“Yeah.” Flannery hesitated. “Good luck.”

Luke hung up, his mind already on his destination. Verona. Juliet’s Wall. He had to admit there was something that hit him right in the chest at the thought of never seeing her again. He wasn’t the type to write love letters to a woman who would never receive them, but after the last few days, he understood the urge. At this point, he’d do that and more to make her sit still long enough to listen to what he had to say.

First, he needed a fucking train ticket.

Alexis sat on one of the benches in the little courtyard and stared at the wall peppered with more letters than she could begin to count. Thousands of lovers pouring out their hearts to Juliet. She wasn’t sure if it was romantic or horribly sad. In her current mood, she leaned toward the latter.

Hadn’t she learned the hard way that life was more than willing to pass you by if you sat back and waited for something good to come? That’s all she’d been doing for the last fifteen years, letting life guide her and, as a result, pass her by. If she’d been more proactive—more willing to put aside other people’s expectations of her—would she be happy now? Maybe she would have found a man who was actually worth her love and settled down. The cancer… That was no one’s fault. It still would have come no matter what choices she made. But it didn’t have to be the destroying factor it’d turned into. She’d let the loss of her ability to have children take away everything else good in her.

No more.

She wasn’t willing to sit back and wait. How many of the people who wrote these letters felt the same hopeless abyss she currently had fighting for dominance inside her?

All she could focus on was her memories of Luke and the realization that he’d been right—the way she’d grown had little to do with him. Yes, he’d made her body come alive and maybe acted as a catalyst to channel her returning self-confidence, but she would have gotten there on her own.

And the things he’d said to her…

She wanted what he’d been promising. She wanted it a lot. More than that, she deserved a man who wouldn’t look at her and see all the places she was lacking. Luke saw her faults, but he also saw things worth admiring—all the good, the bad, and the ugly—and he didn’t think she was a giant disappointment.

He was right.

She could face that now, could step away from the constant weight of other people’s expectations. Which left the question—if she wasn’t living for other people’s needs, what did she want?

The answer was easier than she would have guessed.

She wanted Luke. She wanted the bickering and the long, sweaty nights spent in his arms, and the soft moments when they both lowered their battered emotional walls.

“Darlin’…”

For half a heartbeat, she thought she was hallucinating, but then Alexis looked up…straight into the sea-green eyes she’d become so familiar with since Cork. Still, she could hardly believe it. “Luke?”

He went to his knees in front of her, his slight grimace the only indication of how much the move must have hurt his old injury. “I’ve been waiting for two days for you to walk into this courtyard, darlin’.”

Two days? She opened her mouth, but he held up a hand. “Hear me out. Please. I’m sorry. Christ, Alexis, you have no idea how sorry. I never should have lied to you about why I was here, but I swear to God, I never lied about anything except the Marines, and if you give me a chance, I’ll never lie to you again.” He slipped something out of his pocket and pressed it into her hand.

She frowned. “What’s this?”

“You said Juliet’s Wall was filled with letters written to lost loves.” He held her gaze, never wavering. “So I figured it was only right that I bring one of my own.”

She stared at the paper. It had been ripped out of some hotel stationery and folded several times. From the creases, she got the feeling that Luke had opened and refolded it repeatedly since he wrote it. He wrote me a letter, a letter in a place meant for lost loves. Does that mean…? “Luke—”

“It’s for you, darlin’. It was always for you.”

Hesitantly, she unfolded it, her heart in her throat as she read. It was short and to the point, just like Luke.

Alexis,

If I’m handing you this letter, chances are that I’ve already told you how badly I fucked up and how desperately I want to make it right. But I’ll say it again. You’re the first woman who’s looked at me and seen that the man is more than the scars of his past. You didn’t flinch. You didn’t turn away. You just accepted it all and turned it into something to be proud of. You humble me, darlin’. Being around you makes me want to believe in fairy tales and true love, and gives me the strength to want to face my past and my fears—everything you’ve done since you got off that plane in Cork. I don’t deserve you. But if you give me a chance to make things right, I’ll spend the rest of my life working to be a man worthy of you.

I love you, darlin’.

Feelings welled up inside her, nearly too much to contain. He’d come for her. More than that, the words he’d written seemed aimed for her very soul. This wasn’t a lie. It was too raw and vulnerable to be fake. Her hands shook as that truth rolled over her. It’s real. It’s all been real. “You…love me?”

“I do.” His frown deepened. “I know the letter isn’t much, but—”

“Stop.” She took his hands and urged him up onto the bench next to her. “The letter is perfect. It’s everything. I…” There was no denying the truth. Not now, not here, not with him looking at her with a fragile hope in his eyes. “I love you, too. And you weren’t the only one who made mistakes. I never should have said some of those things to you. I’m sorry, too.”

“I deserved every word out of your mouth.” He started to reach for her, and visibly restrained himself. “I know it’s going to take time to re-earn your trust, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

“Kiss me.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Do you need a written invitation?” She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him closer. “Kiss me like you mean it, Luke Jackson.”

“That’s no hardship.” But he leaned in slowly, as if doubting this was what she really wanted. Alexis hooked the back of his neck and towed him to her, nipping his bottom lip before she teased his mouth open.

This was perfection. Kissing Luke felt a whole lot like coming home. And then his arms were around her and he was pulling her into his lap, and she knew without a doubt that she’d found exactly what she’d come to Europe looking for.

She pulled away. “Come home with me.”

“Only if you promise to come down to Mississippi afterward. My auntie will be wanting to meet the woman who stole my heart.” He grinned, making her heart skip a beat. “But there’s time. I plan on spending the rest of my life with you, darlin’, so if you want to pick up and go see the world, I’m there every step of the way. I’ll always be there.”

Epilogue

Luke touched his pocket for the seventeenth time in the last hour. He knew he was being crazy, but he couldn’t seem to stop. Things were going too damn well—they had been for the last six months. After he and Alexis came back from Europe, there was some hashing out to do with the Flannery brothers and Avery, but it had fallen out okay when all was said and done.

Really, he would have gone through that and worse if it meant Alexis would be by his side at the end of it.

He reached over and took her hand, earning an absentminded smile before she went back to baby-talking at her nephew, Braeden. In the kitchen, her sister was working up some kind of magic for dinner and chatting happily with Drew Flannery. It was the very epitome of domestic bliss.