Yours, For Good (Cozy Latine Billionaires #4)

44. Chapter 44

Chapter 44

Nora

Tears streamed down my face the moment I stepped into the train. By the time I sat down on my seat, I sobbed.

Concerned people around me offered tissues, water, even to call people for me. I waved them away, thanking them and reassuring them, but it wasn't enough. A thousand times I said it was okay, it was meant to be that way, to just ignore me and let me cry. Still, I caught their worried glances, as much as they all wanted to pretend they weren't paying attention.

I was making a spectacle of myself, and I couldn't care less. Those tears glued our last words to my brain.

"I don't want to let you go." I had my arms around his neck and hid my nose in his shirt. "I'm not ready for this to be goodbye. This feeling is still here."

"But is that feeling love?"

Ugh. Probably, right? It had only been an hour since I left Manhattan, and an empty space already burst open in my chest.

But I couldn't promise forever unless I was sure.

"I'll wait, Nora," he said between kisses. "For as long as you want. When you reach out, be it a week or a year or a decade, I'm here. For good."

It hurts , I muttered, and cried some more.

It was a small miracle that Mrs. Semple had gone out shopping and left a note to welcome me back. I didn't want to have to explain why I looked like such a mess.

I threw myself in my bed and what did I do? I cried some more.

Fuck, this didn't bode well.

Eventually, I fell asleep. I woke up dehydrated like I had been out partying, and drank a gallon of water to recover. Or to fuel the next batch of tears; things were still up in the air that way.

I sneaked into the kitchen, made myself a sandwich, and left a note for Mrs. Semple not to worry.

I'm super tired. See you tomorrow! ~Nora.

I lay awake for hours that night, thinking of the past many months. How I'd been so sure that receiving Mr. Smith's offer was the real start to my life, yet having no idea how true that was. I was twenty seven years old now and I'd lived a hundred lives in a year— I'd been a bright eyed debutante to a world I never thought I'd get into. I had been a fearless businesswoman, laying the foundation for an organization to meet my wildest dreams. I had been a shy, eager person in search of her friends and found family.

One of my lives had been the one of a woman who found romance where she never expected it.

But had she fallen in love?

The galaxy-sized hole in my chest suggested I had.

"Fuck," I muttered into the night.

The room felt wrong. It didn't have beautiful architectural arches and an understated warmth to it. Worse, my bed was way too empty. It grated at my heart, and my hands itched with the need to find Javier's body next to mine.

And where was the glorious home library? It had my books! The start of my own collection.

I could see it so clearly. The headquarters for my company would find a beautiful home in Manhattan. I would find a small place in New York to live in and, out of practicality, I would ask Javier to let me keep my books in his bookshelves. He had so much more room than me.

Shit. I even had an office in his place already. If I ended up staying over with Javier and it was easier to jump into a videocall from there, I could do it.

Because I'd sleep over a lot. I'd have my set of everything there— toothbrushes and a section of his closet. I had already scoped it out. It had been his grandmother's walk-in and it was way too big for what Javier needed; there was plenty of room for my stuff to keep his company.

The fantasy of our lives together finally lulled me to sleep, leading into dreams where I gave up my lease only a few months later, because who was I kidding, I didn't want to sleep anywhere else.

My first thought the next morning was that I didn't want to live where Javier wasn't.

After a quick breakfast with Mrs. Semple, I went for a walk to the beach. I videocalled Sally and, once she reassured me that she could move a couple of meetings around— she had also gotten investments and was in the process of setting up her own business— I proceeded to tell her about my mom and Javier. Because fuck it. If I wanted to be as close to Sally as Javier was to his friends, I needed to trust her. Let her show me she would be there for me.

She was.

I told her about growing up with my mom, just the two of us, and her passing away. I skipped all about Javier getting me into the incubator, and talked about our friendship and me kissing him and his confession he had hidden something. Sally didn't ask for more than I could share, even when it didn't fully make sense.

"You know," I told her stunned face on the phone more than an hour later, "in one of my psychology classes, they said that grief is a process of adjustment. It's how you say goodbye to people and things, and find a way to go on living despite their absence. I had to do it with my mom and it hurt like nothing else. Eventually, I found a way to move forward. The grief isn't truly gone; it's a thread stitched to my heart that still tugs sometimes. It will always be there."

"I understand." Her bewildered light blue eyes and wild blonde curls filled the screen. "I was really close to my aunt who passed away. I can't imagine losing my mom."

I sat on the sand and gazed out to the ocean. "Going through this right now with Javier hurts so much but it's different…"

"Because he's two and a half hours away by car?"

"Right," I chuckled. "He's not gone-gone. But I miss him so much! It's only been a day and here I am, talking to my friend about this emptiness eating me inside, because I didn't get to say good morning to him!"

I didn't feel the tears until two of them rolled down my face.

Sally gave me a soft look. "And your friend is wondering, will you forgive him? Is this grief worth going through?"

I sighed and made no effort to stop crying. It all swelled inside like the sea building a wave, climbing to the sky and at the verge of cresting and breaking into tumultuous white water.

"I've forgiven him." The revelation wasn't louder than a murmur, but it roared inside. It was the deep rumble of the ocean. "Probably earlier than I knew, but fear didn't let me see it. He is worth the grief."

I dropped my head and heard another truth about us— about me. It thundered in my heart.

I loved him.

He was worth the grief, because I loved him.

"Fuck," I muttered, and cried harder. "Yes."

My love for him crashed into me like water on the shore. It rippled and changed the territory of my chest. The sea had always been there but, until I mourned him, I had confused it for a lake in the distance.

