72

LAURA
By chaos, I meant a thousand roses.
They were everywhere. Scattered all over the inside of my store and even the store front. They hadn’t been there when Drew and I had come in, which meant whoever had done this, had to have done it when I was occupied with Drew by the hangers.
“How on earth did these get here?” I whisper-shouted to Bailey, my voice filled with horror. There were customers in the shop and I didn’t know what the hell was going on but I definitely didn’t want it posing an inconvenience to them.
What if they left horrible reviews on the website? Oh my God.
Bailey, whom I’d expected to share the same sentiment as me, merely stood there smiling at me. Was she insane? What could she possibly find funny about any of this? Some customers had already paused their shopping to curiously stare at us.
Without uttering a word, she gently gripped my shoulders and turned me around until I was facing the entrance of the store where I saw Alex standing there, carrying roses in all colors, including some I’d never seen before.
At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Maybe I’d wanted to see him so bad, my brain decided to conjure up images of him. But no, this version of Alex I was seeing was real because when I blinked–twice–he was still standing there, carrying that bouquet.
The mere sight of him had that all-familiar ache flaring to life from deep inside my chest.
Saying that I’d missed him would be the understatement of the century. Being without him felt like a separation from a dear limb I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get used to living without.
Now that he was here-now that I was seeing him right in front of me-the fears I’d had all through last night and this morning seemed inconsequential. Laughably so. And the only thing I could think about-hell, the only thing I wanted to do right now, was to run into his arms and forget about everything.
Gluing my feet to the ground when they obviously wanted to take me closer to him required herculean effort.
I was so fucking gone on him.
“Hey, Laura,” he said, looking hesitant.
What was he doing here? The bouquet of roses he was carrying was enough to let me know that the ones scattered around the floor was his doing.
My heart started racing in my chest.
If I was being completely honest with myself, then I would admit that I had an inkling as to what was about to happen, and I was going to lose my freaking mind. I had never been one for PDAs and this-whatever it was he planned to do in front of my customers-was the mother of all PDAs. Hell, It could probably be seen all the way from space.
People had gathered outside, some pulling out their phones to record. And me? I wanted to scream, throw up, and burst into tears. At the same time.
Alex seemed to make a decision then, erasing the unsure look from his face and steeling himself as he took a few steps closer to me. Close enough that if he spoke, I would hear him without him having to raise his voice but far enough that my body rebelled against the distance. His eyes never left mine the entire time. Not even for a quarter of a second.
“I know you’re probably wondering what the hell is happening right now and I’m eighty percent sure you’re already plotting my murder for all of this-” he gestured to the roses. “-but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
It was almost alarming just how well he knew me. He’d proven to me over and over again that I could fool anyone with my poker face, but not him. Never him.
“Laura, when I met you in that elevator all those months ago, I knew for certain, right there and then that I was never going to meet anyone like you again. What I didn’t know, however, was that you would come to mean this much to me.” He took a deep breath. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said you were the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. Still are. And I do not mean the kind of beauty that fades away with time, no, I’m talking about the kind that runs soul deep.”
Someone went ‘aww’ but I didn’t turn to look, unwilling to drag my eyes from his form.
“I see you when you do something nice or something unbelievably selfless then you turn around as if to make sure no one saw you doing it because you’ve built a wall so high between you and everyone else, only letting them see what you want them to. But you let me in, and I hurt you.” His eyes looked bleak as he said those words, like it could possibly have hurt him as much as it had hurt me. “It would be a miracle to gain your forgiveness but even if you do forgive me, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for causing you pain.”
He seemed to consider his next words. “I wish I could tell you when and where I fell in love with you like they do in the movies but I can’t because I wasn’t even aware when it happened. I just know that I found myself wanting to be wherever you were. Hell, I even had to blackmail you to get you to spend time with me” He shook his head, a self-depreciating laugh escaping him. “That was when I knew I was in trouble.”
My face heated when I remembered exactly how the ‘blackmail’ had gone.
He shook his head again like he couldn’t believe it. “Do you know why I didn’t call you as soon as we landed in New York?” He asked rhetorically. “Because I was trying to rid myself of you. You had infiltrated my mind and body without my knowledge and when I found out, I tried to get you out of my system. What you do to me, Laura…it scares me. Nothing and no one makes me feel the way you do, so I wanted to run while I still could.” He lifted his eyes and held mine. “But it was already too late. I was too far gone on you. So I broke and reached out to you and I have not been able to stay away ever since.”
