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AT EIGHT ON MONDAY morning, Britt couldn’t stop crying as she sat at the far corner table with Megan and Vivian.
After sex in the office and their conversation afterwards on Saturday afternoon, Britt knew things had finally come to a head between her and Nash. She’d tried to keep it light and nonconfrontational, but she’d asked him to think about it. To let her know what he wanted to do. And he’d clearly understood what that meant. She’d known his decision would determine whether they could stay together or if their month-long fling would be over.
She hadn’t heard from Nash all Saturday evening.
She hadn’t heard from him all day on Sunday.
Now it was Monday morning, and he hadn’t even come into Coble Coffee. He was always here early on Mondays.
It was a sign. A very clear signal.
He didn’t want them to stay together.
All weekend, she’d tried to reason herself out of her tears. After all, she’d known from the beginning what this relationship could offer her. Sex with no strings. She was the silly fool who’d fallen too far for a completely unavailable man. Who’d started believing maybe he felt the same way.
She’d been wrong. Unquestionably wrong.
If he’d wanted her for more than sex, he would have told her by now.
The whole thing was so upsetting that she’d finally broken down and told Megan and Vivian this morning. She’d cried through the whole story, so it wasn’t the clearest narrative ever. But they’d understood almost immediately. They didn’t reproach her for keeping the secret. In fact, they didn’t even seem particularly surprised.
“I knew something was going on with you,” Megan said, her freckled face worried and sympathetic. “And I thought Nash must be connected. He’s seemed so... I don’t know... almost happy lately.”
Since Nash wasn’t currently here, Britt wasn’t too worried about their talking the whole thing over at the table. She wiped her face with the wad of napkins she’d collected and turned to Megan in surprise. “He’s been happy?”
“Yeah. For him, at least. I can’t tell you how many times in the past few weeks I’ve stopped by the office or caught him unaware, and I swear he was just about smiling. Sitting by himself and staring at the air and just... smiling. He’s never been like that before. I knew it had to be something.”
Britt’s chest expanded at hearing this—but it was from pained confusion as much as excitement. “But... but if he’s been happy, then why would he... why wouldn’t he...” She crumpled into tears again and had to mop her face some more.
“Shit, the stubborn asshole,” Megan muttered, mostly to herself, as Vivian scooted over so she could wrap a comforting arm around Britt.
“He’s probably scared,” Vivian told her. “I bet he’s just scared. He’s obviously really into you. I’ve known it for a while.”
“You have?” Britt straightened up and looked over to Megan for confirmation.
She nodded, still looking kind of annoyed. At Nash. “He’s been into you for as long as he’s known you, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to...” She shook her head.
Britt let out a long sigh. “Yeah. I know. It doesn’t mean he’s going to commit to a real relationship with me. He’s got such a hang-up over those. And I can understand—with the way his mom and his ex-wife walked out on him. At least maybe I can believe he wants me. That I didn’t make the whole thing up.”
“Of course you didn’t make it up. I don’t think you would have fallen for him like this if you hadn’t been getting something back from him. More than physical. I’m just sorry it’s gotten so hard now.” Vivian glanced toward the door and added almost wistfully, “Maybe he’ll come around.”
“I don’t think so. I think if he was going to do something, he would have already done it. Maybe he does want me, but he doesn’t want me enough.” It hurt so much to say—to believe—that Britt thought she’d dissolve into tears again. But she didn’t. It hurt almost too much to even cry.
Her friends didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. Just sat in sympathetic silence.
Then Britt said, “I really am sorry I kept it a secret. I hope y’all aren’t mad or... or upset about that.”
“Of course not,” Vivian assured her.
“I just kept thinking, if I didn’t talk about it, if I didn’t share it with anyone, then maybe I wouldn’t take it seriously. Maybe it wouldn’t mean anything. I knew you would expect me to be smart and mature about the whole thing, but I didn’t want to be smart and mature. I wanted to...” She gulped. “I wanted to have him for a little while.”