I had looked at the horizon far away, and thought it was all calm and unmoving.

I closed my eyes, and saw the tiny smile he would give me if I told him he had been right. This is what I needed to go through to know.

"You said love is loaned and— it is." Sally's voice interrupted my reverie. She tilted her head in a challenge. "But why on earth would you pay the interest before you had to?"

I laugh-snorted. "I don't ever want to pay back the loan, but…"

I fished a tissue out of my pocket, blinked away the last few tears, and cleaned up.

"I don't have a choice in what people do," I said, "or if accidents happen… but I still have agency today in what I do about it all. If I grieve now when I don't have to, then I'm accountable for that pain— I'm the one causing it."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to start with a text."

Sally stayed in the call while I crafted the simple message.

Nora : I miss you

Javier : I miss you, too.

Nora : Can we talk?

I didn't hear from Javier again, so I chatted a bit more with Sally before she had to go. His lack of a reply didn't bother me; he might have been working and waited for a break to text me back. Maybe we'd get to talk that night after office hours. Not that he had a strict schedule, but people depended on him, and he wouldn't drop them if they needed him.

A smile stretched on my face, because the thought came with zero doubts.

It was fine. I could wait. My anger was gone. The ocean of love inside had settled, but cresting waves or not, the sea couldn't be shaken away. She would stay there, infinitely deep.

All I cared about was that when I finally got to tell him I was ready to go back and be one hundred percent in, I could see every detail of his reaction. I wanted to record it in my heart forever. Make it into one of the nerves pulsing little shocks to the organ, to remind it to keep a constant rhythm.

Sigh. I was so in love with him. Knowing for sure felt amazing.

I walked back to Lock Willow and gave Mrs. Semple a genuine smile for no reason.

"Oh, I'm so happy to see you smiling," she said. "You looked full of malaise this morning for breakfast."

"I'm happy to announce the malaise is gone, which reminds me… we may need to talk business soon. I may leave ahead of schedule, Mistress Semple."

"Let me guess." She gave me a knowing smile. "New York?"

"How much more would you like me if I told you Javier and I are in love?"

She laughed. "My dear, you already have my esteem. I'm happy for you both."

I excused myself and decided I could use the helium filling my lungs to be productive. The library made for a great setting; I tried to start on a draft for a job description, but quickly got distracted. I spent the next couple of hours looking for commercial rentals in Manhattan and, when that was way more expensive than I had originally budgeted for, expanded my search to nearby areas. It didn't discourage me; I could make it work with a simple train ride. Quite the cosmopolitan life I would lead…

"Nora."

The screen before me disappeared. I straightened in my chair like a meerkat hearing a distant sound, and regretted I faced the wall and not the door behind me.

Because my name… and the voice… how he'd said it…

"Nora."

I turned to find Javier standing in the middle of the room, his eyes serious on me.

My lips parted. "You came."

"You said you missed me."

He took a step toward me and came to a sudden halt. His fists curled at his sides, tension building as he kept himself still.

I got out of my chair. "I thought you'd just call me back— I didn't expect you to come here— you didn't have to drop everything—"

"Yes. I did." He released a frustrated gust of air. "I had to come, that is. I didn't drop anything— I had already taken the day off."

I took a step toward him. "Why did you take the day off?"

"To be miserable. To question myself for hours if I had done the right thing, or I had done something I'd regret forever… then I got your text." He pressed his lips together not to smile. "It might have been overkill but… I needed to see you."

"Not overkill." I took a step, another.

"It's only been one day, and I don't mean to pressure you— I said I'd wait, and I'll wait— but when you said you missed me, I…"

I stood an arm's length away. His breathing was fast, his eyes tracing my face like he couldn't choose a single spot he'd missed more.

"You, what?" I breathed.

"I… I didn't think. Before I knew it, I was on my way. If you want me to go, I'll leave right away…"

"I missed you, Javier. I'd rather you stayed."

He gulped. "How close?"

"This close."

I jumped to him. He barely had time to prepare, but he took the inertia of my body well. His arms went around me, mine went around his shoulders. I leaned on him and he held me.

We kissed. Lips to lips, tongues dancing together, we rocked in place. He pulled me closer and I almost climbed up his body— we couldn't get close enough.

"You missed me," he said after a while. "Did you grieve me?"

"Too hard." I gave him another kiss. Peppered them over his face. "So hard that I had to wonder, why would I do this to myself?"

"Kindly notice this affected me deeply, too."

I chuckled. Kissed his mouth again. "Noted. I don't want to do that either."

"So what will you do?"

"I forgive you. I believe in who you are. So I'll move to New York. I'll find a place even if I stay with my boyfriend most nights."

"Your boyfriend." One of his tiny smiles made an appearance. "Does he know you're kissing me at the moment?"

"I don't think he'll have any issues with me kissing you often." I ran my fingers up the short hairs at his nape. "I want to kiss you as often as I can."

"But do you love me?" The question was so soft it could have been swept away by a gentle breeze. "Or at least… do you care about me enough that you could love me one day?"

"I love you. It's an ocean inside of me—"

His mouth crashed onto mine. His hands splayed on my back, pulling me closer to him than I thought possible. I kissed him right back.

"Fuck, that feels good to hear," he said.

"It feels good to say."

Sparkly like fresh snow under the sun. Warm like blankets on a cold day.

I pressed my lips to him again. "Love like this doesn't feel too hard to hold on to… but I'll hold on with all my might."

"I fell in love without noticing, so slowly… I thought we could stay friends… if you ever could forgive me for what I did."

"We can be friends. As long as we're lovers, too."

"Good," he whispered, before he kissed me again.