When she heard the door click shut behind her, she turned to face Aspen. Fuck, she was gorgeous.
Aspen didn’t meet her eyes. “Maddy, wh—”
“I’m sorry.” Maddy blurted out. Aspen’s eyes snapped up and locked on hers.
Maddy took a careful step forward. “I’m so sorry, Aspen.
For what I said before I left, and for not fighting you on it when you ended things because of it.
I was wrong to think I couldn’t do both—my new job and be in a relationship with you. ”
Aspen’s brows pulled together. She didn’t say anything.
Maddy kept going, because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hold herself together if she stopped.
“I know I was wrong, because I have done nothing but think about you for the past ten days. I can’t even begin to tell you how many texts I started to type to you and then deleted, or how many times I wanted to call you just to tell you about my day and hear about yours.
” Her voice cracked, her vision getting blurry with tears.
“And even though I was completely…heartbroken,” she pushed the word out around the lump in her throat, the tears spilling over, “and thinking about you nonstop, that didn’t stop me from crushing my new job. ” A wet laugh escaped.
Aspen’s eyes had gone glossy too, but she stayed silent. Maddy wasn’t sure she’d even blinked since Maddy had started talking.
Maddy stepped closer. “I’m not perfect, Aspen.
And I will deny it if you ever told anyone I said that.
” The corner of Aspen’s mouth twitched. “I’m stubborn, and competitive, and a control freak, and I’m not very good at…
this,” she gestured between them, “vulnerability, and feelings, and confessions. But I want to get better at it. With you. I’m not ready to…
say everything yet—everything that you said to me…
” she said carefully. “But I want to be with you. Officially. I want you to come visit me in LA and attend network events with me where I introduce you as my girlfriend, and you whisper dirty things in my ear throughout the night to try to break my professional composure and I elbow you in the ribs, and then we end up having sex in the backseat of my car because we can’t make it ten more minutes without ripping each other’s clothes off.
” She saw Aspen losing the fight to her smile.
She took another half a step closer and gently wrapped her fingers around Aspen’s wrists.
“And I want to come visit you here whenever I have a break between in-person meetings and go to dinner with you at The Huxley, and hold your hand at the aquarium, and be your partner at St. Claire game nights, and go to Wave games with you and kiss you in front of thirty thousand people when we score.”
She brought both hands up to cup Aspen’s jaw, her thumbs wiping at the tears running down Aspen’s cheeks.
“And I should have said all of this to you the night before I left, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Aspen.” She pressed their foreheads together. Aspen’s eyes fell shut, and her shaky hands came up to rest on Maddy’s hips. “Please tell me I’m not too late. That you still want all of that too.”
Aspen sniffled, her voice thick. “Are you sure?”
Maddy pulled back an inch, just enough to find her eyes. “I have never been more sure about anything in my life.”
Aspen pulled their bodies together and kissed her.
Maddy’s hands slid around the back of Aspen’s neck and kissed her back, hard, ten days of longing and missing and aching for this moment, all at once.
And then the kiss softened. When their lips broke apart, neither of them pulled back, their lips brushing lightly as they caught their breath, foreheads pressed together.
“Is that a yes?” Maddy asked. She could feel the smile taking over her face.
Aspen laughed, a gorgeous grin finally forming on those perfect lips. “Yes.”
Relief hit so hard Maddy had to lock her knees. She wrapped both arms all the way around Aspen’s neck and pulled her in, and Aspen’s arms came around her back and squeezed.
This was why she was here. Why she had driven two and half hours to show up at a doorstep at nearly eleven o’clock at night just to have to turn right back around nine hours later.
And it was completely worth it. Because whatever came next, whatever challenges she had to face after this moment, she’d be facing them as Aspen St. Claire’s girlfriend.