Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(90)

I fumbled to the call screen. “His number. I don’t know his number!” I typed his name into Brent’s contacts and it didn’t come up. “How do you not have his number?! He’s one of your investors!”

“It’s under Jesus’s Abs! No! Wait! It’s under Fancy Hall Cop! Type in Fancy Hall Cop!”

I pulled up the contact and hit Send, pacing along the bamboo railing.

The call wouldn’t connect.

I made a guttural shrieking noise and whirled to run to beg Drake for his satellite phone.

I was going to miss the wedding. I was going to get on The Weeknd’s Jet Ski and take it right to the nearest airport. I wouldn’t stop moving until Adrian was in front of me.

“Vanessa!” A faraway voice drifted from somewhere in the distance.

I slid to a halt in the sand, panting. “Did you guys hear that?” I asked, looking back at Laird and Brent, who’d followed me. Laird was still filming.

“Vanessaaa!”

I twisted around. “Okay, that was definitely closer. Who is calling me?”

Laird was looking around now too. Panning the shoreline with the camera.

I think we saw him at the same time, because Laird’s camera stopped moving and focused on a man running up the beach from the direction of the pig roast. It looked like a wedding guest. He was in a white linen outfit, kicking up sand at a full run.

“Vanessa!”

I narrowed my eyes.

And then I put a hand over my mouth.

It was him.

Adrian.

I only had a moment to register it before I broke into a run toward him down the beach and we crashed into each other.

I was instantly whole.

He gathered me up like I’d seen Drake gather a parachute after landing a BASE jump. Hand over hand, tucking it all into your belly to carry it off in your arms. My thighs were lifted around his waist, my dress hiked up, hands under my ass, warm lips on my mouth, and I wondered briefly if I’d finally died and this was heaven.

I broke away from his kiss. “Wait. Wait wait wait, what are you doing here?” I breathed. “How? How did you find me?”

He pulled away just enough to look at me. He was crying. He looked like a man who had cried every single day for months. Like he’d gotten good at it and it was easier to cry now than it was to stop.

“I knew you’d be here. You wouldn’t miss Drake’s wedding. I knew I only had one shot at knowing exactly where you were. Vanessa, I’m so sorry. I was wrong. I was wrong to ask you what I did. I had no right.”

I shook my head. “You were just being honest about what you need—”

“Fuck what I need. I should have kept you still. It was my job to keep you still. I’ve worked really hard to deal with the things inside of me that made it difficult to be strong for you. That was my own shit, and I had to work through that and I’m sorry.”

I swallowed down the knot in my throat.

His eyes bored into mine. “I love you. I never said it and I should have said it every fucking day. I love you.”

My chin trembled. “You got on a plane…”

He shook his head. “I got on dozens of planes. I quit my job. I woke up every day with no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I didn’t even know whether you’d talk to me if I found you.”

“You adopted Grace?” I said, my voice cracking.

“I went to get her from Gerald the day you had him clear out your apartment.”

“You…you did?” I breathed.

A small smile played at the corners of his lips. “He gave me a long speech about how I should let you go. Then he made a dramatic exit and I didn’t even let him get down the hallway before I went after him and told him I’d never give up on you and I wanted my daughter back. He said he wanted to see if I’d fight to keep my family together. I must have passed his test.”

I laughed through tears.

He smiled. “It was the negotiation of a lifetime. He made me promise to let him see her and to only give her gender-neutral toys. Then he went on a rant about the patriarchy and subliminal messages in children’s movies. I’ve been taking your dad to Perkins with Grace once a week since you left.”

I didn’t think it was possible to love Adrian more, to be prouder of him. But I was.

He nodded over his shoulder. “She’s here, actually. She’s with Drake—who still doesn’t have a shirt, by the way.”

I laughed and the welling tears spilled over.

His green eyes held mine and he wiped off my cheek with his thumb. “Please,” he whispered. “Tell me it’s not too late. Tell me you’ll give me another chance. I don’t want to waste another minute. I’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered.

“Yes?”

I laughed through tears. “Yes.”

His smile was enormous. It radiated. He kissed me again and I melted into it.

There was nothing nostalgic about him, not in his familiar smell or the shape of his body, because nostalgia would have suggested that he was a memory. He wasn’t. My heart had never left him, had never forgotten a thing about him. It just started right back up from where we left off, like an ongoing conversation. The inhale to the long exhale of the last two months.

He pulled away to look at me. “Let’s make this the best time of our lives. Live every day like it’s your last.”