“Me too,” I said. “It wasn’t only you.”

“And the sex.” He exhaled, closing his eyes. “The fucking sex.”

“I know,” I whispered, heat prickling across my skin. “It scared me too, how good it was.”

“I was able to be myself with you, afraid of nothing. It was so incredible. After that, it was a constant battle between my heart and my head—my heart telling me I’d always been destined to be with you, and my head refusing to let me believe I was worthy of it. I’d never brought anything but pain to women, and I wasn’t sure I was capable of letting you in.”

“But you did,” I said softly. “I felt it.”

He nodded. “I did. But the more I loved you, the more I feared the loss of you—when had I ever been able to hold on to happiness? I didn’t know how it would happen, but in my mind I always knew you’d leave, or something would happen to you, and it would be my fault.”

“Oh, Sebastian. I wish you’d have said something.”

“I couldn’t. Especially not once you told me you loved me. Then I felt this need to protect you even more, but what you needed protecting from was me. I started engaging in all my old rituals, stopped going to therapy.”

My heart ached for him. “I saw it happening. But I didn’t know what to do about it. And some days were so good.”

“They were.” He looked down at my hair twisting through his fingers. “And I should have talked to you on one of those days—I was just too scared. But the messed up thing is that you were right, you know.”

“About what?”

“That subconsciously I knew I was driving you away with my behavior and continued to do it because then at least I’d be prepared. I wouldn’t experience another sudden, shocking loss and feel blindsided and abandoned.”

“Another loss?” It hit me. “Your mom.”

“Maybe.” He kept looking at his hand, and in the firelight his sea-glass green eyes were shiny. “I’m still working through that. I don’t think it caused my OCD, but therapy is helping me to see how my fear of loss and abandonment has caused me a lot of anxiety and grief, and maybe that manifests as OCD related behaviors. Who knows?” He sighed. “For as much as science has taught us about the brain, some things are still a mystery. But I don’t think a kid loses his mom suddenly and tragically and remains unaffected—and when I look at the way I chose isolation and emotional distance from people, it makes sense. And this probably sounds crazy, but I felt like I deserved the loneliness. Like a punishment. Whether it was penance for my mom’s death, my violent thoughts, my cold treatment of women, my breakup with Diana…there was always something in my head I needed to atone for. But I don’t want to be alone anymore. I want to be with you.”

My throat closed up and I threw my arms around his neck, pressing my body against his. “You aren’t,” I sobbed. “I love you and I won’t let you be alone. You deserve to be happy, Sebastian.”

He gathered me in his arms, lying back and letting me weep against his chest. “Thank you. I can’t say there won’t be setbacks, and I’ll tell you right now there will be good days and bad, but I promise to talk about it with you.”

Nodding, I blubbered for a solid ten minutes as he stroked my hair and rubbed my back. I don’t even know why I was crying so hard—relief? Sadness for the child he’d been? The man he was now? Laying my cheek on his chest, I listened to his heart beat and vowed he would never know loneliness again.

“Will you come to therapy with me?” Sebastian asked once my sobs had subsided.

“Of course,” I said, picking my head up to smile at him. “I’d love that.”

“Good.” He wiped my tears from under one eye with his thumb. “Because this is it for me, Skylar. You’re the love of my life.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’ve spent nearly all my days being dominated by doubt, unable to trust myself—tortured by what my mind says and what my heart knows. But for once, I feel—I know—this is right. You’re the one.” He smiled. “And that is the only time the number one will ever sound good to me.”

I laughed. “I want to be the one.”

“Do you?” He arched one brow. “Because you know what it means to be my one.”

“Tell me.”

“It means being the one I’ll kiss good morning and good night—twice.” He grinned. “It means being the one who’ll have to hold my hand when we fly off to our villa in France.” At my gasp, his smile widened. “It means the forever things, Skylar.”

“I want them.” I scooted up and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I want them all.”

He flipped me onto my back again and looked down at me. “Then live with me.”

My heart stopped. “What?”

“Stay here. Live with me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. I’m one hundred percent sure about this, and one hundred is a good number.”

I laughed softly as tears filled my eyes again. “You keep making me cry tonight. What’s with that?”

“I don’t want you to cry. Ever again.” He kissed my eyelids.

“They’re happy tears, Sebastian. Of course I’ll live with you.”

“Good.” He scooted down to rest his head on my chest and we lay together, the fire warming our skin, our breathing slow and deep. “Happy tears are good, I can handle those. And if there are sad tears, I’ll handle those too. I’ll take care of you, Skylar.”

“And I’ll take care of you.” I closed my eyes and inhaled, loving the weight of his head on my chest, the warmth of his skin against mine, the promise of hope in the air. “Forever.”

“Are you ready?”

“I think so.” His face told me what a lie that was, but I’d budgeted plenty of time for his nerves into today’s itinerary. After living with him for the past two months, I knew to allot extra time for pretty much anything we did outside the house. He was getting much better about checking, but today was new ground for him.

“Come on. You’ve got this.” I tugged on his hand, but he didn’t move. “It’s not like we’re getting on the plane yet, Sebastian. This is the airport entrance.” As I talked, I took his elbow and ushered him gently through the automatic doors. “There are nice people in there who are going to look at our boarding passes and tell us what gate to sit at, and some other nice people are going to overcharge us for coffee and tell us to have a nice flight, and then some more nice people are going to show us how to use a seat belt and thank us for flying with them today.”

By the time I’d finished my soothing little speech, we were inside the terminal.

“See? You’re here, and you’re fine,” I said triumphantly.

“Now what?” he asked shakily.

“Now we’ll check in and find our gate. We don’t even have any luggage to check, so it will be nice and easy. OK?”

He took a deep breath. “OK.”

“Good. Because this little Valentine’s weekend jaunt was your idea and you paid for it, so it would be a damn shame if I had to give your ticket to someone else.”

“Don’t you dare.” He caught me around the waist and squeezed. “How long is the flight again?”

I kissed his cheek. “One hour and ten minutes, and I will talk to you the entire time.”

Some color returned to his face as he smiled. “I have no doubt.”

I pulled out our boarding passes, which I’d printed at work, and we got in line to check in. Sebastian seemed more relaxed until we were told that the flight was leaving from gate three.

“Stop worrying,” I told him, taking his hand again. “The gate number does not matter.”

We located gate three, grabbed five dollar cups of coffee, and chose seats near the window. The weather was bleak and dreary, and I was so looking forward to getting away. Not that the Chicago weather would be any better, but it would be fun to stay in a luxury hotel together, shop the Magnificent Mile, have dinner in a gourmet French restaurant or maybe a cozy little Italian place. Honestly, I didn’t care what we did—what mattered most was that we’d be there together. Our first vacation.