Page 139 of Wait for Him

Not if. When.

6. Enjoy your birthday. I'd bet money you worked all day because it's "any other day," so do something you love. Something just for you. I'll be on my balcony doing yoga at 5 a.m. if you want to join me. It would be nice to know you're doing it with me from across the ocean.

No matter where we are, I'll always love you.

Happy birthday, my love.

Missing you,

Rose

I read it again. Then again.

By the fourth time, I'm still standing in the cold with the party glowing through the glass behind me, but suddenly, breathing doesn't hurt quite as much.

Don't wait for me, she says.

I hear her.

I do.

But then, in the very same breath: I am coming home. Meet me on your balcony at five in the morning. My love.

She can write no longer in the cards in that steady attorney script all she wants.

She still dealt me one.

And maybe I'm a fucking idiot for holding onto it, but I've spent too many years loving this woman through every reason we couldn't be together. Too young. Michael's best friend. Married. Too much history, too much damage, too much everything. I've heard no in every language Rose knows how to speak, and somehow there has always been an except hiding somewhere behind it.

Waiting?

Yeah.

I'm going to wait.

Not with my life on pause. She specifically told me to live it, and for once I'm going to try listening to the whole instruction instead of the part I like best. I'll work. I'll build my company. I'll spend time with my people. I'll laugh when Blaire calls me a pussy and let Bennet drag me into whatever fresh hell he's manufactured for himself.

And I'll love Rose while I do it.

Because I've been doing that anyway.

At least now I know she's coming home.

I slide the card into my breast pocket, over the exact cliché she'd mock me for, and go back inside to my people because she told me to enjoy my birthday, and I intend to obey.

And tomorrow, at 4:55 a.m., I'll be on my balcony with a yoga mat I don't own yet.

She can tell me not to wait all she wants.

Five o'clock says otherwise.

Rose

I had a setback this week.

Dr. Campbell told me to expect them. He said it the way he says everything, calm and without an escape hatch: recovery isn't a staircase, Rosalie, it's a tide.

I'd nodded like a good student and privately decided that setbacks were probably for people with less discipline than me.