Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(74)
It was Mom’s ring.
I put a shaking hand out to touch it like it might not be real. “How did you…?” I breathed.
“I started looking for it right after you told me it was stolen.”
A choking sob burst from my mouth.
“Adrian…this is…” I shook my head and looked up at him with tears in my eyes. “This is the best Christmas gift anyone has ever given me,” I whispered.
He smiled. Then he took the ring out of the tin, slid it onto my finger, and bent to kiss me. When he came back up, I stood there, looking at my hand, blinking back tears.
“Thank you,” I breathed, peering up at him.
His green eyes held mine. “I would give you the whole world if I could.” He studied me for a moment. “You had all of this planned, didn’t you?”
“What?” I sniffed.
“You knew I was going to fall for you. That I didn’t stand a chance.”
I smiled. “I’d like to take more credit. But to be honest, with all my problems, I didn’t think you’d even want me.”
He shook his head. “Did you know my grandparents lived their whole life in this house? They were the happiest couple I’ve ever known. My grandma married my grandpa a month after they met. I never understood it. I never imagined that I’d ever feel that sure about anyone that soon. Or ever. Until you.”
He put his warm hands on my cheeks.
“You are the flood, Vanessa. You pour into me, washing away everything that I used to think mattered and then filling me up to the top until I’m drowned in nothing but you.”
My mouth fell open and I couldn’t even breathe. No one had ever said anything so beautiful to me. Ever.
“Adrian…”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to say anything. It’s just true. And I never had any choice in the matter.”
The welling tears broke free and slid down my cheeks.
I felt so lucky to be cared for by him. And to be different for him than anyone else had ever been.
He was different for me too.
I was in love with this man. There was no other way to put it. I was in love with him. And he wasn’t even trying to make me love him. He was just being who he was.
I’d seen so much of the world. But I’d never see enough of Adrian. Even if I got a lifetime on this Earth, to be married to him and grow old with him, it wouldn’t be enough.
A sudden, bottomless, aching sadness overcame me. Invisible fingers reached up and choked me from the inside.
I was probably going to die. Soon.
This realization hit me in a way that it never had. In all my years of living with this unknown, I’d never felt it this deep in my bones. It had never been this savage.
I’d always suspected I would die young. Then my hand started acting up and I knew I would. I was at peace with it, for the most part. I’d lived a great life. I had no regrets. But now everything was different.
I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay with him.
And the fact that I couldn’t, that I couldn’t get all of him that I wanted, was devastating.
I didn’t want to leave him.
How could the universe show me how pure, how perfect, love could be, and then kill me?
A wave of grief poured over me. That forbidden emotion that I never let in. I looked right at the sun and it exploded, crashed into me, and seared me alive.
I started to cry. Racking, choking sobs.
His arms wrapped around me. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head into his chest. “I’m so afraid of losing you.”
“You won’t,” he whispered. “You will never lose me.”
No.
It would be the other way around.
He would lose me.
CHAPTER 25
10 SIGNS THAT YOUR
PERFECT RELATIONSHIP IS
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
ADRIAN
I woke up on Christmas morning, my arms wrapped around her warm body. She was in nothing but a baggy T-shirt. Her hair was pulled over one shoulder and I kissed the bare skin on her neck and she tipped her head to one side.
She smelled like vanilla. She smelled like home.
I couldn’t even understand how I had lived without her once. How I’d gone through my days not knowing her. I was turned to her now the way a house plant leaned toward a sunny window. I felt like the luckiest man in the world.
Christmas was one of the best I’d ever had. We ate breakfast and opened presents. I got Richard and Mom an espresso maker. A smaller, less vulgar (as Vanessa called it) version of the one in my own kitchen. We’d gotten the approval from the rescue and we talked to Richard and Mom about Harry. Grandma was already holding him when we told her, and she was very excited.
Vanessa’s mother’s ring was my main gift to her. When all was said and done, I could have bought five rings for the price of what it cost me to find this one, but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. The look on her face when she saw it was priceless.
I also got her an Office shirt with Jim’s face and BEARS, BEETS, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA on the front. She loved it.
Since Badger Den hadn’t panned out, she got me a bottle of 2010 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac. She said it was “a Bordeaux with a strong sense of its own self-importance”—a lot like her dad. Her words, not mine. She also bought me an ant farm, which was ironic since my last gift to her, still en route to her apartment, was a butterfly habitat.