Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
His eyebrows pull together. “Wasn’t that often.”
“I missed you making sure I’d eaten dinner.” I study his cute face. “Missed seeing you through my window when you’d leave for church Sunday mornings. Missed us passing each other when we’d head out to work or come home. I missed … having someone who made more of a fuss over my wellbeing than anyone ever has my whole life.” I smirk at him. “Honestly kinda fuckin’ annoying.”
“Try being the one making the fuss,” he mumbles back.
I lift an eyebrow questioningly.
He takes a breath. “I need you to understand something.”
I’m not done with the big speech I’d planned, but the look in his eyes tells me to listen. “I’m all ears.”
“I don’t need a guardian deciding which people belong in my life, professionally or otherwise.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t need you fighting every battle for me.”
“You’re more than capable of fighting your own.”
“But sometimes … maybe I wouldn’t mind … having you next to me.” He meets my eyes. “When I fight my next one.”
I gaze back at him.
Breath knocked out of me.
“You … still want me next to you?” I ask him, struck by that.
“Depends.”
I frown. “On what?”
“On who’s asking the question.” He lifts an eyebrow. “Is it my neighbor asking?” His eyes drop to my chest. “The guy who comes when I send an SOS? … The guy who … kidnaps an orchid and takes it with him because he didn’t trust to leave it with the new family who moved in next-door?”
“Your boyfriend.”
Wyatt’s eyes snap to mine.
I’m not quite sure that was the end of the path he was leading me down.
But that’s where I brought us. Dropping the hammer with that little word that breaks his beautiful face apart.
“It’s your boyfriend asking,” I tell him. “If you want him next to you for all the battles you fight. I’ll trust you when you tell me you’re unbreakable. And if you fall on your ass anyway …” I shrug. “I can be standing next to you when you get back up.” I come even closer to him, right in front of him. “I don’t wanna just be the guy who comes when you need him anymore. I want to be here.”
“My boyfriend …” he murmurs, like he’s trying it out.
“If you’ll have me.”
His mouth does something funny.
Is it because I came closer to him?
“That’s … awfully presumptuous,” he says, “for a man whose orchid sits on the porch behind him half-dead.”
“It ain’t half dead.”
“Three-eighths.”
“Wyatt.”
His smile finally breaks through. “Yeah.”
My heart stops. “Yeah? Yeah what?”
“Yeah boyfriend.”
The sound of his voice.
Uttering those sweet, perfect words.
Now I’m the one smiling. My heart as light as the breeze over our faces right now. This guy in front of me. This perfect guy.
“Can I kiss you?” I ask him.
Or was about to.
Before he rushes me, pressing his hands to my chest, and the pair of us slam against the side of his porch, lips locked.
Maybe I was lying.
What I missed most was this.
His clumsy, adorable, fumbling shows of affection.
His soft, perfect lips.
His kisses.
“Wyatt,” I whisper. “Your neighbors … they can see us.”
“Let them,” he says back, then dives into our kiss again.
—Epilogue—
The orchid is blooming.
I hate that Diego won’t shut up about it.
Like, one flower.
A single one.
You’d think the man resurrected a rainforest.
It has found the perfect spot in my front kitchen window now. Diego is its king and servant. He knows precisely how much water it needs and when. Studied where the light hits. When to rotate it. I’ve had to listen to him talking about it for months.
Don’t get me wrong.
I’m low-key delighted, high-key proud that my boyfriend has mastered the delicate art of keeping a plant alive.
Even if it means, after waking up late one Friday morning, I stumble tiredly into the kitchen to find my dear Diego tending to his orchid before he’s even put on the coffee.
His eye catches something through the window. He waves. It’s one of Nicole’s sons, handsome and full of charm, hanging a pretty blue wind chime on their porch, and he waves cheerily back.
Diego is just in his boxers, by the way.
Oh, how so spectacularly ineffective our attempt at privacy has become.
One of Nicole’s sons is gay, by the way. Just heard it last week through Lottie’s book club ladies, who can’t say which of the Berry brothers is gay, only that one of them most definitely, totally is.
Yep. I’m in the group chat, too, now.
Thanks, Lottie.
“We ordering out or staying in tonight?” asks Diego through a mouthful of toothpaste.
I spit into the sink and nudge him. “Bonnie’s thing.”
“Ahh. Forgot.” He spits too, then eyes me. “No chance of—?”
“If I have to be there and Mindy and Joel have to be there and even somehow Lance and Chad got roped in—”
“Okay, okay, okay.”
I put a toothpasty peck on his lips and say, “Thanks, love. I’m off. Gotta get a head start on training the new gal.”