“It’s okay,” Megan said. “We get it. We’ve all kept some secrets when it came to the guys we lo—” She stopped herself mid-word.
“It’s okay. You can say it.” Britt shook her head and wondered how she’d managed to get herself into this mess. “Because I do. It’s probably proof that I’m too optimistic and naïve to exist in the world, but I do.”
Vivian opened her mouth—probably to leap to Britt’s defense—but she cut off the words when her eyes flashed to the front door of the coffee shop.
Britt glanced over to see what had diverted her.
Nash had just walked in.
He was in jeans with a untucked blue button-down, and he was carrying a plastic food storage container. His eyes had been on Britt, but they quickly moved away when she caught his gaze. He paced silently through the room and all the way to the back office. She heard the door click shut behind him.
Slumping back in her seat, she knew her answer for sure.
He didn’t want her. Not enough.
“I’ll be okay,” she said in a small voice.
“Of course you will. It will take a little time to get over, but then you’ll be just fine. You’ll find someone who loves you like crazy and who’d cut off his right arm before he ever let you go.” Vivian gave her another half-hug.
“Maybe.” Britt wanted to believe it. Of course she did. But she’d never felt this way about anyone, and she couldn’t imagine it ever changing. Surely she wouldn’t spend the rest of her life with this gaping hole in her heart where Nash was supposed to belong.
Megan still looked thoughtful, like she was trying to suss it all out. “Of course you’ll be fine. But I’m telling you something big has been going on with him, so I still wonder if he’ll—”
Britt knew why she’d broken off the sentence, even before she looked toward the office and saw that Nash had come out again. He still had the container in his hand. He didn’t glance toward her for even a couple of seconds. Instead, he strode behind the counter and started taking out what looked like big iced cookies, placing them in the bakery case.
He sometimes baked cookies or pastries for the shop. They were always the best ones. But he usually baked them here in the café. It was strange if he’d brought them in from somewhere else.
Maybe he’d baked them at home?
None of them spoke for a few minutes. Obviously they weren’t going to keep discussing Nash and Britt’s relationship when Nash was there across the room.
Britt thought his shoulders looked tense. And she suspected his jaw was clenched beneath his beard. He disciplined his eyes rigorously. He didn’t let his gaze flicker over to her at all.
Maybe she was still making things up in her relentless optimism, but it really felt like he wanted to look at her and was having to make himself not.
Not that it mattered. If he wouldn’t even let himself look at her, then there was absolutely no hope for a relationship with him.
She needed to accept it. She needed to put it behind her. She needed to move on.
She couldn’t emotionally cling to a man who’d never give himself back to her.
She turned her head to meet Vivian and Megan’s eyes in turn, and so she didn’t see when Nash came out from behind the counter. So she was shocked speechless when he approached their table, carrying a plate with three of the cookies on them.
Her lips parted as he drew near. She held her breath expectantly.
He set the plate on their table and walked away without a word, disappearing once more into the office.
The three of them gaped down at the plate. Three beautifully iced cookies in animal shapes.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Britt grabbed for the pink elephant.
It was gorgeous. Intricately decorated down to the wrinkles on the skin and the pretty flower garland around its neck.
Her face tightened as she tried to suppress new sobs.
Maybe she was a deluded romantic, but it felt like he’d made this cookie just for her.
***
AT ABOUT TWO-THIRTY that afternoon, Britt parked her car in her assigned spot and settled her bag on her shoulder—heavy with books and her laptop—before she carefully picked up the box Megan had packed her elephant cookie in that morning before she’d left.
Vivian and Megan had said the cookies were delicious, but Britt couldn’t bring herself to eat hers. So she’d carried it around in the little box all day, standing guard over it like it was precious.
She’d cried herself out this morning, and then she’d had a seminar and a couple of hours working on a group project on campus, so she was exhausted and blah and heavy as she trudged to the building entrance.
