“I’ve loved you since I was a freshman in high school,” I admit, and the last wall around my heart crumbles into dust. “You’re my dream come true. I tried to convince myself that you were the enemy, but it was me. My hesitation was the enemy.”

“You still love me now?” He searches my eyes. I know he sees nothing but truth.

“I love you.”

He closes the gap between us and then his mouth is on mine, drinking me in, and I’m crying and laughing at the same time. “I’m so sorry about…about the dick pic, Roman,” I cry into his mouth.

That’s the last straw for Marjorie. She comes thundering up from the back, throwing words like missiles, but all of them bounce right off me. Roman is kissing me too hard for me to care all.

“—over! Give it over,” she says from close by.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am.” Roman releases me, then reaches carefully around and unties my apron. It’s such an intimate motion that it takes my breath away. He lifts it from my neck and hands it reverently to Marjorie. She scowls at him, but there’s no disguising the pink in her cheeks. He’s that hot.

“Out. Out.”

“We’d love to have you at the Bliss Resort,” says Roman smoothly. He takes a folded paper from his pocket. “A discount coupon for our hotel restaurant.”

She snatches it from his hand and stomps toward the back, still muttering under her breath. The customer caught in the crossfire cowers in the back of the store.

Roman takes my hand, and I look back up at him. “I’m really sorry, Roman. For all of it.”

“You know what?” He sticks his other hand in his pocket. “I think we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that, as long as you come home.”

He’s going to make me cry again. “Home with you?”

“Home with me.”

He wraps his arm around me and steers me toward the door, pushing it open so we can step out into the summer sun. “Anywhere you are is home,” I tell him, and it’s true. “But can we please go back to Bliss?”

He smiles down at me, then lifts my chin. “Yes,” he says. And then he says it again, with a kiss. And again, and again, and again.

26

Roman

The microphone squeals with feedback when I lift it toward my mouth, which makes everyone at Beau’s beach party flinch. He runs up from the center of the crowd, mouths sorry! and adjusts something on a speaker at the front of the stage. Then he gives me two thumbs up.