Too Late to Win Me Back, Mr. Billionaire novel · Chapter 19 of 32

Chapter 19: Upstairs

Heavy feet crossed the floor inside.

The door opened.

Sawyer stood there in a gray T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, barefoot.

He had a pencil behind his ear and his grandfather's crossword book in one hand.

He looked at me.

At the boots, the jacket, my face.

"Darcy."

"Is that the Sunday one?"

He looked down at the book. "Thursday. I'm behind."

"What's seven down?"

"I didn't come to the door to do the crossword."

"Neither did I."

The wind came up the stairs behind me and blew my hair across my face.

He didn't move it this time. He just looked at me with the beacon swinging green and white across the landing.

"You said not while you're still his on paper," he said.

"He's going to keep me on paper until spring. He told me so on the dock. He needs me not to be gone yet."

"And you're here because you're mad at him."

"No." I took a step closer. "I'm here because I've been waiting for him to let me go. And I just figured out he doesn't get to decide that. Nobody does. Not his mother, not his lawyers, not a judge in Rockland."

Sawyer's hand tightened on the crossword book.

"I'm not his," I said. "I haven't been his since the lawn. I'm done letting him have the last word on that."

"Darcy."

"I want this. I want you. Tonight, all of it. I'm saying it out loud so you never have to wonder."

He set the crossword book down on the shelf by the door without looking at it.

Then he reached out and took my face in both hands, the way he had on the wing, and this time nobody stopped.

He kissed me on the landing in the cold.

He walked me backward through his own door and kicked it shut behind us.

He kissed me against the door like the landing hadn't been enough.

His hands were in my hair, then under my jacket, then gripping my waist through my flannel shirt.

I pushed the jacket off my shoulders and let it fall.

"Darcy," he said against my mouth.

I got his T-shirt in both fists and pulled it up and over his head.

Then I stopped and looked at him.

The beacon swept green across his chest and away.

I put my palm flat over his heart and held it there.

His heartbeat was going hard as the Hen on a short runway.

"You've been flying through fog for years," I said. "You can handle this."

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