There was work she should do this afternoon, but she probably wouldn’t end up doing it. She mostly wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over her head for the rest of the day.
She was staring at the pavement as she walked, watching her small feet take step after step. So she gasped and gave a little jump when she finally looked up and saw a man sitting on a step that led up to the entrance.
He was big and bearded. He had a sober expression and hazel eyes that rested on her face. He was leaning forward with his forearms on his knees.
Waiting for her.
“Oh,” she said with her typical lucidity, staring at him, frozen in place.
Nash didn’t say anything. Neither did she. When she realized she was capable of moving, she walked slowly over and lowered herself to sit on the step beside him.
She placed the box with her cookie next to her, making sure not to rattle or jar it.
He felt tense beside her. Full of angsty emotion. He kept looking over at her and then looking away.
Nash clearly had something to tell her, but she had no clue what it was. It could be bad. Or it could be very, very good. She wanted to drag the words out of him, but that wouldn’t be right. He needed to do it himself.
So she waited, all her pulse points throbbing with rising nerves.
“I’m sorry,” he finally blurted out.
Britt dropped her eyes. Swallowed hard. That didn’t sound good. “It’s okay. I think I can... I can understand.”
“You can?” He was frowning now, looking almost confused.
“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be able to understand? Everyone is a little bit afraid of relationships. Of being that vulnerable. Of risking heartbreak. I can understand how it might be worse for you because of your... your history.” Her voice started breaking so she stopped talking.
She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to live through this moment.
She didn’t want Nash to tell her they could never be anything real to each other, and he was about to do it.
“Yeah. I guess. But I hurt you.”
She sniffed and jerked her head to the side so he wouldn’t see her twisting her features to keep from crying. “It won’t be the last time. Maybe I trust people too much. But I thought... I really thought...”
“You thought I was better than I am. You thought I’d recognize what you were giving me and... take care of it the way it deserves.”
Her whole body was shuddering with her attempt to hold back more sobs. She couldn’t bear to look at him, see the expression on his face right now.
She’d been dumped before, but it had never been this devastating.
“On Saturday...” His voice was hoarse. He had to pause and clear his throat. “On Saturday, I knew what I wanted. I knew what you were to me. I knew how I felt and that I’ve never once felt the same way for anyone else. I knew all that Saturday, so I should have... I should have... told you then.”
Something wasn’t quite right here. This wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. It didn’t sound like a normal breakup speech, and she had no idea where he was going with it. She finally turned her head to check his face.
The look in his eyes shattered her into pieces. His expression was composed, almost normal, but his gaze was overflowing with naked vulnerability. Open tenderness. So much depth and softness.
Everything she’d ever wanted to see there.
“But I knew it would change everything,” he went on, clearly having no idea how her heart had just been remade. “I knew it would make a different person. Being with you that way. And I was... I was scared to do it. Because what if you leave me one day? How would I ever survive?”
She opened her mouth, her torrent of feelings on the verge of spilling out.
But Nash went on before she could get anything said. “So I spent the weekend trapped. I couldn’t do anything except be miserable because I didn’t have you.” He cleared his throat again and nodded toward the box beside her. “I made those cookies for something to do. I was trying to distract myself. But I kept making elephants. And pink icing. So many shades of pink icing. And decorating them the way I thought you’d like most. All night I made cookies, until this morning I finally realize that that’s what I want.”
She blinked, shuddering with excitement and so much more—so much that she couldn’t think clearly. “To make cookies?”
He laughed—soft and gruff and oddly poignant. “To make you happy.” He turned toward her fully for the first time and reached out to cup her face. “Britt, that’s what I want. To make you happy. For as long as I can. For as long as you’ll let me. And as soon as I realized that, I also figured out that, even if you end up leaving me somewhere down the line, it will still have been worth it. To be with you, to make you happy, for as long as I get.”
And that was the very last straw for Britt. She burst into tears and threw herself against him. He wrapped his arms around her tightly. Held her close. Exactly as she needed.
