Viv

“I love you, Nora,” he says when we pull apart a few inches to breathe. “I think I love everything about you.”

“Even my Peloton?” I ask.

“Great piece of equipment,” he says.

“The fact that I check my email after work hours?”

“Just makes it easier to share Bigfoot erotica without having to walk across the room,” he says.

“Sometimes I wear very impractical shoes,” I add.

“Nothing impractical about looking hot,” he says.

“And what about my bloodlust?”

His eyes go heavy as he smiles. “That,” he says, “might be my favorite thing. Be my shark, Stephens.”

“Already was,” I say. “Always have been.”

“I love you,” he says again.

“I love you too.” I don’t have to force it past a knot or through the vise of a tight throat. It’s simply the truth, and it breathes out of me, a wisp of smoke, a sigh, another floating blossom on a current carrying billions of them.

“I know,” he says. “I can read you like a book.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers