There. I’d put myself out there as much as possible, and now it was going to be up to him.
The ball was in his court.
“You love me?”
“Yes, I love you. Infuriating, charming, wonderful, intelligent, kind you.” I took another deep breath. This was the bit I needed an answer to. “Do you think you could ever feel the same way about me?”
Then his lips were on mine, swallowing my words. He kissed me hard and thoroughly and I could feel his emotions, that he felt the same way as me. Pure joy blossomed inside me. Marco loved me, too. There was no denying it this time. Kaboom. I was going to buy Catalina a very pretty present.
When the kiss ended, he leaned his forehead against mine, his hands on my face. I clung to his wrists, relying on his strength. “That wasn’t an answer,” I chided him, not able to suppress my blissful smile.
He grinned, my favorite thing in the world, and said, “Wasn’t it? I have a hypothesis that actions are better than words.”
“I need the words.”
He stroked the side of my face so lovingly and tenderly that I wanted to melt into him. “I have felt so selfish. Wanting to kiss you, touch you, be close to you, and the whole time I thought you were in love with my brother. Do you know how hard it is to be in love with someone who loves somebody else? I tried hard to be respectful of you and your feelings, Anna. And there were so many times that I felt like I was taking advantage of you.”
“You never once did that,” I told him, pressing my cheek against his.
“I struggled so much with guilt. I used that flimsy experiment pretense to be able to kiss you when I was so desperate for you that I could barely stand it. In Vermont, I felt like I had taken things too far. I wanted to take them further. If you hadn’t gotten sick that night . . .” He trailed off but then pressed a kiss on my cheek. “I knew I had gone too far over that line. That I had to respect you and the feelings I thought you had for Craig.”
“Feelings I never had,” I corrected him.
He kissed me gently. “I know that now. I wish I’d known it then. Because I used to be a love atheist. I never believed it was real. But you turned me into a believer. Because what other way is there to describe what I feel when I look at you? Of course I love you. I love everything about you, every perfect and broken piece. I think I loved you from the first time I saw you in your cosplay dress at that company event. I thought, Here’s someone who needs me. But that wasn’t true. I needed you. I didn’t realize what was missing from my life until you came barreling into it. I love you, and I want everything you want. A life. A family. A business. Whatever you want, just so long as we’re together. I do want you to be happy, but I want you to be happy with me.”
My heart leapt and jumped in celebration, the joy I was feeling threatening to make me burst into song. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this happy. I’d been so worried he wouldn’t love me, and to find that he did? That he always had?
Then it was my turn to kiss him, to show him what his words meant to me. Maybe a little bit of action was better than words. When we were both breathing hard, I said, “I would let someone put lasers in my eyeballs for you.”
“Gi melin, Undómiel.”
“That’s what you said to me in Vermont. What does it mean?”
“It’s Elvish. Well, technically it’s two different dialects of Elvish. But it means I love you, Evenstar.”
Evenstar. That’s what they called Arwen in Lord of the Rings. He was such a giant nerd, and I loved that about him. I loved everything about him.
This time, I tackled him, and he was laughing as he fell back against the couch, until I made sure that he wasn’t laughing anymore.
“I should have told you sooner,” I said when I broke off for some much-needed air. “I should have spoken up and said how I felt. What I wanted. It’s always been so hard for me. I thought I would lose things if I spoke up. But I’ve found the opposite to be true. I regret not doing it sooner.”
“It’s okay,” he said, tracing the outline of my face with his fingertips, like he wanted to memorize it. “We’ll make sure that we always tell each other what we need and how much we mean to each other. Because now that I have you, I don’t plan on ever letting you go again.”
“Good. Because I don’t plan on going anywhere. You’re my eyelash wish come true.”
He kissed me gently, tenderly. I loved him so much. “You wished for me?”
“I did. And I wouldn’t even admit it to myself. Today I ran up five flights of stairs at Minx to find you.”
“That is love. Why didn’t you wait for the elevators? They’re actually really fast.”
“Do you think you could please shut up and go back to proving your hypothesis correct?”
“I’ll do anything for science,” he said with a smile and then kissed me in a way that let me know everything I needed to.
EPILOGUE
Six months later . . .
“You’re going to call him tomorrow?” Catalina asked me, her voice crackling slightly on her end of the phone. Marco stopped at a red light to make a left turn. I wanted to ask him again where we were going, but he had been strangely silent on the matter.
Catalina let out an impatient sound that made me respond. “Yes, I am going to call Zhen and offer him the job. But only if you promise that you’re not going to sexually harass him at work.”
“I make no such promise. Plus, that would be highly hypocritical given that whenever you and Marco are in the lab together, I’m concerned about everything around us spontaneously combusting.”
Zhen and Catalina had been dating for nearly as long as Marco and I had. Now that Aviary Cosmetics had all its funding lined up, I’d promised I would hire him away from Minx.
Catalina had, obviously, been my first hire.
Well, after Marco. But he was my partner, working as CEO, so I didn’t count that.
“And what do we say to our best friend?” she asked, and I rolled my eyes.
“Catalina is always right. And I will never doubt her again. And I will name my firstborn child after her.” This had started after I’d found out just how much I owed to her. Marie-Angelique and Catalina were friends, and when the whole pitch-meeting-gone-wrong fiasco had happened and Marco quit, Marie-Angelique had immediately called Catalina to fill her in.
At which point Catalina had told her to make things seem urgent, as if Marco were planning to leave right away, so that I would be motivated to act. Marco’s flight to Italy had actually been scheduled for four days later.
“But if you’d known that, you would have talked yourself out of it, and then you wouldn’t be so happy right now!” she had insisted. “It’s not a rom-com ending unless you stop him from going to the airport,” and I was inclined to agree with her. I figured a little lie was okay if things turned out so well in the end.
Catalina said, “Okay, well, have so much fun on your date tonight. With whatever it is that you have planned.”
It was an odd thing to say. “Okay, weirdo. See you tomorrow.”
When I hung up my phone, he reached over to stroke the back of my head, and I smiled at him. “What did Catalina have to say?” he asked.