Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 41687 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 167(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41687 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 167(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
“I have never thought that, Robbie Warren. Not for a single second. You’re worth everything,” he said fiercely. “Every risk, every complication, every moment of fear. You always have been. It’s never been about you not being enough for me. It’s exactly the opposite, baby. I’ve never wanted to hold you back.”
I wanted to believe him. So fucking much. But the scared, broken part of me that had spent six weeks thinking I’d never see Kit again, that I’d have to cut him out of my life to save my own sanity, wasn’t ready to hope again. Every time I hoped for more, he left.
Before I could tell him any of that, he leaned down and picked something up I hadn’t noticed before, a brown paper shopping bag with handles. “I brought something for you,” he said nervously. “Can I come in and show it to you?”
My curiosity, along with my raw need for him, meant there was only one response. “Yes.”
I led him into the cozy living room, where the small white sofa meant I’d be sitting close enough to inhale his familiar scent. I took a breath and held it. “What’s that?”
He pulled a large glass jar out of the bag. It was similar to the one I kept my “magpie” treasures in, only it had a screw-on lid instead of the kind that clamped with a metal latch. Inside was a motley collection of items.
“It’s all the things I collected for you over the years that I never gave you.”
I stared at the jar before looking up to meet his eyes. “What do you mean? What could you… when… why didn’t you give them to me?”
He unscrewed the lid and began to shake items into his hand, one by one. “This is the tab on the soda from the night of your father’s funeral. When we kissed. I went back to my room and grabbed a cold can from the mini fridge to hold against my neck because I’d never been more turned on in my fucking life. I felt like I was going to combust.” He set it on the cushion between us before reaching in for another treasure. “This is the string bracelet I found in a shop in Vancouver on your twentieth birthday that had all the colors of your eyes. As soon as I got it home, I realized I could never give it to you without sounding like a creep. And this… this is the ticket stub from the night we saw Captain America together, and you told me Chris Evans was sexy but too nice for you.”
My face heated, not only from embarrassment at the memory but with the sheer heat of his intense focus and the shocking truth of his attention all these years.
“And this,” he said, pulling out a strangely neon-pink feather. “Was from your costume in a school play where you played a dead bird.” He laughed and shook his head. “You were so fucking cute. And this is a shell from the night that I…”
“That you what?” I breathed, mesmerized by what he was revealing. The heart-shaped scallop shell was tiny in his broad palm.
“That I realized I wanted you. When you made your confession in the office at the beach house. I went for a long walk that night and found this shell. Only… I realized I couldn’t give it to you. Couldn’t tell you that it marked the moment between not knowing and knowing.”
He cleared his throat and continued showing me things from the jar. Things he’d picked up on trips or pulled from shared moments. Item after item carried nostalgic importance or simply reminded him of me. It was overwhelming and real. Solid and irrefutable proof that I was loved and seen. Remembered and cared for.
There was a stone he’d picked up in Moab when he’d left after Dad’s funeral. A seltzer bottle cap from the night I’d slept in his bed after Hawthorne had been arrested. The missing button from my pants the night we’d had sex in his office. There were also small, beautiful sculptures of animals from all over the world he thought my students would like, a cardboard coaster from a private event where a favorite band of mine had played, and colorful, braided threads he’d found and fiddled with during my college graduation ceremony.
“Magpie,” he breathed, eyes meeting mine with the kind of love I could no longer deny seeing when he looked at me. “You’ve been mine for a very long time. My greatest treasure. The only thing I have left to offer you is my heart. It’s jaded and battered, but it’s yours.”
The vulnerability in his voice was devastating. This wasn’t the controlled, confident Kit Evers who ran board meetings and made million-dollar deals. This was just a man out of his element, offering me his heart with shaking hands.