After a minute, when she’d quieted down, he nuzzled her hair and murmured thickly, “You can cry for as long as you want, but can you at least give me a hint?”
Confused again, she pulled away and peered at him, sniffling. “A hint about what?”
“About whether this crying is good or bad. About whether you still want to put up with me, after the way I hurt you this weekend. About whether you want me to make you happy.”
“Of course I do!” She went in for another hug, mumbling against his shirt, “I want you too. I want to make you happy too. And I don’t think I’ve ever been any happier than I am right now.”
With a helpless sound in his throat, Nash tightened his arms around her, holding her so close that she was briefly afraid for the condition of her ribs.
It was several minutes before they were able to pull out of the embrace. Then they finally managed to get up, collect her stuff, and walk up to her apartment. They collapsed on the couch together but didn’t last there long. They were both so exhausted and emotionally wrecked that they ended up getting into bed.
They talked and dozed and hugged some more. He told her he’d been planning to talk to her this morning but had gotten stalled by seeing her with her friends. He’d been so full of nerves that he couldn’t decide what to do so he’d ended up just giving them the cookies. She told him her futile attempt to keep things casual with him and how she’d eventually realized it was a hopeless cause. He told her about the advice his grandmother had given him. And they both laughed over the reactions from Miss Thelma and Miss Molly when they told them they were really together now.
After a couple hours, they started to kiss, and it turned into slow, tender sex that lasted a really long time.
And Britt couldn’t imagine being any more perfectly happy than afterwards, when they finally ate her pink elephant cookie.
***
THREE MONTHS LATER, Britt was brushing her teeth in the fancy bathroom of a luxury mountain lodge in Alaska.
She’d had the time of her life on the ten-day trip Nash had arranged for them. When he’d mentioned he wanted to do it, he’d made it clear that they could plan the trip for whenever worked for her schedule, but she’d been so excited they ended up going a few weeks later. She’d never had a better vacation. Any time she expressed concern about the amount of money he was spending on it, Nash assured her he was doing well financially, and he’d gone years with no vacations at all so he could afford to splurge on this one.
They’d started in Anchorage and then gone up to Denali and then farther north to see the glaciers and fjords, staying in very nice hotels at each stage. Now they were concluding the trip in this mountain lodge, and Britt was loving every minute of it.
She’d never dreamed anyone would give her a trip like this. The joy of it filled her heart right to the brim.
Giggling to herself as she worked on her teeth, she visualized her heart inside her chest, swelling a little from how many feelings it was having to contain. She’d only been with Nash for four months—the first one ostensibly with no strings—but she was as sure of him right now as she would have been a ten-year partner.
He’d hesitated about taking the step, but now that he had, he was in all the way. She’d never felt so valued and cared for. So excited about the future.
When she heard a sound from their room, she walked over to the bathroom entrance to see if Nash had come back. He’d said he wanted to stretch his legs after dinner, so he was going to take a quick walk around the building.
He’d returned, and he must have lied to her about the walk because he had brought back with him a bouquet of pink peonies, a bottle of champagne, and a box of chocolates she’d tried yesterday and raved about. He was arranging all the treats on the table near the window. She gasped around her toothbrush at what he’d brought her and then pursed her lips to keep the toothbrush in her mouth so she could clap her hands in excitement.
Nash laughed out loud at her enthusiasm as he looked over and saw her. His face was soft in that way it only got with her.
“I love you, Britt,” he said without warning or prelude. “You know that, right? These past months have been the best of my whole life.”
She almost choked on her mouthful of toothpaste suds. He’d never said those words to her before. In her excitement to respond, she burst out with an earnest, garbled whimper around the toothbrush.
Nash laughed again and moved closer. “What was that exactly?”
She ran into the bathroom to spit out the paste and then sprinted back, flinging herself at him as she did. “I love you too!”
He scooped her up in a hug, still laughing as he buried his face in her hair.
He didn’t appear to mind at all that she was still clutching the toothbrush in her hand.