I missed it.

I was a shit teacher. It was a noble profession, but I lacked the patience and the inspiration to effectively do my job. Not to mention the whole affair-with-a-student-the-first-time-I-taught thing. My future was definitely not in teaching.

There weren’t that many things I was good at, but I still had this. So I job-hunted, and started making plans to pick myself up off of the ground. And I existed, survived, until a knock at the door changed everything.

I opened my front door one blustery day at the end of January, and came face to face with Blair’s eyes in a blonde girl’s body, her cheekbones, the shape of her face, on another, even taller blonde girl.

For a moment, I couldn’t speak.

I wasn’t ready for this.

The tall one spoke first. “I’m Jackie. Blair’s sister.” She gestured toward the girl next to her. “This is Kate. Blair’s other sister.”

It hurt to speak. “I know.”

“Can we come in?” Jackie asked.

I nodded, stepping back while they walked over the threshold.

I led them into the living room, my mind racing, struggling to process this latest change, trying to understand how they’d ended up on my doorstep. I started with the only thing that connected us.

“Is Blair okay?”

“She’s fine,” Jackie answered.

Kate still didn’t speak. In fact, for all that I was good at reading people, I definitely couldn’t get a read on her. Blair had said her sister had a wall built up around her, but she hadn’t mentioned that the wall was also guarded, electrified, and protected by man-eating guard dogs.

Jackie might have had a reputation for being tough, but at the moment I’d take her any day of the week. Kate wasn’t just cold, she was dead inside. Considering I’d lived a fair amount of my adult life in the same state, it was easy enough to recognize.

We all sat, the silence stretching into an uncomfortable tension, until I couldn’t take it anymore, and I had to ask the question that had plagued me for weeks.

“How’s Blair?”

Jackie sent me a kind look tinged with pity, as though it was obvious that my heart was somewhere outside of my chest . . . firmly ensconced in her sister’s fist.

“About as good as you look,” Jackie answered, her voice soft. “That’s kind of why we’re here.”

Maybe that was why Jackie was here, but I had no idea why Kate had come. She still hadn’t looked at me or spoken.

“She’s thinking of leaving D.C.,” Jackie continued, her words sending a knife through my chest.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because she loves you. Still.”

I looked up, hating the hope—that faithless bitch that had led me astray so many times—that filled me now. Hating the voice that had gone from a whisper to a scream—

She still loves you. Don’t let her go, you idiot.

“I don’t—”

I literally had no words. Nothing. I had pain and loss, and a heart that had abandoned me.

“She says she’s okay, but she’s not. She loves you, and she’s hurting, and no matter how hard she tries to put on a brave face, it’s obvious that she misses you.”

The idea of Blair feeling anything close to the way I felt now was almost more than I could bear.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked, my voice hoarse at the emotions scraping their way out, at the boulder lodged in my chest where my heart used to be.

“Do you still love her?” Jackie asked.

“I’ll love her until the day I die.”

Something flickered in Jackie’s eyes, as though I’d just given her the answer she wanted to hear.

“Then find her. Tell her you love her. Tell her you’ll fight for her. She doesn’t want anyone else. She only wants you.”

My mind raced as I tried to figure out what the fuck was the right thing to do.

“She wants you.”

Shock filled me as I turned and stared at Kate.

She held my gaze, whatever wall resided around her temporarily down. “She loves you. She chose you. Blair is the best person I know. If she sees something in you that she loves, then you have to believe that’s enough.”

“I don’t want to hurt her.”

Kate’s eyebrow arched. “Then don’t.”

She rose from her chair, Jackie mimicking her motions.

Kate headed to the door, giving me no choice but to follow.

She turned and faced me. “I’m sorry for what I did. I wrecked this, not you. Now I’m trying to fix it, because my sister loves you in a way I’ve never seen her love anyone. I was wrong. I thought I was protecting her, just like you think you’re protecting her now, but maybe we need to acknowledge that Blair’s stronger than we both give her credit for. She can take care of herself. Let her love you.”

Her words cut through me, and I just stood there in my hallway, wondering if all of the Reynolds women possessed this uncanny ability to steamroll me.

I loved her.

I’d thought loving her meant I couldn’t have her, that giving her up was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. But now I knew.

I would never give her up. I would turn myself inside out, work myself to the bone, sacrifice everything to be the man she wanted me to be, to earn her, to keep her.

I loved her. Nothing else mattered.

Blair

I headed home, having completed my first week volunteering with the nonprofit Will recommended in Arlington. He was right. I absolutely loved it. The kids had all lost a parent who’d served in the military, each of them at different stages of living with their grief. Our job was to do little things—take them on field trips, give them a place to go after school since most of them were now in single-parent homes. We filled in the gaps wherever we could, to honor the sacrifice their family had made.

I’d known I made the right choice minutes into my first day there. I was still planning to move, but now I knew the kind of job I wanted, and the kind of life I wanted to lead.

I walked down my street, digging my keys out of my purse, and froze.

Gray stood on the sidewalk staring at me.

It had been three weeks. Three weeks of trying to convince myself that what I’d felt for him hadn’t been real, that I could move on, that I’d meet someone else, someone who would make me happier than he had.

Three weeks of me failing miserably.

Gray stood in front of me, dressed in jeans, a navy blue sweater, and a khaki-colored raincoat. I’d spent the last few weeks trying to convince myself that he wasn’t as hot as I’d remembered, that surely the sight of him hadn’t been enough to set my body on fire.

I’d failed there, too.

He looked tired, like the time apart had been as hellish on him as it had been on me. And while I hated to see him in pain, it gave me hope that he finally understood what I’d known all along.

We belonged together.

He stopped a few feet away from me.

My eyes stung, my heart pounded. I probably should have been angry with him for leaving in the first place, upset for all he’d put me through. And I was, for like a second.

But he was here and I wanted to be happy. I’d seen firsthand the loss that my sister lived, watched her life be shattered in an instant, seen the people around me throw away happiness with both hands. It was the most underrated emotion in the world, but if life had taught me anything, it was that you only got so many chances to be happy. I wasn’t going to waste one chance.

I liked that I could be myself with him. That he didn’t try to change me or turn me into someone I wasn’t. I couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t hurt me, but I was too greedy to let that stand in my way.

You didn’t throw love away. You clutched it to your chest, fought for it, died for it, and kept it safe above all else.

He was here, and I wasn’t letting go.

Gray spoke first.

“Hi.”

I closed my eyes, letting his voice cloak me in its warmth.

They opened, and I drank in the sight of him standing in front of me once more.