Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 16403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 82(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 16403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 82(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
The silence stretches out and I watch her process it all. She wipes her face again and finally meets my eyes.
"I still don't understand why you never said anything. If you … if it was really me you wanted."
Here's my card to put on the table. The thing I've carried just as long, pointing the other direction. "Because I was sure you thought I was beneath you."
She blinks. "What?"
"You were brilliant. Honor roll, headed somewhere I didn't think I belonged. I was the jock with good hands and nothing upstairs, at least in my own head. I figured if I made a move, you'd give me the kind, sorry, polite no, and I couldn't handle that. So I never reached."
We look at each other across the narrow space between the beds. Ten fucking years. The waste of it would be funny if it didn't hurt so much.
"We're idiots," she says quietly.
"Yeah. We really are."
But there's one more card I need to turn over. The biggest one. The most important thing to lay all her worries to rest. I've practiced it a thousand times in my head, but fuck, I can't remember a thing.
I snap my eyes shut, and decide that fuck it, I will just tell her what's in my mind right now. I open my eyes and hold her gaze.
"You were never the second choice, Harriet. You were the first choice. The only choice. The reason I couldn't make a move wasn't because you didn't matter. It's because you mattered too much to risk losing."
Tears well in her eyes, but she blinks them back. I stay rooted to my spot and shove my hands in my pockets. I don't want to go there yet. I need to say all these things because the moment I touch her, my thoughts would shatter and scatter.
"I've been in love with you since we were kids," I tell her. "At school, I wanted to hang around you, but there was this one time, I think in middle school, I tried to sit beside you at lunch, but you grabbed your tray and transferred somewhere else. I figured you didn't want to be seen with me, and I didn't want you to be uncomfortable."
"Heath." Her voice breaks on my name. "I love you too. I've loved you so long I forgot what it felt like to not love you. And that middle school moment? I heard one of your friends tell you not to sit by the losers' table."
"He wasn't my friend."
That's it. That's everything I needed to hear.
I cross to her, pull her to me, and slam my mouth to hers, kissing her with everything in me. Harriet opens her mouth, and I grab the chance to slither my tongue and tangle it with hers.
The door bangs open.
We break apart and there's Gram in the doorway, taking in the scene with a smug smile and an even smugger nod.
"Well," she says, not even bothering to hide her pleasure. "Guess I can't die yet. Still got great-grand babies to meet."
EPILOGUE
HARRIET
One year later…
The house is quiet when I walk through the front door.
The Lanes are never quiet. Either everyone has magically disappeared or they're hiding something, and with this family, it's a coin flip.
Heath's still out at the car wrestling with our suitcases—his team's victory yesterday means he's got approximately seventeen different team gear bags to haul in—so I'm flying solo on reconnaissance.
The kitchen's empty. No coffee brewing, no one arguing about whether the bacon's too crispy, no Gram holding court from her throne at the head of the table.
"Mom? Dad? Gram?"
Nothing.
"Gran Juliet?"
Still nothing, which is especially weird because Gran Juliet's hearing aid makes her speak at roughly the volume of a small aircraft.
I've seen too many horror movies to go poking through empty bedrooms one by one like the girl who dies first. Better to find Heath—he'll know what to do. He always knows what to do, which is one of the many reasons I'm completely gone for him.
I head back toward the driveway to drag him away from the luggages, but when I round the corner of the house, there they all are.
The entire family. Down by the fire pit. And Heath isn't by the car anymore—he's standing in the middle of them.
Gram is behind him, looking smug with her glass of sweet tea.
Gram's had a full year to scheme since she successfully trapped me and Heath in the attic, and she's been suspiciously well-behaved lately. Which means she's been suspiciously up to something.
This is that something.
I'm just three steps away when Heath drops to one knee.
Oh.
Oh God. Is this what I think it is?
"I've always loved you, Harriet. Only ever you. Now will you please put me out of this stress and anxiety, which I've been suffering from for over a month, and give me the honor of becoming my wife?"