Leo's Chance(25)

"It wasn't my intention to do this on a street corner, but this stubborn girl is gonna make me," I say, mostly to myself. Okay, though. I’m flexible. I take a deep breath as Evie narrows her eyes at me again. But she’s not trying to move away. This is a start.

I don’t have to tell Evie who I am to let her know what was crystal clear to me simply from watching her live her life for a little over a week. I could very well have been a stranger and still figured out how amazing she is. "You think I don't know you, Evie? I'll tell you what I know about you. That week I was following you, I know that you took the goddamn BUS to an old man's house to drop off cookies."

Her brows snap down and she stares at me for a second. "Mr. Cooper?" she finally asks, shaking her head in confusion, her eyes losing some of the anger they just held. "He lived next to the house where I lived for four years. He was always nice to me. He's widowed. Lonely. He really likes my chocolate chip cookies."

"It's a two hour round trip bus ride, Evie."

She’s still looking at me like I might be slightly crazy as she takes a deep breath. "Jake, I'm sure there's a point here but–"

"That guy across the hall was going to kill me before he let me even think about so much as making you uncomfortable."

"Maurice?" she says, scrunching her face up in confusion. God, she really has no f*cking clue how she affects other people. "He's a really protective guy."

I keep going, trying to make my point, "Like the guy last night who practically melted me with the angry lasers coming out of his eyes after he thought I disrespected you in public?" I ask gently, my hold on her hand loosening because I don’t think she’s going to run now.

"Landon?" she asks. "He's one of my best friends, he–"

Jesus, am I not making this crystal clear to her? I’ve never met anyone who has a harder time understanding a compliment. I get it, believe me, I get it. But it’s still f*cking frustrating when you’re the one trying to deliver the praise. It occurs to me that she probably hasn’t had a lot of heartfelt compliments in her life since I left and it’s no wonder she doesn’t recognize one when she sees it. This thought makes an intense flood of possessiveness fill my chest and I make the vow to keep telling her how amazing she is every day until I leave this earth. If by some horror she rejects me once she knows my whole disgusting truth, I will have it written in the sky every morning over her apartment. It feels like the greatest travesty of justice on the planet for this girl not to understand the depth of her own beauty. For my girl not to understand the depth of her own beauty. "Evie, I think you're failing to grasp what I'm saying to you and so I'm going to spell it out for you here, baby."

I stare straight into her widened eyes as I say, "You say 'please' and 'thank you' to everyone, Evie. You almost bumped into a cocker spaniel being walked by his owner and when you ducked around him, you said, 'excuse me.' You said 'excuse me' to a dog, Evie. And I bet you didn't even think twice about that. And that's because your manners are so deeply ingrained in you, that that is second nature. And given what I know about your past, I'm gonna guess that no one f*cking taught you that. That that is just all Evie."

She’s staring at me, unspeaking and so I consider that a good sign to continue.

"What I know about you, is that people who are lucky enough to have your trust and your friendship, it is clear that they would have your back to within an inch of their life and that is because you give them you, and they know that when they have you, they have a f*ck of a lot.

"And, Evie, when you walk away from people, even strangers, you gotta know that their eyes follow you. And I'll tell you why, because I've felt it myself. It's because they don't want to see the light that is Evie, the light that is you, walking away from them. They want to see it coming toward them and staying with them."

"Uh–" she starts to say something, but I’m on a roll and frankly, this is my favorite subject and so I don’t want to stop.

"So maybe I don't know what your favorite meal is, maybe I don't even know your birthday. But what I do know is beautiful, and Evie, what I do know lets me know that I want to know more."

The fact is, I do know her birthday. I know it as well as I know my own, but it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t. It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t know any more than what it took to figure out in a week and a half. And I know that for a fact, because it took me fifteen minutes to know she was someone I was going to fall in love with when I was f*cking eleven years old. The day I first noticed her, sitting at that dinner table wearing her heart on her sleeve, she brought me back to life and made me hope. In those first few minutes, that’s what she had done. And that’s why my betrayal of her made me hate myself so goddamn much.

This all swirls through my mind at lightning speed as we stare into each other’s eyes, standing at a bus stop on a city street. I’m lost in the depths of the dark brown windows to her soul.

"Um, Jake," she finally says quietly.

"What, Evie?"

"I missed my bus. I'm gonna need a ride."

Her words penetrate and I can’t help the giant grin that I feel spreading across my face.

I lead her to my car and deposit her in the passenger side as I make my way around and get in the driver’s side.