“So…wait.” Shaking my head, I got to my knees and sat back on my heels. Was he doing my work for me? Was this what I thought it might be? It seemed like too much to hope for. “What exactly are you saying?”
He sat up and took my hands. “I’m saying what you said yesterday. I want more. I love you and I miss you every day. I lied when I said I was happy with the way things are—I’m not. I want more; I’m just scared.”
I felt like jumping up and down on the bed, but reined in my excitement. Proceed with caution. You don’t know what he wants yet. “How much more?”
He hesitated, the question suspended in the air between us, and I almost asked it again before he answered. “Stay with me. Live with me.”
OK, f**k caution.
“Yes!” I shouted, throwing my arms around his neck. “Yes, yes, yes!” Swaying from side to side, I breathed in the scent of his skin. Oh my God, I’ll have this around me all the time. “Yes.”
Laughing, Lucas wrapped his arms around my waist and held me close.
“Sorry. I can’t seem to think of any other word.”
He squeezed me. “It’s OK. I always love to hear you say yes.”
Breathless, I sat back on my heels again and took his hands. “You said you’re scared. What are you scared of?”
“Lots of things. For one, I’m scared of marriage. You know that. I saw what it did to my dad when my mom left. And words like forever, eternity, till death do us part…” He shook his head. “Are they realistic? I mean, maybe they are, I don’t know. Right now it feels like we’ll be in love forever, and I hope we are, but marriage scares the shit out of me. I’ve seen it ruin solid relationships. That’s why I’ve always been up front about my position. You say you’re OK with it, but what if you change your mind and leave me for someone who wants that piece of paper?”
I dropped his hands. “Don’t compare me to Jessica.”
“I’m not, Mia—I swear, I’m not.” He picked them up again, stroking my wrists with his thumbs. “Listen. You’re so different. You scare me way more than she ever did. When she left, I felt bad, but never once did I think I wouldn’t meet someone else, someone I’d love more. Someone who gets me the way you do, who loves me like you do. Someone who lets me love her the way I want to—all the ways I want to.”
Whoosh.
Heat flashed through me thinking about all his ways. Damn I loved his ways.
“I think that’s what makes taking the next step so hard for me—it’s not that I don’t love you enough to make a bigger commitment. It’s that I’m afraid I won’t measure up, you’ll find someone who does, and I’ll never find anyone as amazing as you.”
I shook my head. “What?”
“You’ve had this idea in your head of the perfect man for so long. I bet he didn’t look like me, sound like me, or act like me. I’ve been putting off admitting—even to myself—that I want to live together because I’m hiding this fear that once you’re with me all the time, you’ll realize that I’m not what you want. I guess, in the back of my mind, I felt like it was safer to keep you at a distance. But now I’m all messed up, because I love you too much to keep you at a distance any longer.” He exhaled, leaning back against the headboard. “Fuck, it feels good to say this stuff out loud.”
I scooted closer to him. “Lucas, I’m scared too. My life has taken this crazy turn in the last year and nothing looks like I thought it would. I’m not where I thought I’d be. And no, you are not who I pictured when I fantasized about my perfect husband. Or the perfect wedding, the perfect home, the perfect family.”
He blinked. “Is this supposed to make me feel better?”
“Yes. Let me finish.” I pulled back the sheet—holy crap, I’d almost forgotten we were naked—and straddled his hips. “What I’m trying to say is, there’s no perfect life without you. In fact, I no longer dream about a “perfect” life. I only dream about a life with you.”
Lucas sat up and kissed me hard, threading his fingers through my hair. “I dream about a life with you too. I want to make you happy, Mia. And if a ring means that much to you—”
I stopped him with two fingers over his lips. “I don’t need a ring right now, Lucas. I don’t need a marriage certificate. I don’t even need you to promise I’ll get those things in the future—right now, I’m happy just to hear you say you want a life with me. We can take that life one day at a time and see where it leads us.”
He kissed me again, and as he moved his lips over mine, his hands cradling my head, I realized the words I’d just said were true. I’d come here with a question about what our future would look like, but Lucas’s mind worked differently than mine. He didn’t know what the future looked like; he just knew he wanted to build one with me. He’d even been willing to put a ring on my finger to reassure me of his commitment.
But surprisingly, I didn’t want that—not now, anyway.
If and when he ever proposed, I wanted the question to come from a place other than fear.
“Let’s be fearless, Lucas,” I murmured, running my hands up his chest. Blood was surging through my veins, and I felt more alive, more exhilarated, more aroused than I’d ever felt before. Not in a purely sexual way—although his c**k was hardening beneath me, and my body was sizzling in all the right places—but in all ways, as if there were cells in my body that had lain dormant, and now they were awake, alert, electrified.