Emotion clogged my throat and I brought my hands up to my chest, holding them to my heart as if they would somehow stop it from galloping like a horse. The crowd had increased and there were a lot of people around us, watching avidly, but I didn’t dare take my watering eyes away from Alex.
Alex, too, looked emotional, his eyes suspiciously bright. “Laura baby, you gave me your trust once, and I let you down. Right now, I am asking for a second chance and I swear on everything I hold dear that I will never let you down again.”
A sob wracked my chest but, oh, he wasn’t even done.
“Please give me another chance and I promise to spend every single day of my life making it up to you.”
Oh my poor baby.
He looked scared. His eyes filling with even more dread at the sight of my tears, no doubt interpreting them as a sign of rejection.
I wanted to tell him that I’d already forgiven him and that I just wanted him back. Hell, I wanted to ask him if we could skip all these and fast forward to the part where he kissed me and took me the hell out of here, but movement behind him caught my eyes and surprise filled me as I looked up to see Jack, Jake and Balery. The disbelief I felt upon seeing my best friend damn near had my eyes bulging out of their sockets.
She laughed in delight when she saw my reaction, lifting her hands.
That was when I realized that they were all holding up cards with words on them. Jack’s read “Please”, Jake’s read “Forgive” and Balery’s read “Alex”.
The tears were spilling out of my eyes uncontrollably now, our audience be damned. I couldn’t believe that they’d done this.
Alex followed my eyes when he saw where I was looking. “Yeah, I somehow managed to convince them into helping me.”
I shook my head, unable to speak past the lump in my throat. Did he have any idea how sweet this was?
They dropped the cards they were holding and lifted new ones which collectively read, “Make Alex again.”
I frowned as I tried to make sense of the words. Make Alex again? I had no idea what that meant. Perhaps there had been a typo.
Someone walked out from behind me carrying a card. Situating himself between Jake and Balery, he lifted it. It was Drew, grinning wide, and his card read “happy”.
The entire thing now read “Make Alex happy again”.
A watery laugh bubbled up my throat as I pieced two and two together. Drew had never wanted to ‘make it up to me’. There was also no girlfriend whose birthday was coming up. His role in this had been to bring me here in a way that I wouldn’t have had any suspicions. That was why he’d been texting on his phone and had seemed so distracted the entire time.
“He made me do it,” Drew mouthed to me, jerking his chin at Alex.
Alex, who was still standing there, waiting for an answer. As if any dimension existed where I rejected him after he’d gone out of his way to pull something like this.
A woman in the crowd shouted, “Take him back.” And soon, the entire crowd was chanting it.
Alex stared at me, heart in his eyes.
Without waiting another moment, I threw myself into his arms and he caught me just as I’d known he would, burying his face in my neck as tremors ran down his arms. “I am so fucking sorry, Laura.” He breathed. “I’ll never hurt you again.”
“It’s okay,” I told him, wrapping my arms tight around him.
The claps from the crowd felt like it was coming from far away. The familiar smell of Alex filled my nostrils and my senses.
Over his shoulder, I saw that Jack and Jake had drawn closer and were holding up new signs which read “We’re sorry”.
Sniffing, I rolled my eyes and went over to them, despite how reluctant Alex was to let me go. One by one, I hugged each of them, along with Drew and Balery-who told me she owed me an explanation for all of this but I couldn’t even be bothered about that right now.
I had Alex.
Speaking of, I turned to him and saw that he was already looking at me. Had he ever even stopped?
His eyes followed me like he didn’t want me out of his sight for even a second, and my belly fluttered. But he seemed like he was holding himself back, probably worried about smothering me.
Well, that wouldn’t do at all.
Going to him, I didn’t stop until my body was molded to his and his body heat seeped through the barriers of our clothes. His skin was tense, every inch of him hard. “Take us out of here?” I whispered so only he could hear.
My customers had long since gone back to shopping and the crowd outside had thinned, but the others were still here and I didn’t want to risk anything.
Alex’s eyes darkened, throat bobbing on a swallow. “I’ll bring the car around.”