He dips his head and smiles sheepishly. “Everyone loved him—teachers, cops, shop owners. They asked him to run for mayor one year, but he laughed and said he couldn’t be away from his family. He believed in me, no matter the shitty grades or how rambunctious I got. I gave him a run for his money too, fighting in school and being a pill, lashing out because of my issues. He was patient and loving. He adored my mom, always kissing her in front of people.” A small laugh comes from him. “He loved to tell the story of how they met. He was on a date with some model, one of those glamorous types, and Mom marched up to him at the bar while his date was in the restroom and said, I’m the girl you want, then tucked her number in his shirt pocket and walked away. He called her that night and they were married six months later. He loved hard, with everything he had, always planning things for us to do together. Family trips, crazy themed dinners. Every Christmas we did this mystery dinner where one of us was the bad person trying to mess up Christmas and the rest of us had to figure it out. He wrote the script for it and coached the bad guy. Whoever guessed it right got an old football trophy of his from when he was a kid. It was dumb and silly, but the best. I spent Sundays in our basement with him watching football and playing darts from the age of five to fifteen. He laughed all the time. He told horrible jokes, never could remember the punch lines right. He was so easy to love, so damn easy. He came to every single football game I ever played. He made me feel important, and you could tell him anything and he wouldn’t judge, he really listened…” He pauses, grimacing. “God. I miss him, Anastasia, and my mom…I’m terrified she’s next.”

The pain in his words make tears prick my eyelids. I hold myself back from hugging him. I’m sad for him and his mom, and I dig deep to look for something positive to say that doesn’t sound trite. I can’t say She’ll be okay or You’ll be okay because the truth is, I don’t know that.

“Someday you can pass those traditions to your own family. Family is a precious gift.”

“You think I’ll be like him?” He looks at me uncertainly. “I’m kind of a mess.”

Oh, River. A beautiful mess.

“Yes. You will. You’re too beautiful for words, River, and again, I don’t mean how you look.”

I glance at him and he’s watching me, his eyes lowered as he stalks closer. His face is open, a glint in his eyes that makes me gasp.

I see pain there.

And need. Sharp and visceral. He shields his gaze from me, so often, but now…

My heart pounds as the delicate thread between us tightens. I take a breath.

He’s in front of me, our bodies almost touching. “I love the things you say. You’re a dreamer, Anastasia. Like me. I’m glad I met you a year ago.”

“Even though you hated me?”

“I never hated you. I can’t stay away from you.”

My heart dips and his eyes widen as the silence builds, stretching.

Ah. He didn’t mean to say that.

Then.

Oh. Oh.

Everything clicks together.

His eye twitch, his evasiveness earlier.

Clarity hits me, the real reason I was shaking downstairs. My brain was slowly putting it together.

How did I miss this?

He frowns. “What’s wrong?”

I gaze up at him, my stomach jumpy. “Let me take you back to a night a year ago. In the library, you did drop your pen to talk to me. It was your way in, to feel me out. Recon. Then you went back to Donovan, and you may not have written the note that night—it was in his handwriting, I’ll give you that—but you dictated it, coached him on what to say. You give advice to all the guys.”

“Anastasia—”

I hold my hand up, cutting him off as an exhalation comes from my chest. “You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how. He never once mentioned that quote to me when we dated, and it’s from Gone with the Wind. He’s never seen the movie and never wrote me any more notes like that. He never wanted to talk about that letter. Never. He’d just laugh and change the subject when I brought it up, even though it meant so much to me—that someone saw that I wasn’t smiling, that someone was looking at me hard enough to see under the surface. The note talked about three things he liked about me, things Donovan never mentions, and now, it makes perfect sense!”

He sighs.

“Three is your thing, not his,” I say, speaking softer as I look at the letters on his fingers, then his face. “River…why?”

His lashes flutter against his cheek. “Anastasia, you shouldn’t—”

“It was you,” I say, feeling the certainty, and the ramifications. “You wrote that letter. Is that why you didn’t want to introduce me to Kian…because you’d already sort of fixed me up with Donovan?” I shake my head, trying to line everything up.

“Yes.”

“River! I walked out of the library and he was there, and that was supposed to be you, and it’s just wrong, wrong, wrong—”

He shuts his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“This whole time… Donovan and I started out with a lie. That you built. It’s not right!” It feels like a betrayal, another one from Donovan, and a new one from River.

“Don’t say that.” Frustration colors his words as he pulls me fully into his arms, his grasp strong, the heat of his body engulfing mine.

“I wasted a year on him and it wasn’t even real—”

“You fell in love with him, Anastasia. It wasn’t just the note,” he counters.

“Was it just a game to you?” I look up at him.

“No. Never. I-I just somehow knew what to say to you…” He swallows and glances away from me, then drops his arms and takes a step back.

My chest rises. He wrote my note. He’s the one I should have been with.

“You told me at the sunrise to live each moment. Well, here and now, I’m living it. We’ve been dancing around each other for days. I want you.”

“We can’t.”

I shake my head. “We can. Since the moment we met, the world has been put on pause, waiting for us to figure it out, maybe, I don’t know, at least that’s how it feels for me. In the library when we met, that night in your bedroom at the Kappa house, in the kitchen in May—you wanted me. You’ve built a fortress around yourself, trying to keep me out, am I right?”

“Anastasia, we can’t talk about—”

“Stop,” I tell him. “We want each other—”

He sucks in a breath. “Don’t say it. Don’t.”

Oh, I’m going to say it.

I’m done with him pushing me away.

And this thing feels like it’s going to unravel at any moment if I don’t hang on tight. I take the one step that puts me back in his arms and press my cheek to his chest.

His arms go around me. “We can’t do this,” he says, a catch in his voice. “He’s my friend.”

My voice is muffled, and I can’t look at him when I say the vulnerable words. “Listen to me. We’re here. We’re under the stars. You can’t lie to the stars. We have a connection and you know it. Life doesn’t give out a lot of moments like this. Just kiss me, just kiss me or walk away.”