She stared up at him, sure she was seeing things, hearing things. “What are you doing here?”
He took a deep breath, and she felt it fan across her skin when he exhaled. “Anything I have to in order to show you I was wrong. To show you what you mean to me.” He extended the flowers. “These were so bright and happy. It made me smile just to look at them. They reminded me of you.”
Her breath whooshed out of her lungs as she closed her eyes, then opened them. She took the flowers, hoping he didn’t see her hands shake. “I know I matter to you, Wes. And I miss you. I do. But we can’t go back to being friends. At least not yet. Maybe one day. But not yet.”
He took the flowers and the wine, walked to the table, and set them down before coming back to take her hand. He led her to a chair, held it out. She sat and Wes pulled his chair directly in front of her so their knees were touching.
“This is more than friendship, Hailey. So much more. You were right about me. I was scared. I was a coward.”
She shook her head, doing her best to stuff down her emotions. “You were right, too. I knew who you were, what you wanted and didn’t want out of life. You can’t make someone love you back. Let’s just call it even and hope that in the future we can be in the same room without it hurting.”
He shook his head. “No.”
Hailey’s brows moved up. “Excuse me?”
“I never wanted to be in love. From what I’d heard, what I’d seen with my brothers, it was the equivalent of jumping out of an airplane with a chute you’re only hopeful will work. There are no guarantees. Those three words seemed more like a watered-down farewell than an expression of how the other person alters someone’s life just by being part of it. My father would say it to calm my mother and his subsequent wives and girlfriends, appease them. My mother says it so often at the end of a conversation, I’ve heard her say it to her hairdresser and masseuse. I’m not even sure if she knows she’s saying it or if it’s just habit. So how meaningful can they be?”
Hailey’s lips twitched so she gave into the small smile. “Maybe they’re really good at what they do.” What he said made so many things make sense. The emotion in his voice seeped into the cracks of her heart.
He laughed, reached out to take her hands. “You make me laugh. You call me on things when I don’t make any sense. You have the most amazing heart and work ethic of anyone I know. You’re not afraid to reflect, to dig deep and see what you can do to make the world around you better. You not only started over but you flourished. You’ve changed me.”
Tears pushed. “I wasn’t trying to. People shouldn’t have to change for love.” Though, maybe they changed because of it.
Wes scooted closer, his knees going on the outside of hers. “That’s not entirely true. I mean, isn’t that what life is? Growing, changing, making the effort to be better? To be more? To realize the ways we’re preventing our own happiness?”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
“When I hit a wall in my coding, I have to go around, under, over, basically tearing apart every step I made to see which one was wrong. When I did that to myself, when I pulled apart my mistakes, trying to figure out where I went wrong so I could stop feeling so lost, so empty, without you, I figured it out. I thought by controlling my feelings, by refusing to say the words, there was no way to fail. I was stupid enough to believe that not saying the words meant I could stop myself from feeling them. I was so sure I could chart the course of my future without being hurt. The irony is, I put up a roadblock in my head and around my heart, refusing to admit to being in love because I told myself that way, nothing could hurt me. I thought there was nothing more terrifying than falling in love with you. Than having my heart in your hands.”
She pulled her hands back, set them flat on her thighs. “But?”
Wes held her gaze, his confident and sure. “But that’s nothing compared to how scared I am that you won’t forgive me, that you won’t believe I love you enough to fight for you, to change and grow. That I know now why people say those words. I know what they mean, at least to me.”
She blinked back the tears. “What do they mean?”
He nodded his head. “They mean I’m vulnerable. I run the risk of you hurting me or worse, me hurting you. But the reward of owning them, of telling you every single day that I love you, that I will always love you, well, that’s like nothing I’ve ever known. I want to weather hard times and argue over which version of Overboard is better. I want to spend my life with you, accepting you and loving you for exactly who you are. And nothing could be scarier than the thought that I’ve missed my chance. That I’m too late.”