Page 190 of Just One More Thing

She cries harder. Then lifts both hands and makes a heart.

Something in me gives way.

I’m jogging toward the wall before I realize my feet are moving.

She’s moving too, pushing past people, stepping over seats, working her way down toward the railing. My jersey hangs halfway down her thighs. Her hair’s a mess. Her face is wrecked and beautiful and the best thing I’ve ever seen.

She reaches the railing and grips it with both hands like it’s the only thing holding her up.

I stop right below her.

“Mo.”

CHAPTER 43

EMORY

“Mo!”

I see my name leave his lips and hear it in his voice at the exact same time.

My hands grip the rail so hard my knuckles have gone white. My fingers are numb. I can’t feel anything except the impossible way my chest seems to cave in and expand at the same time.

Jake is standing below me in full pads, helmet off, sweat shining on his face, breathing hard, looking up at me like I’m the only thing he sees while the stadium loses its collective mind around us.

Cannons fire. “Yo Ho, Yo Ho” blasts through the speakers. His leap into the end zone flashes across the jumbotron withTOUCHDOWNstamped in giant letters while grown men chest bump and strangers hug and somewhere behind me a woman screams loud enough to qualify as an emergency siren.

And somehow all of it feels far away.

All I see is him.

I open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.

Shocker.

Ten years ago, this man looked at me and said I love you. And I said thank you. Because I am historically, spectacularly bad at the moments that matter most.

Not today.

Please, God. Not today.

He’s looking at me the way he always has. Since before I understood what it meant. Since long after I pretended I didn’t.

“What are you doing here?” he calls.

A nervous laugh breaks out of me, tangled up with a sob. “I’m choosing you,” I shout.

The words come out of me so fast they almost knock me off balance.

“I should’ve said it then,” I call down to him, voice shaking now. “I should’ve said it in the lighthouse. On the island. On the dock. In the boathouse. I should’ve said it a hundred different times in a hundred different places, and I didn’t.”

I stop, take a breath, and press one hand flat to my chest like that might slow me down.

I don’t want to rush this.

Because I finally have the words.