Chapter 49

49

Annika

Mama's making chocolate chip cookies. She's in the kitchen, which is in a tent on a boat, which is a little weird, but she's cooked on alligator backs before too, so this isn't outside the range of normal.

I just hope the milk doesn't spill into the snapping turtles.

Into?

Onto.

Spill onto the turtles.

I suck in a deep breath of cookie goodness again, and that's when reality comes crashing down around me.

Mama can't see.

She shouldn't be using the oven. Not alone, anyway.

My eyes fly open, the blank stars on my ceiling sit there and stare back at me, and I leap out of bed.

Then I remember my entire body is one huge overworked muscle of pain, and I squeak and go down.

My ass lands on the thin carpet with a jolt, and I swear on mama's cinnamon rolls, I am never dating again, because then I'll never be motivated to do something as stupid as making up my own triathlon of death again.

"Annika? You okay?"

Grady leans in my doorway and looks down at me, concern etched in his blue-green eyes, which are definitely more green today, and I must still be dreaming, because Grady Rock is in Mama's house.

Except this is Mama's house.

My old twin bed with the saggy mattress.

The stars on the ceiling.

The now-faded Harry Potter movie poster hiding the hole in the wall where I accidentally put a softball through it when Bailey was a baby, right next to my posters of Paris and Disney World and Australia.

This isn't a dream.

Grady's in Mama's house, looking at me like I didn't tell him to take a flying leap and get out of my life yesterday.

My heart launches into space and takes my brain with it.

"Mama?" I croak, because that's all my voice can muster.

"She's at Duh-Nuts. Are you okay?"

"What are you doing here?"

"I don't give up on the people I love. You want a cookie? Just came out of the oven. And they go equally well with milk or Jack. Your choice."

I blink at him.

Then blink again.

My vision blurs, but he's still standing there.

"Why?" I whisper.

"You always liked my cookies."

"No, why—why are you here?"

He crosses the room in three steps and squats to the floor in front of me. "I. Love. You."

I'm supposed to say something, but panic is flooding my veins while my heart tries to bat it all away with a broom like it's a mouse.

Grady loves me.

He loves me .

"And I'm not letting you go this time without a fight," he adds, that beautiful blue-green gaze daring me to tell him he'll have to fight for me.

Telling me he'll enjoy the hell out of fighting for me.

Telling me I'm worth fighting for.

Oh .

He's here.

He came back.

He loves me .

"I can't fight," I rasp out, because once I say I love you too , it's out, and I can't take it back, and I do. I love him. I love him and I was such an asshole yesterday and I don't deserve him being back.

"You can't?" he murmurs.

"I can't even lift my pinky finger," I confess.

He ducks his head, but I know he's grinning. "Overdid it yesterday?"

"Shut up."

"Aw, Annika." He moves to sit next to me, wraps an arm around me, and reaches across with his other hand to stroke my aching bicep like it's not a big deal that I'm sitting here about to have a mental breakdown because I told him to take a flying leap and he came back.

He came back to fight for me.

In Mama's house.

Which means she probably knows he's here.

"Hurt here?" he asks.

"A little," I lie. And then I realize what I'm doing. I snap straight and pull away, even though it makes my stomach muscles groan and puts a cramp in my back that radiates pain down my leg. " Stop making me lie ."

"You know that selfie we took last week with Sue? When the Fireballs were losing by eight in the second inning? I shared that on the bakery wars scorekeeping page this morning."

Dammit . Now he's making my eyes water too. "You did?"

"I was never ashamed of you, Annika. You're not a dirty secret. You're my kryptonite."

"I'm a glowing piece of alien rock?" Distraction. Yes.

Definitely distraction so I can find my courage to love him back.

He strokes my back, and all my sore muscles give a shudder of relief under his careful touch.

"You're the only person in the world who can break me." His eyes are steady, but he can't fully hide the vulnerability at the confession.

And I can't leave him hanging there alone.

If he's going out on a shaky tree limb, I need to be there with him.

"I can relate," I whisper.

"It's fucking terrifying."

"Beyond terrifying."

"So much easier to pretend this isn't real so it hurts less when it's over, than it is to let myself hope we could have forever."

"I hate being afraid."

"Fuck being afraid. I love you. I've always loved you. I will always love you. Through time and space and distance, and burnt cookies and family crises and horny goats. All of it. We'll argue and fight sometimes. But I will always come back. Loving you is the one thing I do better than anything else, and I fucking love loving you. Even when it's hard. So yeah. I'm here. And I'm gonna shout to the world every day for the rest of my life how much I love you. Because I do. I love you."

I should be fresh out of tears, but here they come again. "I'm sorry," I choke out.

"If the next words out of your mouth are I can't do this , rest assured you can, and we both know you can, and I'll keep coming back."

I shake my head, and my neck muscles groan in protest and send a fiery ball of pain down my spine. "I'm sorry I yelled at you yesterday."

"I have this crazy feeling it won't be the last time."

"I don't want to yell at you."

"We could make up."

I grimace, because while my vagina would enjoy that, she's feeling beat up by proximity to the rest of my body.

"You can't move at all, can you?"

"I'm fine. Fucking dammit , Grady, I hate lying."

He chuckles and scoots closer to use both hands on my aching back. "That's not a lie. That's bravado. How about I feed you warm chocolate chip cookies while you soak in a hot bath, and when you're feeling human again in another week or three, you can show me around this little town you call home."

I whimper.

"Is there anywhere that doesn't hurt?"

Is there?

I take stock of my body, and yes.

There's one place that definitely does not hurt.

"My heart," I tell him. "My heart doesn't hurt at all."

He smiles at me, all dimpled and warm-eyed and full of love, and I realize I haven't said it back.

"You're worth waiting for," he says softly, like he knows what I'm thinking, and I thought I'd fallen for Grady Rock before, first in high school, then when he brought me ice cream, again when he figured out my secret and saved all our asses at Duh-Nuts, but I was wrong.

I hadn't fallen.

Not like this.

"I love you so much," I choke out, and it's hard, but so very, very worth it.

Because my heart takes wings and Grady pulls me into his arms, his breath going ragged while he blinks hard, and I finally understand what it means to be someone's everything.

It's a huge responsibility.

And it's one I will happily bear for the rest of my life.